The latest publication from the RAND Corporation looks like an interesting read. It’s called Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation:
Business marketing practices provide a useful framework for improving U.S. military efforts to shape the attitudes and behaviors of local populations in a theater of operations as well as those of a broader, international audience. Enlisting Madison Avenue extracts lessons from these business practices and adapts them to U.S. military efforts, developing a unique approach to shaping that has the potential to improve military-civilian relations, the accuracy of media coverage of operations, communication of U.S. and coalition objectives, and the reputation of U.S. forces in theater and internationally.
In an accompanying press release, the lead author of that study, Todd Helmus says, ““The central feature of consumer marketing is: know your target audience so you can satisfy their needs. The U.S. armed forces need to know who the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan are, apply that knowledge through day-to-day operations, and monitor how those civilian populations perceive U.S. operations in their countries. Then the military can adjust operations to get more civilian support.”