The US government is releasing information from the documents seized during the fatal raid on Osama bin Laden.   We’re learning about bin Laden persuasion preferences.  Like a name change.

So badly tarnished had the al Qaeda brand become that bin Laden noodled with changing the name of his group . . . Bin Laden went on to nominate some possible new names for al Qaeda. “These are some suggestions: Monotheism and Jihad group, Monotheism and Defending Islam Group, Restoration of the Caliphate Group . . . Muslim Unity group.” None of these suggestions were exactly catchy and the group did not rename itsel.

Call me radical, but if folks are willing to blow themselves up for the cause, can the brand name make that much difference?

I wouldn’t be caught dead in those Wranglers, but I’d die in my Levi’s?

While you can classically condition about anything, I have my doubts about Ding-Donging on Existential Actions. I can see the utility of the Brand Name for public communication to a variety of Other Guys, like the Westerners bin Laden is trying to kill and to various sympathizers he wants for support, but for the key Other Guys, those willing to die for the cause . . . really, the Brand Name matters?

Consider a more prosaic explanation for the name game. When you’re hunted, on the run, and all you can do is think then you’ll think about what you can change and that boiled down to mere words at the end for bin Laden. And, if you think about it, his actions reveal his persuasion preferences. He subscribed to the Source School of Persuasion and not the Receiver School of Persuasion.

Source guys think the persuasion is all about them, how they look, walk, and talk. Style. Flavor. Brand. Insight. Vision. Receiver guys, by contrast, follow the Rule, It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid. Instead of dying while playing with words, a Receiver-oriented radical would have died trying to Change the Other Guy with whatever he could find in the Local. As I noted two years ago, it turns out that bin Laden was too Sincere for change.

President Obama is getting chippy about being the Commander In Chief. First, he released an ad extolling his virtues in bringing justice to Osama bin Laden, to generally unfavorable reviews. But, I get it. The message clearly persuades with his base and his base is crucial for the re-election. So Obama with a Smoking Gun makes persuasion sense if you understand the TACT: Get out the Vote!

But, consider this second example of Virile Obama. Read under the headline, Terror Risk Falls, U.S. Officials Say

WASHINGTON—The chances of a Sept. 11-style attack have substantially decreased as a result of U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials who provided an assessment Friday of the state of al Qaeda a year after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. A high-casualty attack by a foreign terrorist group is “unlikely in the next year,” said Robert Cardillo, a top official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “That’s a result of the counterterrorism pressure that’s been applied.”

I can see no worthwhile persuasion value to this story for the Obama re-election. At best it comes off as a kind of self congratulatory message that Obama won the war on terror. At worst it challenges Other Bad Guys to mount a fatal terrorist attack and see if it qualifies as “high-casualty.” Further, it appears to have no resonance with the Obama base. I searched the DailyKos, as an exemplar, and found one entry related to this story and that was part of a daily news feed, a summary posting with links to outside sources. DailyKos itself provided no comment on it.

Part of my persuasion problem is locating the TACT, of finding the persuasion strategy that implements a persuasion tactic like this. Insulting your enemies on the anniversary of a big event is a tricky play. And getting nothing from your zealots for the insult does nothing to help with the election. This looks surface smart, but tidal stupid. Obama asserts his competence as Commander In Chief – smart. Obama insults his enemies and misses his allies – stupid.

The only way I can resolve this is to note that if some bad guys attack on US soil before the election, Obama is ruined. Therefore, maladroit statements like this can’t hurt unless a bad guy does something and since Obama cannot control all the bad guys all the time, so what if he talks chippy? Sure, others like me can criticize him for shooting his mouth off like this, but as long as we see no smoking buildings on CNN, it’s just trash talking.

Of course, kids, this is May. November is a very long way off . . . hmmm. Kinda of a cop out from me. Is Obama a maven or a muggle, Steve?

Consider Ford-Carter 1976 then Carter-Reagan 1980 then finally Bush-Clinton 1992. Each different, but the incumbent losers all lost the same way. Right now Obama is campaigning more like the loser of those races, Ford, then Carter, then Bush. He’s got the power of the incumbency, a lot of money, and a good base, but his campaign is just not smooth, fluent, compact, structured. He’s thrashing, experimenting, adjusting, altering.

Of course, he got himself elected President and all I got was this blog . . .

Max Boot reviews a new book on General David Petraeus, All In, by Paula Broadwell. Broadwell narrates the life and times of the General with a particular emphasis upon his leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan. Boot offers a mixed evaluation, finding the book to be honest and accurate, but there’s something missing he really dislikes.

As is so often the case, the authors’ greatest fault is a byproduct of their greatest virtue: loyalty. Gen. Petraeus granted Ms. Broadwell considerable access and, it seems clear, she does not want to abuse his trust by showing his actions in an unfavorable light—or even in a light differing from the one that Gen. Petraeus himself would use.

Boot then discloses several examples from his personal experience covering Petraeus that illustrate unflattering moments for the General. Boot wishes that Broadwell had discussed and developed these and other events that showed the nitty-gritty of the General’s work.

Boot, to his credit, does observe the central and compelling persuasion problem with his criticism.

Gen. Petraeus probably would not like to see such details in print — as CIA director, he would not want to complicate his relations with other countries.

Really? Why would the Director of the CIA disapprove of a detailed presentation of his private thoughts on allies and enemies, foreign and domestic? Jeepers, you’d think such a person would want a full throated broadcast of his opinions so that all the Other Guys would know exactly where they stand in Petraeus’s estimation.

You see the persuasion problem and possibilities of the living biography. Recall the Rule.

Great Persuaders Can Be Famous or Effective but Not Both.

If Broadwell disclosed how Petraeus worked effective persuasion, he’d be famous for it and then persuasion ineffective for the forewarning effects of that disclosure. A living biography, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is a hallmark of Sincerity. This works for biography but not for the subject. Such Sincerity kills his persuasion.

All Bad Living Biography Is Sincere.

Which means that All In is probably a persuasion play from David Petraeus through Paula Broadwell.

You probably know Invisible Children and their pursuit of the Ugandan warlord, Kony. Through their mastery of persuasion, the charitable organization called Invisible Children has created this week’s buzz with a viral YouTube video about Kony, an adult who abuses children for his war in Uganda. Invisible Children wants you to know that Kony preys upon children, capturing girls for sex slaves and boys for warriors, as he prosecutes his local terrorism under the protection of the Uganda leadership.  Invisible Children want your awareness.

And, through their skill, they’ve generated awareness or that Reception/Exposure stage in the Cascade. They posted a slick video about Kony, Uganda, and those kids on YouTube. On Monday of this week it got 66,000 hits. By Thursday of this week (March 8, 2012), the video had gone wildly viral with over 50,000,000 hits. What persuasion play did Invisible Children use to make this stunning leap in Reception?

They directed their small group of social media followers to bombard a specific list of 20 celebrities with the Kony YouTube video. That small group managed to make themselves larger to those 20 celebrities and they struck three in the heart, Oprah Winfrey, Ryan Seacrest, and Ellen DeGeneres. These celebrities then pointed their millions of social media followers to the YouTube video and the rest is persuasion gravity from the Communication Cascade.

Realize both the simplicity and effectiveness of this play. Invisible Children appears to have carefully selected the 20 celebrities so that their legion of followers do not strongly overlap. While the three primary targets, Ryan, Oprah, and Ellen are famous, they are famous with different audiences. Thus, in combination the three bring an even larger audience than say getting Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon.

Now, the fun part. This may hurt. But, persuasion is about Changing the Other Guy and sometimes that’s not pretty. Persuasion is only and always about Change.

Consider Invisible Children. A persuasion maven should immediately ask, What’s the TACT with Invisible Children? If someone claims they exist to Change Other Guys to the benefit of invisible children, wouldn’t you expect more resource on the ground, to deliver aid and comfort to abused, neglected, and abandoned children?

But, if you look at how Invisible Children acquires and distributes its resources, it appears they seek a different TACT. They want to Change Other Guys to support Invisible Children, not invisible children. According to CBS News, last year they raised over $13 million for their cause and spent more than half of it on themselves with about 20% going to on the ground help for the invisible children of the world.

At the first TACT, Invisible Children excels as mavens. They employed an old persuasion tactic, the two step flow. The two step flow posits that if you first change Opinion Leaders, then second, you will change Followers. Invisible Children used their Followers to influence Leaders of other people. And in the cheap, fast, and easy way of WATtapping in social media, all it took was a twitch from Oprah or Ryan or Ellen to ignite a Reception firestorm for Invisible Children.

Now, at first glance it appears that Invisible Children could help invisible children through their media persuasion efforts in another kind of two step operation. Step 1, rally the world’s awareness of Kony in Uganda. Step 2, the world captures Kony and thereby saves invisible children.

Here’s what you don’t know about Kony and the rest of the world, particularly the US Government. Last year President Obama ordered Special Operations forces to capture Kony. Over 100 Spec Ops troopers are humping the mountains and jungles of Uganda without the permission or support of the Ugandan national government in the single minded pursuit of the warlord Kony. We are after him and will bring him to justice or justice to him. Obama did that without Invisible Children.

So, if the world is already in pursuit of Kony with the military resources of the US leading the way, Step 1 is already completed without any social media persuasion from Invisible Children. The world is actively seeking Kony and after the fact, Invisible Children is calling for the world to actively seek Kony. Most Other Guys, especially people strongly tuned into social media, have no idea that the US Government is already in hot pursuit of Kony, but they do know that Invisible Children is in hot pursuit of awareness.

As a persuasion analyst, I recognize the skill of Invisible Children. They can hit the TACT of getting you to give them money to run Invisible Children. They do so by making you feel responsible and committed and kind to children in terrible trouble, when all you’re doing is clicking a mouse in the safety and comfort of your home or office. Invisible Children then takes that money to make cheap videos and hype them through cheap social media persuasion which attracts more Other Guys who can click a mouse and feel responsible and committed and kind to children in terrible trouble.

No one, not Invisible Children and not you, is doing anything like a TACT of saving invisible children. You don’t even realize your government is risking the lives of military personnel to hit the TACT of saving those invisible children by capturing or killing Kony and others like him. As long as everyone is WATtapping on websites or twitter or YouTube, everyone feels good while changing nothing. Invisible Children has figured this out and survives with it.

Remember the Rule.

There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.

Invisible Children may find that their success may cause Other Guys to wonder just what is persuasion and what is smoke and mirrors.

USA Today offers a hard hitting investigative exposé of wasteful government spending on persuasion campaigns from the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lede gives it up.

WASHINGTON – As the Pentagon has sought to sell wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to often-hostile populations there, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tracked marketing and propaganda campaigns that military leaders like to call “information operations,” the modern equivalent of psychological warfare.

Reading the tea leaves from my Fed experience, the piece looks like a lazy hit job featuring a disgruntled, but unnamed employee. USA Today did nothing except read government reports and listen to somebody who’s unhappy, but that’s what passes for hard hitting investigative exposés. It did get some people’s attention. Some in Congress are calling on the Pentagon to investigate the article.

WASHINGTON – Members of Congress called Thursday for the Pentagon to investigate the military’s information operations programs and its top contractor in Afghanistan for failing to pay taxes.

Of course, the initial report focused upon wasteful Information Operations (what I call here Persuasion). The call from Congress focuses upon the tax status of a contractor which is a much different matter and exposes the exposé for what it is: Beltway politics. But, return to the original claim about the Pentagon.

. . . it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tracked marketing and propaganda campaigns . . .

While you may not realize it at first take, the complaint raised here about Pentagon persuasion spending overseas can be raised with CDC persuasion spending in the US, or virtually any spending from any government agency on national persuasion campaigns. If you are doing a truly national effort, then assessing effectiveness is difficult because you have no good control group for comparison. People may try to argue that this is a unique problem for those Wasteful Bastards in the Pentagon, but with closer thinking you realize it applies to all the Wasteful Bastards.

When you run a national campaign, by definition you are hitting all of the Other Guys with your treatment. Sure, you can run a pre-post measurement, but then you are confounding your treatment with every other activity going on simultaneously. Maybe it wasn’t your campaign, but something that happened in the stock market or employment or crime rates or some other New New Thing that popped up during your intervention. A no-message control group, randomly selected, would help, but since you are a government agency required to conduct a national campaign for all the Other Guys, alas, that control does not exist.

From my reading and conversation with military persuaders, they are struggling with MOEs, Measures of Effectiveness, just like the folks at CDC or NIH or all other agencies facing this problem. Everyone convenes special conferences, meetings, and boards all aimed at this topic and I’ve participated in several over the years. Of course, by definition, you can never solve the paradox of reaching all the Other Guys while having a control group of untreated Other Guys . . . eating your cake yet having it, too.

Thus, and this is a funny thought, the solution to this problem of persuasion effectiveness is . . . persuasion. I’ve read any number of MOE, process-outcome, evaluation reports that, by the numbers, clearly failed to change anyone about anything at any time or place, but the campaign was universally hailed a success. And, I’ve read others that just as clearly produced a desired, practical Change in the Other Guys that got vilified or, worse, ignored. The difference in the public evaluation of the evaluation report was the persuasion skill of the evaluation team. Let me put it this way:

All Good Evaluation Reports Are Persuasive.

In this case a Report merely means one that is trapped in the paradox of an application that by definition cannot be certainly measured. I’m not implying that the Report is sneaky, deceptive, or fraudulent; it presents the state of the art evaluation which means it is never defensible and always under siege much like a court case that depends upon one criminal in a gang testifying against the other gang members.

Sitting in my chair today, I can laugh past the futility of these arguments and see that they keep a lot of people busy, many paid, and some employed. This Sisyphean task does some business as everyone ends up watching the stone roll downhill. Hey, let’s walk down there and push it up the hill again . . . we’ll have a meeting!

Beyond the irony, see the lesson. For this particular problem, the evaluation of national campaigns, the solution is persuasion, not science.

Drive with Science, Putt with Poetry.