Emotion a weapon in Army ads - Kind of puts a lump in your throat

Gosh, it's gotta be tough -- crafting commercials that persuade parents to encourage their offspring to enlist in the Army, when almost every day we see and read of more carnage in Iraq.

And Iraq, of course, is just one of the battlefields where American soldiers find themselves stationed in what promises to be a long and potentially quite bloody war against terrorism and assorted other threats to the homeland.

But boy, is Leo Burnett, the U.S. Army's agency of record -- at least for the next couple of months -- trying hard to make a compelling case for parents signing off on their kids' signing up for military service.

A new series of what are being termed "influencer" spots make that case in often startlingly emotional terms.

We admit to being surprised at finding a bit of a lump in the throat as we watched a couple of these new commercials. They are populated with some fine actors who know how to plumb the emotional depths of a line of copy.

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