Military Language vs. Relationships. Marketing vs. Wittgenstein.
Katy Lindemann from naked has written an interesting post on marketing language: Time to move on from military marketing
In her opinion the military language in marketing opposes the goal to build relationships and foster engagement.
"It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the holy grail for marketers is engagement – to build meaningful relationships between people and our brands. And yet the way we think about marketing is frequently diametrically opposed to the desired end result.
The vocabulary of marketing is largely one of warfare – with the consumer as enemy combatant, on the receiving end of our merciless attacks. The etymology of the word ’strategy’ is military – literally meaning ‘the art of a general‘. And it’s just as applicable to the world of marketing as it is to the battlefield.
Think about it. How many times do we start by referring to the ‘target’ when considering audiences? (The fact that we talk about ‘consumers’ rather than simply ‘people’ is another strange beast, as it automatically frames people purely within the context of consumption rather than as the multifaceted human animals that we are, but that’s a whole other issue). So we launch aggressive campaigns carefully designed for maximum impact and to gain captive audiences, thinking about strikeweights and guerilla tactics to do battle, gain market dominance and kill the competition.
Hardly the language of fostering engagement and relationship building, is it?"
It reminds me of the famous quote from the philosopher Wittgenstein:
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”
So as long as marketing executives and creatives talk in military language they will act by it.
Perhaps we can borrow some terms from the entertainment industry.
They talk about the script (instead of the plan), the dramaturgy (instead of the strategy) and the audience (instead of the target).
