U.S Navy taps YouTube Creators to recruit Tech talent

The U.S. Navy is diving head first into influencer marketing with its first YouTube creator campaign in a quest to recruit more tech-savvy sailors.

Recognizing the growth of the influencer market and the clear enthusiasm fans have for their favorite creators, together with Wavemaker the Navy is experimenting with an influencer strategy to continue its shift into more digital and content-led channels.

The campaign “Sailor Vs.” taps into creators such as Kevin Lieber, who with more than 4 million subscribers on his channel called VSauce2, deconstructs complicated subjects such as logic, reasoning and robotics in an entertaining way.

“We need the best and brightest recruits who can become cryptologic technicians or graduate from Nuclear Power School and manage a nuclear plant on a submarine or an aircraft carrier,” shared Captain Matt Boren. “These creators let us raise awareness and visibility of the breadth of jobs available and in a format that is authentic and aligned with how young adults access information.”

Together with VMLY&R and in partnership with Google’s BrandUnit Team, we worked to identify creators that aligned with their key areas of focus — science, engineering, technology and math, and onboarded them with a real challenge – spend a day in the Navy.

“Sailor Vs.” launches on YouTube on August 8th and is part of Navy’s ongoing effort to modernize its marketing approach to inform, attract and hire the highest quality candidates to serve and protect our Nation.

The full list of YouTube Creators is below:

Kevin Lieber (in the nuclear submarine) is a smart and engaging “edutainer” with a knack for deconstructing complicated topics (like complex robotics) to an audience of 4.1 million subscribers.

Jake Koehler (working with the explosive specialist) profiles many adventures for his 8.5 million subscribers, including treasure hunting, scuba diving, and freediving escapades.  

William Osman (collaborating with a cybersecurity team) is a mechanical/electrical engineer based in Ventura, California, producing videos involving AI, robotics, and other technological experiments to his base of 1.3 million subscribers.

Check out our other recent work with the Navy, here >