Copyright with Military Insignia

I remember having so much trouble advertising for the National Guard when I worked full time in marketing. One of the biggest rules we had regarding social media on our state pages and our recruiter’s profiles was that we could not appear as if we (as a state/federal page) were not endorsing other non-federal entities (NFE). You would think that wouldn’t be such a hard thing to accomplish, but this made making relationships with local business super hard because we couldn’t even share their social media posts from our page, much less post a picture of one of our recruiters at an establishment, advertising their military discount. So I decided to do a little investigation of what exactly can and can’t be done.

Acording to the DOD (Department of Deffense) as of 2015, you can’t even use the copyrighted military insignia unless authorized, which you can request, but good luck. If the request go through the slow as dead snails military computer network, you’ll probably get an answer (of denial) after the point of when you actually wanted to use the graphic.

Now if you are a NFE and there is a military presence at your event, you are welcome to post something like a picture with a small context giving caption of the event. In no way can you make it seem like that specific branch of the military is supporting your business or organization. There’s a lot of grey area, and a lot of discernment falls upon the commanders level of command, (the boss of a unit at the state level). But bigger, national organizations or social media pages are montiotred by the bigger bosses in Public Affairs.

Bottom line, if you are a state, federal, private or public organization, make sure to check the copyright on any images, graphics and even regulations on how information should be shared. You might be surprised by what you find!

Here’s a small example of something shared by the U.S. Marines, who arguable have the best marketing campaigns. They portray the Marine Corps as the best, the elite, and the strongest military force. Now I’m in the Army, so I know which force is the best force, but this is a great example of something that is right by all the guidelines!