{"id":2500,"date":"2003-03-16T22:26:56","date_gmt":"2003-03-17T06:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilychang.com\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2009-11-08T22:29:05","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T06:29:05","slug":"brand-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/2003\/03\/brand-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORONTO – When the White House decided it was time to address the rising tides of anti-Americanism around the world, it didn\u2019t look to a career diplomat for help. Instead, in keeping with the Bush administration\u2019s philosophy that anything the public sector can do the private sector can do better, it hired one of Madison Avenue\u2019s top brand managers.<\/p>\n

As undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, Charlotte Beers\u2019 assignment was not to https:\/\/me.mtw.nhs.uk\/priligy-order-dapoxetine\/<\/a> improve relations with other countries but rather to perform an overhaul of the U.S. image abroad. Beers had no previous State Department experience, but she had held the top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather ad agencies, and she has built brands for everything from dog food to power drills.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nBrand USA
\nBy Naomi Klein, AlterNet<\/a>
\nMarch 13, 2002<\/p>\n

TORONTO – When the White House decided it was time to address the rising tides of anti-Americanism around the world, it didn\u2019t look to a career diplomat for help. Instead, in keeping with the Bush administration\u2019s philosophy that anything the public sector can do the private sector can do better, it hired one of Madison Avenue\u2019s top brand managers.<\/p>\n

As undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, Charlotte Beers\u2019 assignment was not to https:\/\/me.mtw.nhs.uk\/priligy-order-dapoxetine\/<\/a> improve relations with other countries but rather to perform an overhaul of the U.S. image abroad. Beers had no previous State Department experience, but she had held the top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather ad agencies, and she has built brands for everything from dog food to power drills.<\/p>\n

Now she was being asked to work her magic on the greatest branding challenge of all: to sell the United States and its war on terrorism to an increasingly hostile world. The appointment of an ad woman to this post understandably raised some criticism, but Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shrugged it off. \u201cThere is nothing wrong with getting somebody who knows how to sell something. We are selling a product. We need someone who can re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy.\u201d Besides, he said, \u201cShe got me to buy Uncle Ben\u2019s rice.\u201d So why, only five months in, does the campaign for a new and improved Brand USA seem in disarray? Several of its public service announcements have been exposed for playing fast and loose with the facts. And when Beers went on a mission to Egypt in January to improve the image of the U.S. among Arab \u201copinion-makers,\u201d it didn\u2019t go well. Muhammad Abdel Hadi, an editor at the newspaper Al Ahram, left his meeting with Beers frustrated that she seemed more interested in talking about vague American values than about specific U.S. policies. \u201cNo matter how hard you try to make them understand,\u201d he said, \u201cthey don\u2019t.\u201d
\nThe misunderstanding likely stemmed from the fact that Beers views the United States\u2019 tattered international image as little more than a communications problem. Somehow, despite all the global culture pouring out of New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta, despite the fact that you can watch CNN in Cairo and Black Hawk Down in Mogadishu, America still hasn\u2019t managed, in Beers\u2019 words, to \u201cget out there and tell our story.\u201d In fact, the problem is just the opposite: America\u2019s marketing of itself has been too effective. School children can recite its claims to democracy, liberty and equal opportunity as readily as they can associate McDonald\u2019s with family fun and Nike with athletic prowess. And they expect the U.S. to live up to its promises.
\nIf they are angry, as millions clearly are, it\u2019s because they have seen those promises betrayed by U.S. policy. Despite President Bush\u2019s insistence that America\u2019s enemies resent its liberties, most critics of the U.S. don\u2019t actually object to America\u2019s stated values. Instead, they point to U.S. unilateralism in the face of international laws, widening wealth disparities, crackdowns on immigrants and human rights violations ? most recently in Guantanamo Bay. The anger comes not only from the facts of each case but also from a clear perception of false advertising. In other words, America\u2019s problem is not with its brand ?\u00a0 which could scarcely be stronger ? but with its product.
\nThere is another, more profound obstacle facing the relaunch of Brand USA, and it has to do with the nature of branding itself. Successful branding, Allen Rosenshine, chairman and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, recently wrote in Advertising Age, \u201crequires a carefully crafted message delivered with consistency and discipline.\u201d Quite true. But the values Beers is charged with selling are democracy and diversity, values that are profoundly incompatible with this \u201cconsistency and discipline.\u201d Add to this the fact that many of America\u2019s staunchest critics already feel bullied into conformity by the U.S. government (bristling at phrases like \u201crogue state”), and America\u2019s branding campaign could well backfire, and backfire badly.<\/p>\n

In the corporate world, once a \u201cbrand identity\u201d is settled upon by the head office, it is enforced with military precision throughout a company\u2019s operations. The brand identity may be tailored to accommodate local language and cultural preferences (like McDonald\u2019s serving pasta in Italy), but its core features ? aesthetic, message, logo ? remain unchanged.<\/p>\n

This consistency is what brand managers like to call \u201cthe promise\u201d of a brand: It\u2019s a pledge that wherever you go in the world, your experience at Wal-Mart, Holiday Inn or a Disney theme park will be comfortable and familiar. Anything that threatens this homogeneity dilutes a company\u2019s overall strength. That\u2019s why the flip side of enthusiastically flogging a brand is aggressively prosecuting anyone who tries to mess with it, whether by pirating its trademarks or by spreading unwanted information about the brand on the Internet.<\/p>\n

At its core, branding is about rigorously controlled one-way messages, sent out in their glossiest form, then hermetically sealed off from those who would turn that corporate monologue into a social dialogue. The most important tools in launching a strong brand may be research, creativity and design, but after that, libel and copyright laws are a brand\u2019s best friends.<\/p>\n

When brand managers transfer their skills from the corporate to the political world, they invariably bring this fanaticism for homogeneity with them. For instance, when Wally Olins, co-founder of the Wolff Olins brand consultancy, was asked for his take on America\u2019s image problem, he complained that people don\u2019t have a single clear idea about what the country stands for, but rather have dozens if not hundreds of ideas that \u201care mixed up in people\u2019s heads in a most extraordinary way. So you will often find people both admiring and abusing America, even in the same sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n

From a branding perspective, it would certainly be tiresome if we found ourselves simultaneously admiring and abusing our laundry detergent. But when it comes to our relationship with governments, particularly the government of the most powerful and richest nation in the world, surely some complexity is in order. Having conflicting views about the U.S.\u00a0 ?\u00a0 admiring its creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards ?\u00a0 doesn\u2019t mean you are \u201cmixed up,\u201d to use Mr Olins\u2019 phrase, it means you have been paying attention.<\/p>\n

Besides, much of the anger directed at the U.S. stems from a belief ?\u00a0 voiced as readily in Argentina as in France, in India as in Saudi Arabia ?\u00a0 that the U.S. already demands far too much \u201cconsistency and discipline\u201d from other nations; that beneath its stated commitment to democracy and sovereignty, it is deeply intolerant of deviations from the economic model known as the \u201cthe Washington Consensus.\u201d Whether these policies, so beneficial to foreign investors, are enforced by the Washington-based International Monetary Fund or through international trade agreements, the U.S.\u2019s critics generally feel that the world is already far too influenced by America\u2019s brand of governance (not to mention America\u2019s brands).<\/p>\n

There is another reason to be wary of mixing the logic of branding with the practice of governance. When companies try to implement global image consistency, they look like generic franchises. But when governments do the same, they can look distinctly authoritarian. It\u2019s no coincidence that the political leaders most preoccupied with branding themselves and their parties were also allergic to democracy and diversity. Think Mao Tse-tung\u2019s giant murals and red books, and yes, think Adolf Hitler, a man utterly obsessed with purity of image: within his party, his country, his race. Historically, this has been the ugly flip side of politicians striving for consistency of brand: centralized information, state controlled media, reeducation camps, purging of dissidents and much worse.<\/p>\n

Democracy, thankfully, has other ideas. Unlike strong brands, which are predictable and disciplined, democracy is messy and fractious, if not outright rebellious. Beers and her colleagues may have convinced Colin Powell to buy Uncle Ben\u2019s by creating a comforting brand image, but the United States is not made up of identical grains of rice or assembly- line hamburgers or Gap khakis.<\/p>\n

Its strongest \u201cbrand attribute,\u201d to use a term from Beers\u2019 world, is its embrace of diversity, a value Beers is now, ironically, attempting to stamp with cookie-cutter uniformity around the world. The task is not only futile but dangerous: brand consistency and true human diversity are antithetical ? one seeks sameness, the other celebrates difference; one fears all unscripted messages, the other embraces debate and dissent.<\/p>\n

Making his pitch for Brand USA in Beijing recently, President Bush argued that \u201cin a free society, diversity is not disorder. Debate is not strife.\u201d The audience applauded politely. The message might have proved more persuasive if those values were better reflected in the Bush administration\u2019s communications with the outside world, both in its image and, more importantly, in its policies.<\/p>\n

Because as President Bush rightly points out, diversity and debate are the lifeblood of liberty. And they are enemies of branding.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.<\/p>\n

Naomi Klein is the author of \u201cNo Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies.\u201d www.nologo.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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