Turning News Into Knowledge

Operation Mincemeat

Malcolm Gladwell is truly a gifted, talented, and insightful person. He’s a best-selling author who challenges the way we perceive things and does his best to uncover the truth where we least expect it.

Gladwell wrote the best selling books The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.

In all honesty, he is inspiration to my own endeavors in regards to what I want to achieve with my company through the development of our product MediaMiser Enterprise and our accompanying services. However, on May 10, 2010, Gladwell’s essay for the New Yorker caught the attention of Wesley Wark, a visiting research professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

The essay, Pandora’s Briefcase, was on a very intriguing book by Ben Macintrye called Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. Macintrye’s book tells the true story of how the British fooled the Nazis during the Second World War by planting false information on a corpse wearing the uniform of a royal marine officer.  A briefcase was conveniently handcuffed to the dead body and personal letters and effects were placed in the pockets.

The ruse more than likely saved thousands of lives during operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, and at the same time helped shorten the war.

Essentially, British Intelligence convinced the Nazis that instead of the Allies invading Sicily, they were to invade the less obvious target of Greece. Gladwell uses this story to dismiss the value of both spies, secrets, and intelligence network.

Instead of espousing the virtues of a well-run intelligence agency and the folly of not having one, he chose to use the example of Operation Mincemeat as why intelligence networks are actually a counter productive liability.

The essay motivated Wark to write his own piece, which appeared in the opinion section of the Ottawa Citizen on May 25, 2010.

Wark, like myself, sees value in Gladwell’s unconventional wisdom, even going so far as to complement Gladwell by writing

the world of intelligence and warfare could use a touch of the Gladwellian.

However, Wark disagrees with Gladwell’s assessment of Operation Mincemeat and even rebukes the unconventional wisdom that in the past has served Gladwell, also writing

his unconventional wisdom can be less than wise.

My first instinct was to agree whole-heartedly with Wark – especially since MediaMiser specializes in analysis. But, in the spirit of being open minded, I decided to purchase a copy of “Operation Mincemeat” as well as read Gladwell’s essay.

After consuming both, not only did it confirm my instinct that Wark was right, it also uncovered a point that was clearly missed by both Gladwell’s essay and Wark’s rebuttal.

Operation Mincemeat was not just about the importance that intelligence can play, it also highlighted the importance of having a well orchestrated marketing or communication plan that can be properly analyzed from start to finish.

Essentially, British Intelligence was selling a concept to Nazi Intelligence that they (the Nazis) were in the market for and more than happy to buy.

Gladwell dismisses the whole operation as a bunch of ‘what ifs’ and dwells on how lucky the allies were that Operation Mincemeat didn’t backfire. Also, to further strengthen his own argument, Gladwell even questions whether the operation actually had an effect on the outcome of the invasion, suggesting Nazi high command may have had their own preconceived notions about the invasion being in Greece.

By doing so, Gladwell overlooks the genius of what British Intelligence actually accomplished and not only does he dismiss the obvious value of intelligence agencies, but inadvertently, the value of current day marketing and communication groups as well.

Operation Mincemeat was not just a hairbrain idea that was set in motion by its creators like a toy boat dropped into the currents of a stream and haphazardly reached the intended destination.

The odds of success were stacked in British Intelligences favour, because they were in control every step of the way by having clear objectives, properly researching the opportunity, and constantly analyzing the results and making adjustments along the way.

This is no different from conducting a successful marketing or communications plan:

1) For you to sell a product or to communicate a concept or idea, you must first find a market for your product or an audience willing to listen to you.

This is what the British did: They found a Nazi agent who was looking for something he desperately wanted to believe was true. It wasn’t by luck the false information found it’s way to Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, the Nazi agent.

If fact, both Gladwell and Macintyre, refer to Kühlenthal as “a one-man espionage disaster area.”

The British knew this because they did their homework. The planted information wasn’t found by Kühlenthal by accident.

There is even a passage in Operation Mincemeat attributed to Michael Handel, intelligence historian:

It is very unusual and very difficult for deception to create new concepts for an enemy. It is much easier and more effective to reinforce those which already exist.

2) It isn’t enough to find a market. You must be able to package the goods for sale and effectively communicate them to your target audience.

Again, the British did their homework and left nothing to chance. They ensured consistency by going to tremendous lengths to invent a plausible history for the body, placing personal letters in its uniform, forging id cards, and actually having a double agent confirm the legitimacy of the body back to the Nazis.

3) Once you’ve sold your product, you must constantly monitor and analyze to ensure your message was properly communicated.

The British went to great lengths to monitor and analyze how their disinformation was being perceived by the Nazis. They were even able to forensically tell not only whether documents where read, but how they were read.

4) Monitor and analyze in real time and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Again, the success of Operation Mincemeat was not accidental. Some Germans and Italians were wise to the possibility of a ruse. To British Intelligence’s credit, they were able to adjust their strategy with new or modified tactics.

The British used tactics such as creating fake maps, bogus invasion forces, and employing Greek personnel.

Bletchley Park, the British Intelligence’s information centre that was responsible for decrypting and interpreting enemy messages, insured the deception was taking hold by intercepting and analyzing Nazi communications.

To prevent the body from being exhumed from its burial site, they placed a headstone and had mourners constantly visit the site not only as a way to deter Nazi agents from trying to corroborate the facts, but also to monitor the site and make sure nothing was disturbed.

If the gravesite were disturbed, it would be an indication that Nazis Intelligence was skeptical.

5) Evaluate your efforts.

After the invasion, a post mortem (no pun intended), was conducted on the success of the operation. Just like any good marketing or communication plan, it’s imperative that the final results should be measured.

Finally, I find it ironic that Gladwell points out that many of the British Intelligence agents went on to become celebrated authors, such as Ian Fleming.

Gladwell uses this to say that intelligence agents are their best own publicists and have tendency to ‘self-affirm’ their exploits. This is why we believe there is value in intelligence agencies and spies.

However, maybe if Gladwell also read The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington, he would see that not all spies ended up being world famous authors.

One military intelligence agent, David Ogilvy (founder of Ogilvy & Mather), later became an advertising, PR, and marketing pioneer. Ogilvy was actually recruited by spymaster William Stephenson for his work with George Gallup, where he helped to pioneer polling data. Ogilvy would later use polling data, while working with British Intelligence, to help change US attitudes towards supporting Britain during the war. After the War, Ogilvy would go on to create one of the best known advertising, marketing, and PR firms.

Gladwell finishes off his essay by writing, “the next time a briefcase washes up onshore, don’t open it.”

What Gladwell should have wrote is, “next time a briefcase washes up onshore, analyze the hell out of it and exploit it for its true value.”

That’s what David Ogilvy would have done and this is one of the reasons why market research, marketing, and good analysis saved the Free World.

Since people started communicating online they’ve been searching for better – or just faster – ways of saying what they need to. The internet is full of acronyms (lol brb roflmao) and emoticons , but it’s also working to shape the way people communicate –giving rise to new words on what often feels like a daily basis.

Though languages are constantly evolving (how many of us still communicate in middle English?) the modern world has seen new technologies push the boundaries of speed –nothing more so than social media.

Not everyone is happy with this, as can be seen by the New York Times asking writers to stop using “tweet”.
The argument here is that Standard English and spoken English are two different entities, and only the former should have a regular place in news articles.

While this garnered a lot of attention, of more interest is how the language of social media is used
Ben Zimmer of Visual Thesaurus examined the phenomenon of un-words

One of the hallmarks of social media is the ability for users to register their interest in something they see. But what if you change your mind? Then you can always undo the action that you’ve made.
LiveJournal, a virtual community of bloggers and diary-keepers, has been a pioneer in this type of usage. LiveJournalers were among the first to make friend into a transitive verb to describe the act of adding someone to an online list of acquaintances. (Other social networks like MySpace and Friendster soon got in on the act too.) To remove someone from friend status requires defriending or unfriending. Either the de- or the un- prefix works as a “reversative,” indicating the undoing of a reversible act (though un- seems to be winning out over de- as the preferred prefix these days).

Zimmer’s post is well worth the read, highlighting what is less an erosion of language than a new way of speaking. Social media users have simply invented a way of saying things English simply wasn’t equipped for.

In his post, Zimmer references a column by lexicographer Erin McKean in The Boston Globe.

In it, McKean examines not just the proliferation of tw– words used for everything twitter, but how twitter effects writing itself. And she sees it as far from a bad thing.

…it’s not just the twords that make Twitter interesting, it’s the character limit, the implicit constraint of being interesting, witty, informative – in short, of being worthy of the limited attention of your followers. The best tweets of Twitter (some of them collected on the occasionally not-safe-for-work site Favrd.com) are more epigrammatic than newsy. Twitter demands writerliness in a way that instant messages, text-messaging, and even blogging don’t.

McKean doesn’t see social media communication as a destruction of language, but instead as another step in the constantly-evolving world of communication.

Just as “blog” has become a common, and accepted, term for a new written form, terms like “tweet” and “unfriend” are part of the constant struggle to maintain communication in a constantly changing online world.

It’s hard to see anything wrong with that.

Jen Hogan is a Media Analyst at MediaMiser, follow her @jenogan

It has already been a few weeks since the national conference for the Canadian Public Relations Society in Regina wrapped up.  The conference was very well organized, with a good mix of speakers from not-for-profit, public and private organizations.  Once again MediaMiser participated in the tradeshow, and while the attendance and traffic was a little light—it was well worth the interaction we had with existing customers and prospects.

Back to the speakers. No one was more engaging or entertaining than Peter Mansbridge, national correspondent for the CBC.   While you would expect him to be a confident speaker, he came across as one of the most comfortable public speakers I have ever heard.  He spoke for about 90 minutes, without notes, and was funny, humble, and most importantly interesting.  His topic of ‘What makes Canada, Canada”(or something like that) didn’t have a direct theme associated with public relations, but when you think about it we are in the business of sharing stories and Mr. Mansbridge delivered quirky and patriotic stories about some of his more compelling interviews from around the world; including a very memorable interview with President Obama at the White House.  He had the privilege of being the first foreign reporter to interview the President at the White House since he took office.

However, the point that really stuck out was his story about how he got his start in broadcasting. Again it doesn’t have anything in particular to do with the public relations industry, but I thought it was an important theme for anyone who has great ambitions in our craft or any other industry–don’t forget to go out of your comfort zone once in awhile.

Mr. Mansbridge didn’t finish high school and after a few jobs ended up working ground operations for an airline in Churchill, Manitoba. One day, very short-staffed, he was asked to jump on the intercom to announce flights and missing passengers, etc.  Apparently, just like his keynote, he came across as very comfortable and smooth on the microphone.  And luckily for him, a local CBC radio program director was listening for his gate.   A night program was without a radio host, and he was offered the job on the spot and without hesitation (or any real broadcasting experience) he jumped at the opportunity. Today, he is now one of the most respected and recognizable journalists in Canada.

It probably would have been very easy to come up with an excuse to avoid speaking on the microphone that day, but Mr. Mansbridge took on a small task outside of his job description…and the rest is history. So I’m going to challenge myself, every now and then, to step outside of my comfort zone and see what opportunities come my way.

Thanks CPRS Regina! And we look forward to attending next’s year conference in beautiful Saint John, New Brunswick.

Sometimes it’s really frustrating when it takes a week of research and testing in order to complete a project that should take only 2 hours… But I’m reminded of a saying my brother told me the other week: “Stop trying to be a salmon and just go with the flow.” Though this may sound lazy and unproductive, it actually makes you more productive in the end.

By eliminating the stress and frustration factors, you have more concentration to focus on the actual task at hand, rather than wasting your energy on the workload itself.

Remember when you were in school and everyone would complain about how long an assignment would take? And after a good hour of complaining and just staring at what you need to do, the “goody two shoes” of the class already finished the entire assignment… This is the type of wasteful energy I’m talking about. Instead of wasting energy being frustrated, that person was able to get the work done and move onto other things.

This goes for more than just school assignments or tasks at work. This idea of just focusing on the task at hand can be applied to all aspects of life, especially sports. I’ve been in the sport of diving for 14 years and have represented Canada around the world. One of the main things I’ve learned quickly is how to ignore the stress of a big competition; whether it be your first national competition, international competition or even your first Olympics. Now obviously this is something easier said than done. I can’t imagine treating your first Olympic competition like a regular regional meet or even a regular practice, however, the key point is to focus on the specific task at hand rather than the whole picture.

It’s crazy how many divers have their life’s worst performance during their first senior international competition. Is this because they all of a sudden are incapable of performing their dives? Of course not. It has everything to do with the fact that you’re on the board, heart pumping faster than normal and you’re thinking “Oh god. Don’t mess up. Show everyone you know how to do this.” Instead of thinking of the specific technique you need to do on this dive: “Ok. Make sure you get your arms all the way up on the end of the board before throw down to grab your legs.” Now don’t get me wrong; I’m no expert at this and actually had my life’s worst performance at my first big International competition at Rostock, Germany.

So how do you learn to suppress your stress and procrastination? I find that nothing works better than the oldest saying in the world: “Practice makes perfect.” I find that working out in intense situations (such as I did when I was diving) helps to handle stress. I discovered CrossFit, a new method of working out using functional movements at high-intensity really helps out with getting things done in life. This allows you to get into that “oh god I don’t wanna do this” situation three to five times a week and teaches you to just buckle down and get it over with. I found it so useful, that I opened my own Crossfit gym in Ottawa.

It’s amazing how with the development of a “just get it done” attitude, how much more efficient you can become in your life. Go ahead; give it a try. I challenge you!

David Kalec is a developer at MediaMiser.