Le Carré's wisdom: What unites spies and marketers

John le Carré was the pen name of David Cornwell. He would have turned 94 on 19 October, but passed away in 2020. He worked in the British intelligence service before writing some of the most morally intricate novels of the 20th century. His fictional world was one of duplicity, divided loyalties and muted heroism. It's an atmosphere that, strangely enough, marketers should feel at home with. After all, modern brands too live by trust, ambiguity and the art of persuasion in a world that seldom tells the whole truth.

- SHUBHRANSHU SINGH

Le Carré's genius lay not in espionage as spectacle, but in human observation. His spies were "bureaucrats of the soul," endlessly decoding motives and masking their own. Consider his most famous novels, for example. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold are not thrillers about espionage missions, but profound treatises on motive, moral fatigue and the price of loyalty.

That is precisely why Le Carré's fictional works speak to the marketing profession in our age of information wars, perception management and data-analysis-based manipulation.

The moral intelligence of persuasion: Le Carré rejected propaganda from both sides of a real-world divide. He wrote of institutions that lose their soul by serving slogans. Today, in an era when brands manufacture meaning by algorithm, his insistence on moral tension feels prophetic. Realism is the highest of all 'isms.'

For both 'espiocrats' and marketers, truth is not a slogan, but an act of stewardship. Le Carré teaches us that credibility is earned through doubt, empathy and restraint. Brands that admit nuance and refuse to accept the easy binary of good-versus-evil, often win deeper trust.