You’re a communications director with a product to sell. You’ve been given free reign, you’re well funded, the lawyers won’t bother you and there is a mass of newsworthy and compelling content available to you. Almost all of your organisation is media-savvy, digitally capable and committed to supporting you. It sounds too good to be true. But, it’s not for the likes of ISIS, Boko Haram and other violent extremists.

This is what the world is facing. The question is: how do we counter this vicious and unremitting threat to global security, conducted by organisations who seem to dominate the media narrative with ease?

Countering violent extremism (CVE) is now a central element within government strategies across the world. With a continuing emphasis on hard, military solutions, even President Obama admits such strategy is providing limited results.

Yet, with much of the battle centred around winning ‘hearts and minds’ against an enemy with considerable capabilities in the area, communications, understood broadly, has much more to give in regaining the narrative from extremists.

To date, little in the hunt for a credible and cohesive counter-narrative to violent extremism seems to suggest great success. However, both the public and private sectors have proved that they can change behaviours through carefully planned, resourced and executed campaigns. While there are lessons to be learned from the corporate sector and a culture shift required within the public sector, surely together they can combine chosen elements to produce effective campaigns to counter violent extremists.

There are two fronts and two audiences to contend with: those within our societies who may be drawn to the death cult of ISIS or others and those within societies where violent extremists have a stranglehold such as Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Libya.

ISIS is the primary example of an organisation that uses communications to its advantage, but recognising that any effort to decisively beat violent extremism cannot avoid the actual battle in faraway places, from west Africa to central Asia.

Extremist messages, which by their very nature are already headline material, can flow freely in our media space like never before. Many violent extremists have adapted very successfully to the digital age, with ISIS being born into the digital era. Yet, how terrorists today use the internet to spread ideology, recruit and incite violence and hatred is far from a new phenomenon. The mechanisms are well known to modern and sophisticated corporates selling wares, from Coca-Cola to iPads to BMWs, all of whom who rely on advertising and marketing techniques aligned to contemporary trends, styles and culture. In other words, ‘capturing the zeitgeist.’

Today’s terrorists are digital natives. As such, they are fully aware of the trends, styles and mechanisms used to spread messages online, and thus can successfully use such platforms to reach a greater audience, challenge opponents and spread their ideologies.

The ISIS propaganda machine has demonstrated its familiarity and competence with using the internet to further its campaign, especially with audiences familiar with western popular culture.

For instance, through ‘memes’ (images that are typically humorous in nature that are copied and spread rapidly by internet users), ISIS has released various pop culture spoofs. In a notable example, taking the popular internet meme ‘You only live once’ (YOLO), popularised through a 2013 spoof hip-hop song, ISIS created a reversal: ‘You only die once’ or YODO.

Promoting itself as relatable and even humorous, ISIS uses a language its peers understand and recognise to disseminate its message. ISIS has alsosuccessfully exploited a common method used by social media marketing campaigns by hijacking popular hashtags on Twitter in order to get its content to trend globally. ISIS has reversed various cultural memes to mock the west and promote its own cause – #bringbackourhumvee is one such example, which mocks the hashtag #bringbackourgirls, created in response to the 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria.

With high levels of user buy-in and utility, ISIS disseminates high quality audiovisual content from the battlefield in near real-time, which is then ‘swarmcasted’ (multiplied) via a dispersed networks of users.

A panoply of online platforms including Twitter, WhatsApp, Kik, Ask.fm, Ustream, Keek and Facebook are all used as weapons of propaganda and organisation. Al Shabaab’s live-tweeting during the 2013 Westgate Mall attacks in Nairobi demonstrate this, and Nigeria’s Boko Haram’s social media output has recently seen an upswing in activity and quality, suggesting lessons learned from the ISIS case. Gaming and apps are also part of its armoury. ISIS paid homage to Grand Theft Auto 5 upon the game’s release in a propaganda video, claiming the actions in the game are the same as on the battlefield. Moreover, using references reminiscent of the war- themed video game Call of Duty for recruitment, such as ‘respawning’ (a gamer term for reincarnation), ISIS speaks to its target audience and uses familiar terminology to make its cause sound attractive and exciting.

ISIS has developed an Android app called ‘Dawn of Glad Tidings,’ which permits the organisation to hijack – with the permission of the legitimate owner – an account and broadcast tweets at will. Described as the “App that gives you news from Syria, Iraq and the Islamic world,” it creates a significant multiplier effect by producing a large spike in tweets sent on the particular subject, which then pushes it up lists of search results.

Amidst all this, the traditional media continues its feeding frenzy around the brutal content and stories that ISIS offers, thereby raising the profile of extremism. This tends to be presented to news consumers in a simplistic fashion which fits and encourages a plain public narrative that enhances the view of ‘them and us’ – a view much appreciated and promoted by those very extremists.

So much for the techniques, but what about the underlying extremist narrative? What are they actually selling and how can this help us fight it? Essentially, they are promoting something that every young person looks for: an identity, and perhaps even an ideology, to latch on to.

Ideologies don’t grip minds, minds grip ideologies. In the 1970s, in reaction to a powerful narrative of western values, an extremist left-wing ideology garnered support and fomented acts of terrorism.

Today, is there such a thing as that powerful western narrative, in contrast to the ideology presented by the likes of ISIS? Countering ISIS is about providing a credible alternative, and some would argue this alternative is currently fragmented and indistinct.

Closer to home, in the face of an information juggernaut agile across multiple platforms, governments are struggling to prevent the recruitment of sympathisers to the extremist cause. Programmes spring up and are funded without a full understanding of the audiences they are trying to effect – unthinkable to any marketing or PR team trying to influence consumer behaviour. Research to correct this is ongoing but in the meantime, largely uncoordinated efforts continue. One attempt at coordination, the UK government’s PREVENT strategy, although laudable in its intentions, appears to place religion, notably Islam, as a central node. This has led to a perception by some that it is discriminatory, and therefore it exacerbates the situation by entrenching the ‘Islamisation’ of the problem.

There are good examples of organically-grown counter efforts such as the #notinmyname video, produced by a group of young British Muslims, the Quilliam Foundation and MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), yet even they sometimes contribute to the Islamisation of the problem simply through the fact that these are Islamic- based organisations which therefore keep the debate in the Islamic space.

These attempts, well-intentioned though they may be, can contribute to a cacophony of viewpoints in an echo chamber where governments need to be seen to be doing something and the media needs to sell its stories. The net result is the generation of heat, not light. As such, many experts now contend that while some wider CVE programmes, including the British government’s, have had success in preventing physical attacks and arresting perpetrators, the ‘hearts and minds’ approach that is key to any sustainable success, has so far not borne fruit.

To approach this problem, a full understanding of the audience comes first. To date, too little has been done to fully understand the psycho-social dynamics of how and why the minds of young people are susceptible to these extremist ideologies.

The corporate world has the knowledge and experience to present and sell lifestyles, and a lot of marketing research and funding has gone into this area. This is a resource that could be tapped. Increasingly we don’t buy stuff, but instead we buy into an ‘ideology’ or an identity: possessing the latest iPhone or Range Rover says a lot about who we think we are.

Second, we have to refrain from tackling extremists in the media space on their own terms. In fact, we have to employ similar tactics, common also in the corporate world, and use channels in the same manner as extremists – nimble, visual and networked – but proactively.

The corporate world of advertising, marketing and PR can add much to this discussion, breaking open debates that have been the preserve of academics, terrorism experts and policy wonks, often with much to bring to the table but less understanding of creativity in the digital age or psycho-social and behavioural dynamics.

Amidst all this, the traditional media continues its feeding frenzy around the brutal content and stories that ISIS offers, thereby raising the profile of extremism

Third, we need to remember that we are still most heavily influenced by those around us – our trusted family and friends. While digital is exciting, those real-world social groupings still wield considerable power influence. Alongside this, we need to encourage improved media literacy and critical analysis amongst those susceptible to the draw of what can appear to be compelling extremist ideology.

This is not to assert that any given ideology is wrong, but instead it’s about enabling an environment in which audiences can come to their own well- reasoned conclusions. This is not without considerable effort and it goes deep into re-examining social policies in order to mitigate obvious ‘say-do’ gaps: the inevitable loss of credibility when the government does one thing, yet does another.

However, that leads to the fourth but most contentious issue – addressing directly the narrative or ideology on sale. If what we present is repeatedly based upon countering, demonizing or combating, then we start off on the wrong foot, potentially even increasing the attractiveness of the narrative we are trying to counter.

To young minds, what is banned or discouraged is frequently made more attractive by that fact. We need to develop a brand or narrative that sells itself because of its inherent attractiveness and credibility, instead of maintaining the lazy thinking that because what we’re selling is not ‘the other,’ then that is sufficient.

It is less about providing a counter-narrative and more about reframing and promoting an alternate narrative – one which already exists and is not a reactionary effort – and threading it into wider public discourse and media output. Without such a solid alternate narrative, all else will fail.

To seriously tackle the growing threat of violent extremism the rethink needed is at the fundamental level. This means not only the reframing of our own narrative, but also redirecting our creativity and re-examining the state of our public discourse and social policy. Notably, this is our task. As in, all of us – governments, societies, the media and also the corporate world.