Army's plan to boost recruitment campaign featuring The Rock, UFL, may have hurt enlistment efforts

The US Army’s multi-million dollar deal with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and the United Football League, a professional American football minor league that Johnson owns, to gain new recruits has reportedly failed. The Army may even seek to recoup some of the monetary losses from the deal.

The $11 million deal likely didn’t lead to any new Army recruits, and may have actually had a negative impact on recruiting, internal documents and emails seen by Military.com revealed. 

The deal was struck earlier this year between the Army and the UFL, with the deal including Johnson who was supposed to serve as a brand ambassador for the Army. The Army, however, said that Johnson didn’t uphold his end of the deal to publish a number of Army-related posts to his social media.

Military.com’s report of an internal review of the plan showed that a projected 38 enlistments were lost during the deal. The Army saw the UFL deal as a net negative for recruiting.

The deal included prominent Army branding during UFL games, which included the Army’s logo on players' uniforms at games. With Johnson, the Army had valued social media posts on Johnson’s Instagram at $1 million each. The service was expecting five posts, but Johnson only made two, and no new posts as part of the deal since April.

Of the two posts Johnson made, one featured a photo of him with generals, and another was Johnson touring the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. The Army wants to recoup $6 million from the deal, though Military.com noted that it is unclear how that figure was reached.

"We are in the process of working with the UFL to determine the final cost," a spokesperson for the Army’s marketing team, Laura DeFrancisco, told the outlet.

Army staff had reportedly warned against the deal from the beginning, with Service officials saying the financial burden was too high and viewership of the league was too low. One senior Army marketing official told the outlet that the deal was reminiscent of the $88 million one struck by the National Guard with NASCAR, which also didn’t lead to new recruits.

"In terms of The Rock, it's unfortunate he was pulled away at a time when we expected him to be present with us to create content for his social media channels," Col. Dave Butler, a spokesperson for Gen. Randy George who reportedly pushed the UFL deal through despite concerns, told the outlet.