This talk explores the principle arguments in Alexander Fattal’s new book “Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia” (University of Chicago Press, 2018) about the convergence of marketing and militarism in twenty-first century propaganda. The talk considers the Colombian government’s efforts to engage in a form of ‘brand warfare’ against members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). Since 2007, the government has been working with the same advertising firm that stewards brands such as Mazda and RedBull in Colombia, to lure guerrillas out of the insurgency and transform them into consumer citizens. The ethnography critiques those efforts, pointing to problems that emerge when branding captures critical state functions, like waging a war.

Dr. Alexander L. Fattal is Assistant Professor in the Department of Film-Video and Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is also a documentary artist whose creative and scholarly work focuses on the mediation of the Colombian armed conflict.
@FattAlx | www.alexfattal.net