Lance Murphey for The New York Times
A crew filming Maxim magazine’s Maximum Warrior contest in Crawfordsville, Ark.
CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ark. — Scaling elevator shafts and sliding through sewers in mud-caked fields at a military training camp here would not be what most people would call a vacation. But for 10 Special Operations soldiers from the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, participating in an event called the Maximum Warrior contest, these challenges had a singular aim: to be in Maxim magazine.
Lance Murphey for The New York Times
Producers and participants at the Maximum Warrior competition, an event arranged by Maxim.
Maxim, a testosterone-fueled magazine featuring adolescent humor and plenty of scantily clad actresses, has become for today’s Army what Esquire was to soldiers fighting in World War II and Playboy was during the Vietnam War.
“They’ve got hot chicks, guns, cars, trucks, a little bit of everything,” said Christopher May, a 38-year-old master sergeant in the Marines based at Camp Pendleton in California. He decided to compete in the contest, sponsored by the magazine, to enhance his credibility with younger officers who are die-hard Maxim fans.
On a recent December day in Crawfordsville, 20 miles west of Memphis, as he sat at a barracks table littered with Maxim magazines and cleaned his .45-caliber Remington pistol, he said that Maxim was “the most common magazine hanging around” during his eight deployments. That popularity isn’t an accident. The magazine has focused on the military, veterans and their families as a source of growing readership.
In 2013, Maxim hopes to turn its annual “Salute to the Military” issue — which includes content like how to approach dating after losing a limb in combat and highlights of celebrities who have served in the military — into a quarterly publication. Maxim will continue to work with the U.S.O. on military-sponsored events. It also will continue to run the Maximum Warrior contest, and will use videos from the event online and on the Maxim Xbox app.
The unabashed celebration of the military sets Maxim apart from many mainstream publications. Matt Willette, a 42-year-old special operations manager for ATK Tactical Systems — Blackhawk, provided the uniforms for the Maximum Warrior competition because he said the company wanted to reach military consumers who often buy their own gear. Mr. Willette, who served in the Army from 1988 to 1996, also likes Maxim’s pro-military approach.
“Most guys in the military have not been treated well by the media,” Mr. Willette said. “So when we do find one like Maxim, we want to embrace it.”
When the editor in chief, Dan Bova, meets members of the military, he says, they have read the magazine so thoroughly that they quote back to him the magazine’s jokes and photo captions. They send letters thanking Maxim for cheering them up during hospital stays as they recover from losing limbs. They also have sent photographs posing with Maxim in a claustrophobic snow cave near the Arctic Circle, in a combat zone while wearing night-vision goggles, and outside Saddam Hussein’s bombed-out palaces.
In the January issue, Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Dyk submitted a photograph of himself and his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan with the following note: “Would have liked to have gotten a better angle showing the valley, but we’d been engaged by Taliban that day and couldn’t really stand up to get a better shot!”
Maxim still lags behind Men’s Health, the fitness bible, which was the top-selling magazine year to date at Army and Air Force exchanges, but Maxim has been very successful at penetrating the broader military culture.
Three-quarters of Maxim’s surveyed readers say they have friends or family who are serving in the military or are veterans, according to data tracked by Fresh Intelligence, a market research firm, and the magazine sells particularly well around military bases.
Karl Erickson, host of the Maximum Warrior series and a retired member of the Army’s Green Berets, who served from 1985 to 2010, said that Maxim’s cheeky humor and attractive women resonated with soldiers better than any other magazine.
“Overseas, you’re living in your body armor and you’re within arm’s reach of your weapon at all times,” Mr. Erickson said. “Any chance you can relax and put a smile on your face, you jump at it, and Maxim magazine does do that better than anyone else.”
Maxim Magazine Focuses on Military, Veterans and Their Families
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Maxim Magazine Focuses on Military, Veterans and Their Families
