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Jonathan Majors’s arrest has forced the US Army to think on its feet following a newly launched advertising campaign featuring the Marvel star.
The actor, who was arrested Saturday (25 March) in New York on charges of strangulation, assault and harassment, was the narrator of two ads featured in a media campaign that was launched at the NCAA’s March Madness college basketball tournament.
Due to Majors’ casting in recent blockbusters Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III, army leaders hoped his involvement would help them reach the youth audience.
In a statement on Sunday (26 March), the Enterprise Marketing Office said that the Army was aware of Majors’s arrest and was “deeply concerned by the allegations”.
It added that while Majors “is innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete”.
However, the show must go on – and Major General Alex Fink, head of Army marketing, told The Associated Press that the Army will have “some brand new creative ads” ready on Friday (31 March). These will be compiled using the footage that was filmed without Majors’s narration.
“A majority of that content did not contain our main narrator, so we have a ton of content to go back to, to create basically new commercials new ads, if we need to,” he said, adding: “The campaign is full steam ahead.”
Last year was the Army’s worst recruiting year in recent history, falling 25% short of its goal to enlist 60,000 recruits.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill Tuesday raised the advertising issue and peppered Army Secretary Christine Wormuth and Gen. James McConville, the Army's chief of staff, with questions about how the service intends to fix the recruiting problems.
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Sign up“I see you had a bit of bad luck on your ‘Be All You Can Be’ commercial," said Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Appropriations defence subcommittee. “Hopefully you’re cutting a new commercial and getting it online as quickly as possible.”
Jonathan Majors at the Creed III premiere in Los Angeles on 27 February 2023
(Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Wormuth said the Army has a number of new programs, including bonuses, referral initiatives and a future soldier prep course that gives underperforming recruits a chance to take an academic or fitness course to try and meet enlistment standards.
“We’re trying to do everything we can think of because this is really a fundamental thing that the Army has got to solve if we’re going to continue to be the world’s greatest army,” she said.
Additional reporting by Agencies
