How I use the Battle of Dunkirk in Digital Marketing

Originally published at www.linkedin.com.

Like many digital marketers from the first hour I didn’t have a proper ‘digital marketing education’, I studied history. Sometimes people ask how this resonates with my current work. Digital and history don’t seem to go together after all. I tend to disagree. There is a lot from my history study I take with me in the work that I do now.

An example of that is my very first day as a student. I remember vividly sitting in the big room with about 100 other students I didn’t know, waiting to learn. When the professor walked into the room his first words after he welcomed us were a life lesson I still use, but didn’t get right away when he said it:

“Don’t believe a single word you are going to hear in the next four years.”

As a young student this was confusing: so I’m going to learn things, but I shouldn’t believe them? When you think of the history study as a study that is about facts this indeed seems wrong. But it’s not. The study is about gaining insights, connections and learning how to see things from a different perspective: there are always more truths to a story.

A good example of that was when I learned about the battle of Dunkirk. We got an assignment to read two books about the battle, a German and an English book. The assignment was simple: figure out what’s wrong.

When I got the assignment I started with the German book. At the end of the book it was clear: the Germans had won. When I then read the English book however at the end I was startled: the English had won!

Now you have to know that in this battle the Germans forced back the English, who got away with all sorts of different boats. With over 700 boats they ‘escaped’, making the evacuation a success, the battle was lost. You can read all about the battle here or on Wikipedia.

There were two sides to this story: The German side, who focused on the battle, and the English side, which focused on the evacuation. Both were right, so both won.

In my current work this is something I use a lot. Not just in presentations, but also in consulting and training: I get my clients or students or audience to think from a different perspective, let them look at the other side of things and with that open up new opportunities in marketing. It helps them look at their audience from a different perspective, not just their own, but their audience’ perspective.