Us-versus-them positioning

The pattern

This still is filed under Us-versus-them positioning.

Define

The buyer is invited into a side. The product is what we use. The named other is what we refuse.

Mechanism

Identity contrast. Choosing the offer is choosing a group. The out-group does as much work as the claim.

Verdict

The category is crowded

Why it works

The poem is signed 'a U.S. Marine', so the accusation comes from the man who pays for the failure, not from the factory boss. It names what goes missing, the extra tank, or ship, or plane, and ends on a mirrored couplet, 'FOR WE, NOT YOU, WILL PAY THE COST / OF BATTLES YOU, NOT WE, HAVE LOST', which splits the reader from the fighter and hands the defeat to the one at home. Below the verse a wounded Marine with a bandaged head lies in the grass gripping a pistol, so the reader meets the person the lines are about.

The big idea

A fighting Marine tells the factory worker that battles lost for lack of supplies are the worker's defeat, paid for by the Marine.

Lines from the ad

AND IF OUR LINES SHOULD FORM, THEN BREAK BECAUSE OF THINGS YOU FAILED TO MAKE

FOR WE, NOT YOU, WILL PAY THE COST OF BATTLES YOU, NOT WE, HAVE LOST

a U.S. Marine

Steal this when

When one group bears the cost of another group's slack, and letting the people who pay speak directly will land harder than any instruction from above.

The emotion

Written to Guilt. It makes the Avoid mistake.

The mirrored couplet FOR WE, NOT YOU, WILL PAY THE COST OF BATTLES YOU, NOT WE, HAVE LOST hands the defeat to the worker beside a wounded Marine: heavy blame, not a repairable lapse.

Guilt heavier than the lapse · Puts the problem on the reader