Navy Providing Commercial Endorsements?

Navy for Moms

July 29th, 2008

First of all, congratulations to NavyForMoms.com for achieving your first real membership milestone of 3500 new members in just a few short months! Navy for Mom’s was created to provide parents a forum to exchange information about their experience with the Navy. An excerpt from a recent press release;

“NAVYForMoms.com has become a valuable resource for potential Navy
parents, as well as an online gathering spot for current Navy moms,” said Rear
Adm. Robin Braun, Deputy Commander, Navy Recruiting Command. “We highly
encourage everyone to take a look at the website to view this powerful online
community. The site has enabled many strong friendships and support groups to
develop and provided a place where potential Navy parents can get information.
Its success is a true testament to the value of such a community.”

The web site states in it’s terms of service;

This website (”Site”) is sponsored by the United States Navy (“NAVY”) and produced and maintained by Campbell-Ewald Company (collectively “we,” “us,” “our” “NavyForMoms”) through Ning.com (“Ning”).

Campbell-Ewald (CE) is the company the United States Navy uses to run the Navy.com web site (among others) and also is responsible for generating all the Navy advertising you see on TV, hear on the radio and read in print. A government agency really has to outsource it’s advertising requirements for a few reasons but one of the main ones is legality - a contractor provides a means of keeping things at arms length such as a perception the Navy may be “endorsing” commercial products. Kind of like the Navy NASCAR used to have a co-sponsor “Super-Cuts” - that marriage was quickly broken up and the Navy became the “sole sponsor”. The car still had smaller stickers advertising oil filter companies and such and I suspect is one of the factors in the Navy’s decision to stop all the left hand turns by severing its ties with NASCAR altogether.

Campbell-Ewald’s position as the Navy’s advertising giant will be coming up for bid this year. Unlike the popular Navy.com web site, NavyForMoms.com is “owned” by Campbell-Ewald and interestingly the site provides links to web sites selling products (tee-shirts and such) for profit! Who is profiting from our tax dollars (assuming “sponsored by the United States Navy” is in the form of cash)? Is the NavyForMoms web site domain registration an indicator that CE doesn’t expect the contract to continue? Are we seeing the end of “Accelerate Your Life”?

On a side note, Navy.com, the web site “owned” by Navy Recruiting Command is set to expire in 2009, most other domains registered by the Department of Defense are purchased for very long periods of time, example - militarypay.us doesn’t expire until 2053. Navy Recruiting Command should follow suit with the Navy.com domain and secure that puppy!