Sales & Marketing - and, indeed, Business in general - have long-since used the military as an organizational and behavioral inspiration and template. You have only to think of the lexicon: customers frequently labelled as target groups for marketing campaigns, supported by sales forces.
The question is, is it just hyperbole, or is there a more direct connection? And, if there is a more direct connection, what happens if military strategy itself evolves? Might Sales & Marketing professionals mimic and adopt at least some of the new trends? Well, do you know, I think they might! Indeed, they perhaps are.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.1
When I started out on this post I intended to discuss the concepts of Hybrid Warfare and Hybrid Sales & Marketing all in one go. But, as so often, once I got started, the thoughts just sort of tumbled out. So I’m going to split it over two posts.
This one focuses on Hybrid Warfare and, although it also introduces Hybrid Sales & Marketing, I’ll unpack more of my thoughts on that latter topic in a subsequent post.
In the previous post in the Notion of Customer series, I started trying to fathom the Big Picture, the ‘growth vs. degrowth’ and ‘local vs. global’ dimensions of Business in the 2020s. Now, I want to come back to the Customer because what goes on at the Customer Supplier Interface (CSI) is the ultimate test of a Business’s viability and success. And, in this instance, I want to think about it by reference to what might at first appear a rather odd comparison - Sales & Marketing versus Military Strategy & Warfare!
Let’s start by thinking about the evolution of military strategy.
Hybrid Warfare
Military strategy has always been a driver of thought development within and between human communities. People have, of necessity, pored over new technological developments of all kinds to establish the possibilities for application to warfare. After all, failure so to do might result in vulnerabilities being left open.
You know the sort of thing. A key to the success of Cyrus the Great when he created the First Persian Empire in 550 BCE was his insight about communications and the resulting road system that enabled his troops to move rapidly from point to point across large distances. Similarly but differently, if that makes sense, in 1704, John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough, won the Battle of Blenheim not least because he had realized that, on extremely uneven terrain, supplies could be far more reliably delivered by horse-drawn vehicles pulling single-axle carts rather than the traditional twin-axle versions. The twin-axle versions just shook themselves apart.
So, coming right up to date, when digital technologies came along, it was absolutely inevitable that they would impact the way warfare is conducted. But how would it actually happen?
Back in 2007, Frank Hoffman, writing on this topic, introduced the term ‘hybrid warfare’2. In a brilliant paper, Hoffman noted that threats now include …
… traditional, irregular, terrorist and disruptive threats or challengers. This has created a unique planning dilemma for today’s military planners, raising a choice between preparing for states with conventional capabilities or the more likely scenario of non-state actors employing asymmetric or irregular tactics. … The potential for types of conflict that blur the distinction between war and peace, and combatants and non-combatants, appear to be on the rise.3
The accuracy of this insight became overt via instances of domestic politics and their conflation with international conflicts. Supposed collusion with Russia has been a favourite choice for this activity: used, in the U.S. to make allegations against Donald Trump, and in the UK to denigrate Brexit and its supporters.
Then, two years ago, a real hot war started when Russia invaded Ukraine. However, horrible as it is, it seems to be a fairly traditional conflict - that is, comprehensible in pre-digital terms. Yes, there is much propaganda and a ‘story’ concocted by Vladimir Putin to try to justify his unprovoked assault on a sovereign territory, but the conflict would have been entirely comprehensible to a 20th century audience.
Not so what is now happening with the full-spectrum example of hybrid warfare on display in the Israel versus Hamas war. In this instance, it is surely an understatement to say that the distinction between combatants and non-combatants has been blurred. Hamas has nigh on obliterated any distinction … deliberately.
Hamas’s strategy, acted upon with greatest vigour, ironically, since Israel fully withdrew from Gaza, has been to create an environment where military and civilian communities are utterly intertwined. As evidence, consider the extraordinary subterranean world of tunnels, hundreds of kilometers of them, throughout the entire territory, and the ‘vertical linkage’ of underground military resources with above-ground civilian offices, homes, schools and hospitals.
Consequently, now, counter to the facts on and under the ground, it is Hamas, the original aggressor, the initiator of extreme violence against civilians, that seems often to be granted the political advantage. Which is to say, the group that initiated the war with an unprovoked attack on innocent people, committing hideous outrages and mass murders, and taking more than 250 men, women, children and babies hostage, is able to claim that Israel’s response is somehow unreasonable, unfair and, even, ‘genocidal’.
This is hybrid warfare, the logic of which goes like this:
In the 21st century wars are not won or lost exclusively on the battlefield.
They are also won or lost through informational spaces (specifically social media).
Therefore, domination of information spaces is a means to military victory.
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, clearly has an intuitive understanding of this dynamic. In 2021 this “shrewd, cunning, sophisticated psychopath”4 (as described by Israeli journalist and author Ehud Yaari) fired rockets at Israeli civilian targets. The Israeli Defence Force responded by bombing Sinwar’s house. Sinwar then used it as a photo opportunity, with him seated in an armchair in the midst of the rubble, claiming it as a victory. As Ehud Yaari explains:
You know, for him [Sinwar], Gaza can be destroyed, half destroyed, you don’t measure it. As long as Hamas bleeding, even humiliated, stands on its feet, it’s a victory.
Indeed, the asymmetry between Gaza’s relatively makeshift resources and active lack of consideration for the safety of its civilian population, and Israel’s 21st century weaponry, provides a David versus Goliath scenario that can be used to garner sympathy.
Now think of the protests in support of Hamas that, since October 2023, have taken place across the West. At the time of writing, in the UK, the activity has been ramped up to include the projection of Hamas messages on the London landmark Big Ben, and the causing of disarray in the British parliament through fear of reprisals by Hamas supporters against politicians who don’t think ‘the right way’, and, even, the closing of another landmark, Tower Bridge, for a while … with the local police looking on and doing very little.
So, in PR terms at least, Hamas’s unprovoked rape, torture and murder of innocent people has resulted in their being rewarded with sympathy and support, particularly from a younger demographic. Indeed, some who, one imagines, would be highly unlikely to find a welcome in Gaza - Queers for Gaza, for instance - are loud in their support. Which is really queer.
Now, I am well aware that the concern of many of those supporters is for civilian Palestinians rather than Hamas members. “The killing of innocent people, isn’t that a hideous outcome?” To which the answer is “Yes!”
However, as the initiator of the violence in the first place, Hamas could most likely achieve a cessation of hostilities by voluntarily returning the hostages that they hold. But I’m sure that is not what Mr Sinwar wants.
Whatever the next actions and outcomes prove to be, this is hybrid warfare. So the next question is: is any of this mayhem being enlisted by Sales & Marketing?
Hybrid Sales & Marketing?
What might happen if the hybrid warfare rules were to be translated into the Sales & Marketing arena? If it followed the same logic as hybrid warfare, one imagines that it might look something like this:
In the 21st century customers are not won or lost exclusively in the marketplace of products and services.
They are also won or lost through informational spaces (specifically social media).
Therefore, domination of information spaces is a means to commercial success.
Does that stand up?
To work, it requires a ‘people like us’ dynamic to be in operation: which is to say, a requirement for customers to make their product/service choices secondary to some arguably ‘greater concerns’.
Those ‘greater concerns’ could fall under one of two headings:
Those that have a bearing on some specific aspect of the sourcing or creation of a product/service.
Those that are not related to the sourcing or creation of a product/service.
Once upon a time (in the first generation, G1, of modern business), there was precious little concern for anything other than the end product/service and its performance. Which is to say, there was hardly any interest at all in the sourcing or conduct that a business used to achieve its sales offerings. As Adam Smith wrote:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.5
This approach continued with little change for a very long time. Think about it. As a consequence, all the way through G1’s 200-year-long tenure at the pinnacle of enterprise, businesses ‘trained’ customers (that includes you and me) to ‘lean back’ and view a conveyor belt of items brought never-endingly in front of their/our gaze. “You like this?” “Or maybe this?” Often with a bit of, “You recently bought something from us so, if you now buy this, there’s a discount.” The outcome, for the Customers, was what we term, for obvious reasons, an Expectation & Entitlement mindset.
Then, in the second half of the 20th century, the arrival of digital technologies changed things. At first it enabled better, faster ways to do existing things (e.g. almost overnight the typewriter was rendered obsolete) but then made entirely new things possible (e.g. and most fundamental at first, it permitted business functions to be redistributed in entirely new ways, both geographically and functionally).
It also made product/service updates available in a wide range of areas, across a wide range of applications - activities that absolutely necessitated direct Customer inputs. So, in a fairly short space of time Customers found themselves being expected to move seamlessly between the old Expectation & Entitlement mindset and a new ‘lean forward’, ‘get involved’ mode that we term Activation & Engagement.
This, I suggest, is whence the roots of Hybrid Sales & Marketing emerge, and it started with concerns that had a a bearing on specific aspects of the sourcing or creation of products/services.
An obvious example to make the point is Sustainability. This came to prominence around 2008, the time of the Global Economic Crisis, the worst of its kind since the Great Depression. Note the proximity of timing with Frank Hoffman’s 2007 introduction of Hybrid Warfare.
At the time, as might have been predicted, an increasing number of consumers started seeking out cheaper brands to reduce costs. What was less predictable, however, was the frustration that a significant number of them experienced as a result of trading down. They became concerned that choosing cheaper brands might compromise their commitment to sustainability. They refused to accept that economic volatility was a reason to jettison their principles for the sake of expediency. They demanded quality, availability, price and sustainability.
So, a new kind of factor began to influence buying decisions. An external-but-product-connected factor: “How do I know these people have behaved sustainably?”
Some companies were quick to respond. Marks & Spencer, for instance, launched its ‘Plan A’ “because there’s no Plan B”. And Procter & Gamble was an early supporter: Len Sauers, P&G’s vice president of global sustainability in the 2000s, made the point in Green Business that:
[W]e incorporated sustainability into the company’s statement of purpose, and in a purpose-driven 170-year-old company like ours is, that was a big deal. And it does drive decisions and behaviour in the company.
So far so good. But, then, I suggest, as social media became ever more a fact of life, things became, arguably, somewhat crazy.
Which is where I’ll pick the story up in the next post in this series.
Thanks for reading.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet (1601)
Hoffman, Frank G. Conflict in the 21st Century: the Rise of Hybrid Wars (Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, Virginia. December 2007)
Ibid - Executive Summary
YouTube: The ‘ruthless and cunning’ leader of Hamas in Gaza. CBC News, The National. December 2, 2023.
Smith, Adam. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Book 1, Chapter 2.(1776)
A very good piece, David, particularly as it expresses compatibility. It is a common concern. Both "Left" and "Right" can agree that we do want, nor need, militarisation of a society, and propaganda in our world of commerce and mundane life.