Hasta La Creative!

I was going to write about a specific threat to brand marketing this week. But, considering the recent vicious attacks in London, I want to revisit a thesis about a specific threat from brand marketing.

This enemy is not a person, a people, a government or a nation-state. It is an idea. And as Victor Hugo once said, “On rsiste l’invasion des armes; on ne rsiste pas l’invasion des ides.” (One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.)

In Vom Kriege, Carl von Clausewitz’s masterpiece on the psychological and political aspects of war, Clausewitz describes war as “a fascinating trinity — composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; the play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to pure reason.” His 18th-century words seem prescient as we find ourselves up against an emotionally violent enemy that has reasonably calculated outcomes and left execution to chance.

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