What I Learned About Marketing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe

tl;dr: You might not expect a Chasidic Rabbi to be one of the greatest marketing minds of the 20th century. But the Rebbe was just that.

One of the most impressive marketing organizations in the world is Chabad.

This is a group of Hasidic Jews that were a relatively small sect in the 1950s, having seen a big decrease in their numbers due to Nazi murder and atrocity during World War II.

Over the course of 50 years, however, they transformed into one of the most influential and well-known “brands” of Judaism in the entire world, to the point where they are the ones organizing the lighting of a Hannukah menorah at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

So, how did they do it?

At the core, they were guided by one pivotal person, known simply as “the Rebbe.”

The life of Menachem Mendel Schneerson is chronicled quite nicely in a relatively new book by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, appropriately called Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History

But you don’t need to be Jewish to appreciate the leadership qualities of the Rebbe nor his marketing acumen.

Today, chabad.org gets over 50 million unique visitors per month (with only about 12-13 million Jews in the world, you can see they have broad appeal) and the organization commands respect from world leaders of all stripes.

So, how did the Rebbe turn a minor Hasidic sect into a powerhouse group?

Decentralized Marketing

The Fearless Army of the Rebbe
It is called “the Rebbe’s Army” and it’s the thousands of emissaries that were trained to go out to remote places (for observant Jews, at least) and engage with Jews wherever they could be found to help them.

Now, it’s not easy for a newlywed, young couple to leave their comfortable enclave of Brooklyn and move to Rwanda, Macedonia, or North Dakota..far away from any other committed Jews and any infrastructure, but the Rebbe inspired them to overcome these fears.

Inspire Fearlessness
As Telushkin writes:

“In addition to common sense and a sense of mission, the trait a leader most needs is a lack of fear. Many people of extraordinary capabilities are held back by fear, fear of challenging others, fear of rejection, fear of being laughed at or of appearing to be naive or foolish.

The gift the Rebbe gave his followers-which enabled them to touch and challenge people two and three times their age, with far more secular knowledge and professional attainments- was the belief that they were on a mission for something higher than themselves. To serve God. And that God would not have sent them on such a mission unless he believed in them. And the Rebbe would not have sent them unless he believed in them. And by carrying out their personal missions, these shlichim (ed: emissaries) became leaders. They became visionaries, they became proactive. They became fearless.” (p.108)

An Eternally Curious Student…and a Strategist
The Rebbe was well-known not just for his tremendous knowledge of Jewish subjects, but also for a very broad and deep understanding of secular subjects. Before World War II, he was a university student in Berlin and in Paris. He studied science and humanities and also took a class with Martin Heidegger, who later became of one of leading philosophers of Nazism.

He spoke and read multiple languages and made an effort to read sources in all of them.

“His nephew, Barry Gourary, recalls seeing the Rebbe carefully reading newspapers during the time young Gourary- who was then six-spent in Berlin in 1929 and 1930; ‘ I remember observing that my uncle was an avid reader of…many daily newspapers. He was very interested in politics. He was also fascinated with military strategy. This was one of the area that was always of interest to him.’

The intimate knowledge of military matters was a feature of the Rebbe frequently commented upon by Israeli political and military leaders who met with him. When Yitzchak Rabin, then serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United Sates, but formerly chief of staff of the ISrael Defense Forces (IDF), emerged from a ycehidus (private meeting) with the Rebbe, he commented to his adviser, Yehuda Avner, “That man knows more about what’s goin in Israel than most fo the members of our Knesset put together.” (p.166)

Perhaps that is why one of his signature initiatives as the “Mitzvah Tank,” a converted RV into which the emissaries would invite Jewish passers-by (after having the fearlessness to approach them on the street with the “Are You Jewish?” question) to engage in short, but meaningful ritual observance.

Thinking in Networks
It’s common today to think about “network effects,” but the Rebbe was an early proponent of it.

There’s one story about a young Chabad rabbi, Rabbi Wolf, who found himself in charge of outreach to 7,000 Jewish students at the University of Wisconsin and was feeling overwhelmed about how and where to start.

He wrote the Rebbe:

“How am I as a single individual to operate with 7,000 students?”

The Rebbe answered:

“[You] should work with only seven people, and they will find their seven, those seven will find their seven.” (p.345)

So often in marketing, we think about how we get more people to know about us, so we think about “going big.”

The answer might actually be “go small.” Find the few, overly invest in them, and go from there.

That’s what the Rebbe’s marketing advice was to his team.

The Marketing Lessons of the Rebbe
I sometimes tell people that the Lubavitcher Rebbe has the strategic wisdom of a Daoist master possessing the accumulated spiritual legacy similar to the Dalai Lama (he was the 7th Chabad Rabbi).

His Jewish framework shaped how he treated people and how he guided them, but removing that, he was a marketing maestro for the ages.

He build a decentralized army of people who believe in the cause and are fearless about pursuing its goals. He studied strategy and was widely curious. He thought in networks.

There are marketers of all kinds out there, even some who don’t look the part.