Being able to convince the American public that they need to send their sons and daughters into harms way is not an easy task but one which every United States President may face during his or her tenure. Rallying public support for war is fraught with many different variables that change over the course of time. Through the use of three product marketing models, Philip Kotler’s states of demand and corresponding marketing tasks, Theodore Levitt’s Product Life Cycle, and Seymour Fine’s 7P’s, this research demonstrates how two presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush used various policy marketing tactics similar to product marketing tactics to gain public support for two separate wars in Iraq. By analyzing the pre-war strategic environment, this author introduces a war policy environment spectrum in which future and past conflicts can be compared to ultimately provide a better decision making tool and war policy marketing model.

A most similar systems comparison case study research of Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) is utilized to explore the policy marketing tactics used by the two presidents and how their marketing campaign was implemented to aid in swaying the public’s support. Through the use of polling data, this research demonstrates that as the president’s changed marketing tactics, public support for their respective conflict was affected. Additionally, the author briefly analyzed three other conflicts, Afghanistan, World War II, and Kosovo, using the three marketing models mentioned above.

Findings show other variables that could affect public support such as the popularity of the president and support from the U.N. did not contribute to an increase in America’s support to the same extent that the president’s marketing tactics contributed. Polling data demonstrates that after each president repositioned their respective war through the use of marketing tactics, American support increased along with the job approval ratings for each president.