Marketing

A brand is nothing more than an idea, much like the ideas being represented by a military force as each side competes with each other for the right to have their ideas pervade after the combat is over. People place traits on a brand—they are associated with certain emotions, people grow attached to them, and companies expend tremendous resources managing the personality that people project upon their products. Apple, after the release of the iPod and iPhone, for example, has a customer base that is intensely loyal, able to feel both affection for their products as well as betrayal if those products do not live up to the expectations set by the brand perception. For years, marketers have been attempting to derive the secrets of strategy and leadership from the history of military campaigns for application in the battle to win customers against competing companies. In this book, we’re going to do just the opposite, and derive the secrets of public and consumer behavior from the history of marketing to improve upon existing military strategies. Marketing is, at its heart, the psychological study of consumer behavior—a field dedicated to understanding how to generate a specific response from the public and causing people to want your product (something with which militaries tend to struggle). The idea that marketing is critical to military success has not been completely overlooked. The US Army, in April 2011, developed the AMRG (Army Marketing and Research Group) to develop, synchronize, manage, and execute the Army’s messages.