A War of Words (and Images)

The fact that ISIS out-messages us by reaching alienated young people online, and motivates them to acts of unthinkable inhumanity, is unacceptable.

They seem to own social media, and are lauded at every turn for their expertise in recruiting vulnerable young people who have lived a life of deprivation under the thumb of one dictator or another. Easy pickings, I guess. When you have no job and no prospects, most anything that gives you some power in a powerless world looks better than what you have.

I know it’s more fashionable to roll out the drums of war and talk about bombs and boots on the ground, but if our formidable advertising industry turned its sites on young impressionable potential jihadists, they just might be able to inspire a new generation of nation-builders instead of destroyers.

If you think it can't be done, consider that our marketers repeatedly do the improbable. After all, they taught the world to sing in perfect harmony, got women to smoke a "feminist" cigarette and remade the VW Bug from Hitler’s proletarian-affordable vehicle into an American middle-class icon.

We can certainly turn our messaging--okay, propaganda--skills to the very social media where disenfranchised young Arabs and Muslims live, and fight the slick ISIS presentations with even slicker propaganda. As it is, we're leaving some of our most potent weapons holstered.

C’mon. We invented the modern advertising game. It’s time we play to win.

Imagine the power of thousands of new teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, technologists and people of all kinds working toward building something they own and can grow, instead of strapping on suicide vests.

Are you telling me that we can’t be more persuasive on social media than the people who are motivating them now?

I don’t believe it.