How history’s biggest dictators leveraged marketing in their favor.

An excellent marketing strategy is a vital part of any successful business, brand or leader convincing the people to choose those product or services. As scary as it sounds, it seems that history’s barbaric leaders have been tapping into marketing tactics to create positive sentiment of their regime.

Product

Product is one of the most crucial principles of marketing and the successful marketeers ensure to assess the appeal of their product to their audience before deciding what they will offer. Similarly, the various tyrants that rose around the world have selected careful positioning of their political proposition to ensure its relevant to the people at the certain time of the history.

Hitler rose to power through the Nazi Party, tapping into patriotic German’s feelings that were outraged by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, following the end of World War I. He pledged to restore prosperity, create civil order, eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power.[1]

Similar period, during the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, gained support by campaigning on a slogan of?peace, land and bread, which promised to cease war with Germany, give land to the peasantry, and end the famine caused by Russia's involvement in WWI[2]. These slogans had a direct effect on the growing Bolshevik’s popularity.

Control your narrative

"Controlling the narrative" is about?telling the story your way, before someone else gets to tell it — and possibly tell it better — in a manner that doesn’t serve your interests. In democracy it is expected to have a free and many times adversarial press. On the other side, the suppressing of free press is “how dictators get started”. Most?dictatorships?have kept a?close?guard on the?media to suffocate criticism. They control the access to the media outlets available, so they control the public opinion and share the side of the story that they want. At the same time, they exercise ‘propaganda’[3] disseminating information, arguments and rumors that deliver on their objectives.

The power of storytelling

The most successful campaigns are built around storytelling. Stories have a transformative power and they can shape, strengthen or challenge our opinions and values. Therefore, everything that you do should relate back to the story that you want to tell.

Here is one story related to the President of Iraq Saddam Hussein: ‘Saddam Hussein daughters were married to the Kamel brothers, who were offered crucial positions in government’s cabinet. Despite their authority and due to the great differences between them and Uday, the son of President Saddam Hussein, they left the Iraqi capital and fled to Jordan. The days that followed, Hussein's emissaries called the family and said that they would be forgiven if they returned. An official pardon was the day they returned to Iraq. Two days later they were forced to divorce their wives and were dispatched to their sister's home. There they were gunned down that same day by 50 armed men. The armed men also shot a third brother, their father and their sister, and two of her children’ [4].

What’s the message that the President of Iraq Saddam Hussein wanted to convey? His message was loud and clear. Whomever dares to oppose his regime will be killed, even if they are member of the family.

Social Media

Billions of people around the world use social media to share information, make connections or get entertained.?Others, use the social media to shape the public opinion. The scandal of Cambridge Analytica, that used the Facebook users data for political advertising is well known. But probably this is one out of many cases of manipulative information.

According to?analysis by the Oxford Internet Institute, the spread of misinformation driven by political organizations on social media has been sharply on the rise in recent years. The report states that in 2017,?disinformation campaigns were carried out in 28 countries. Three years later, that?figure had risen to 81 countries. Practices involve bots and trolls, computer programs, and paid users who use fake accounts to flood social media with posts favorable to a cause.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni is suspected of using fake social media accounts to consolidate his power. In 2021, Facebook?(Meta) deactivated more than 20 accounts linked to Museveni, who is ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.?Shortly afterward, Twitter also followed suit, closing?11% of the?nearly 3,500 accounts worldwide that allegedly spread pro-government propaganda. Meanwhile, similar reports are also surfacing from?other countries in Africa[5].

Suppressing of free press is “how dictators get started”        

influencers marketing

Influencers marketing uses endorsements from admired individuals, who have a dedicated following, to gain popularity. Do you think that this type of marketing rose the past years during the digital era? Probably not... Various dictators leveraged famous people, onboarded them with their narrative, so they gain credibility and legitimacy to their regime. Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez remained a close friend and defender of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. North Korean’s Kim Jong-Un found an unlikely wingman in former NBA superstar Dennis Rodman[6]. George Bernard?Shaw described?Hitler as "a very remarkable man, a very able man" and professed himself proud to be the only writer in England who was "scrupulously polite and just to Hitler"[7].

New Technologies

At the turn of the millennium, new technologies, including the Internet and the cell phone, promised to empower citizens, allowing individuals greater access to information and the possibility to make new connections and build new communities.

But this wishful vision of a more democratic future proved na?ve. Instead, new technologies now afford rulers fresh methods for preserving power. Surveillance powered by artificial intelligence (AI), for example, allows despots to automate the monitoring and tracking of their opposition in ways that are far less intrusive than traditional surveillance. Not only do these digital tools enable authoritarian regimes to cast a wider net than with human-dependent methods; they can do so using far fewer resources: no one has to pay a software program to monitor people’s text messages, read their social media posts, or track their movements[8].

Marketing and communication have inevitable power and can shape opinions. But after all is a tool, like many others, and it can be leveraged for good or bad purposes. We cant control how others use it, but maybe we can control our behavior and exercise our critical thinking. As poet and essayist?Adrienne Rich said:?“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work’’.

[1]https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/how-did-hitler-happen

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution#:~:text=The%20Russian%20Revolution%20was%20a,and%20a%20bloody%20civil%20war.

[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/propaganda

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/10/world/iraqi-offers-regrets-in-killing-of-defecting-sons-in-law.html#:~:text=President%20Saddam%20Hussein%20of%20Iraq,family%2C%20Iraqi%20newspapers%20reported%20today.

[5] https://www.dw.com/en/dictators-in-africa-using-social-media-to-cling-to-power/a-60360543

[6] Documentary ‘How to become a tyrant’, Netflix

[7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#:~:text=When%20the%20Nazi%20Party%20came,polite%20and%20just%20to%20Hitler%22.

[8] https://polisci.msu.edu/news-events/news/franz-foreignaffairs.html