FOG OF WAR, UNCERTAINTY, AND DIGITAL MARKETING

Recently, I started to read again the book “On War” written by Carl von Clausewitz. He was a German-Prussian soldier and military theorist who stressed the “moral” (in modern terms, psychological) and political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), was unfinished at his death. In his book, he introduced the concept of : Fog of War.

War is an area of uncertainty; three quarters of the things on which all action in War is based are lying in a fog of uncertainty to a greater or lesser extent. The first thing (needed) here is a fine, piercing mind, to feel out the truth with the measure of its judgment.

The fog of war is the uncertainty in situation awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term captures the uncertainty regarding one’s own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign.

Clausewitz might have written about the nature of war but most of his thinking and conclusions are very applicable and relevant to today’s Social Media challenges. His main themes can be divided in three category:

• The uncertainty and unpredictability of warlike situations can never be mastered.
• We have to accept and even embrace the nonlinearity of warlike event.
• Successful Social Media strategists need to think on concepts of how to deal with those unpredictability in nonlinear situations.

Don’t these three thoughts sound exactly as a good description of today’s Digital Marketeer challenges ? The main objective is to to create relevant engagement between brands and consumers in including all three concepts: unpredictability, nonlinearity, and the need to deal with both challenges without being too much confident. For most brands, the main issue is all about the loss of control and the uncertainty created by the non-linear interactions between brands and consumers.

What can we learn from Clausewitz’ struggle with these phenomena ? I can suggest three elements:

• In order to get more certainty, we also have to embrace uncertainty: It means that we must not about eliminate every single aspect of uncertainty but to be more precise in prediction without being too much arrogant.
• Understand the nonlinear and two ways communication world: Analyze diligently every single aspect of the non-linear characteristics of the brand-consumer engagement.
• Design or use viable tools, and fundamental structure to deal with uncertainty: It’s not about increasing the quality of prediction by 1% but having the right tools and fundamental structure in place to deal with uncertainty.

Clausewitz might have written “On War” over 150 years ago on the complexity of 19th century wars but we still can applies some it’s theory in today’s world.

Sources:

Clausewitz, Carl Von, and J. J. Graham. On War. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 199.