Caesar. Joan of Arc. Napolean. Von Clausewitz. Patton. Brilliant military strategists, yes. But they are also sources of insight for conducting winning marketing campaigns in the modern business world.

First and most obvious, why have you framed modern marketing in military terms?

Growing up in a military family, serving in the army myself, and landing my first job out of college with Ross Perot, there was a common language and common experiences among my teams that were rooted in military history, strategy, and our personal experiences. At my next corporate stops, I was the only veteran or one of a very few, and I needed to translate the powerful strategies I’d been exposed to into mental models that were easily understood and accepted.

Carl von Clausewitz's strategy of force multiplication was the first one that I started introducing. My team did not need to read his treatise On War; they quickly seized on my adaptation of it to marketing, and it became the common theme in our early approaches to building marketing dominance for Foundations Recovery Network. We were not just jumping from trend to trend or tactic to tactic; the team now had language around a powerful strategy.

What does the military do that other institutions or principals don’t?

I love this question! Probably because I like to point out a rather uncommon answer. The military relies on young leaders. The young officers and noncommissioned officers are doing the heavy lifting, the daily training, and executing of the commander's intent. In business, we hamstring and interfere with our young leaders.

We senior leaders need to deliver our commander's intent and let our teams execute within the budget and good governance guidelines. You cannot command innovation. Hire the best, constantly train, coach, document, acknowledge, and let the young leaders deliver the innovation.

Taking action is, of course, a sine qua non........

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