Brand America!™

George Ure brought up a point today about the marketing of the American Brand--or rather, the lack there of....

"What I observe and conclude is that to low income peoples, exploitive Western capitalism is an easy concept to market against. Which is precisely the conclusion that the militants have come to and it's one reason that militant Islam is growing so quickly as a global movement. To their way of thinking (and reflected in their marketing strategies), their mental equivalent of the 13-American colonies includes the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, parts of Southeast Asia, and a host of other countries where Islam is on the march.

While Tony Blair and company are busy coming up with new measures to throw threatening peoples out of England, and the US has increased its misnamed War on Terror, it's clear to me as a sales and marketing professional (and ex-journalist) that the West has missed the fundamental problem almost entirely.

In order to counter-act the al Qaida and militant Islamist movement, the West needs a new marketing and advertising campaign above all else, and getting there requires a radical redefinition of the product we're marketing as a country.

George Bush and company has missed this key point (making Rove more a hack than marketing genius): You don't see Ford going after GM on the basis of "GM being the axels evil." Instead, you see Ford redefine the battle ground in the marketing war as one where "Quality is Job One." Then we see GM respond with offers "employee discounts." Where is our foreign policy equivalent?

International political leadership may read Foreign Affairs and consider themselves quite eloquent in the halls of diplomacy, but give anyone of them a job on Madison Avenue and they would last about 30-seconds...."

It reminded me of an interview I heard on NPR a few years ago (but not long after 9/11) with a man whose name I don't remember but he was touted as the "father of modern American advertising" or some such. He stated the exact same conclusion, to the effect that if you boil the American image down to one thing, it would be "The Last Remaining Superpower". And that, he said, was a terrible "brand" to market.

But I have to question...is this simply an oversight? Have U.S. leaders simply been negligent in nurturing the American image around the world? I'd have to argue that that's a rather tough viewpoint to swallow.

I mean advertising and marketing are without question the prime movers of American culture. Hardly any influence that today's youth absorb into their identities has not been manufactured or manipulated by the "culture" industry--even to the point where much of today's film and advertising has become a sophisticated self-commentary on itself. Further, any element of culture that arises spontaneously and organically is immediately co-opted by the advertising industry.

Our industries devote untold money toward creating and managing their public image. Our politicians as well might be said to be barely more than marketing products--their ideals, platforms, image and personalities undergo an overwhelming degree of analysis and comparison against feedback in various "market segments".

Even individual States spend money to brand and market themselves to the outside world. The CIA and other nether-agencies regularly employ marketing principles in propaganda campaigns against perceived foreign threats. Our leaders even overtly talk of "exporting" Democracy and the American Way of Life.

"Perception management" is not an after-thought. It's a principle consideration when implementing any social agenda. How could we think that it has somehow never occurred to any of our political-industrial leaders that they might apply these skills to sell the world a better story about America's new agenda in the world? We know that American marketing sophistication is unparalleled, and whether we like to admit it or not, we know that it works.

Now granted, one aspect of the question is that the American way of life pretty much sells itself. The image of affluence, confidence, beauty and sexuality that is exported to all corners of the world via American media has always attracted people to want to live here. But more specifically I'm questioning how the American image was allowed to deteriorate so drastically since 9/11...a crisis which drew worldwide sympathy and goodwill for our nation. Even in the face of the rather obvious "real reasons" for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (opium and oil), it nonetheless took a determined effort to undermine this upsurge of goodwill. And to believe that it happened simply by neglect is to miss the point altogether.

The effort to redeem the American name would have involved something like paying a worldwide cross-section of focus groups directed toward honing in on one word or phrase to symbolize everything transcendant and desirable that America represents, then a systematic campaign to relate that concept through images, stories, events, organizations, etc to enhance this identification and goodwill. Even in the midst of the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, in fact especially in the midst of it, this should have been SOP (standard operating procedure). Large corporations quite often run afoul of the public trust (say, for instance, an oil spill or chemical leak), and that's why they keep "damage control" handlers--propaganda gurus trained to take the offensive in order to save the company's reputation.

All in all, I'm forced to conclude that the reason this hasn't been done is because there was really no interest in doing it. I don't think the ball was dropped...I think the marketing campaign is in effect. In fact, it's a raging success. It's just that it was decided that "anger" and "resentment" were a better brand to market. The campaign was rolled-out, a campaign entitled: War on Terror™

Think about it...War on Terror™ It says "War. War with no boundaries. War with no goals. War with no rules. The enemy is anyone, anywhere. Live in fear. The enemy might be you... Don't get out of line."

If you'll allow me to draw water from the Kotke well once again:

"Although industrial investment in the colonies generally returns large profits (25% per year being the standard), super-profits since World War II have come from guns and drugs. The U.S. has been the largest armaments producer, with other countries now catching up rapidly. Alliances and militarization have been encouraged all over the world and this has seen the militaries take power (overt or covert) in most societies. The petroleum industry is the largest planetary industry but it is closely followed by the armaments industry in size and production. The armaments industry mushrooms as all forms of colonial exploitation grow. A modern example is the [1989] Iran-Iraq war, where 42 arms-exporting countries sold weapons to the combatants and 36 sold to both sides.
[...]
The quest for power (military and other) through science has become the central focus of the industrial empire. In the broad view, science is the means to power whereby the empire culture more efficiently extorts the life force of the planet. (Scientific agriculture does not concentrate on building the life of the soil; it concentrates on producing heavier tonnages for market). The reality that science is an integral component of the imperial social system is shown by the fact that more than half of the working scientists of the U.S. are employed in the military-industrial sector. This is hardly a dispassionate search for truth, as the propagandists would have it. The scientific establishment is deeply implicated in the social apparatus of coercion and death as a means of political control."

Keep in mind this was was written in the early 1990's, so Kotke is not merely striking an indictment against the neo-con agenda. He identifies "coercion and death" as the "product" in the general system of empire. So is it reasonable to conclude that marketing in America might consist of selling "goodness and light" on every scale and level save the very pinnacle one, Brand America!™ itself? Strangely, that may be precisely the case. And the reasoning is simple...

"In a country such as the U.S., being 6% of the world’s population and consuming more than half the entire planet’s resources each year, most coming from outside its borders, the need to control the resources and markets is obvious on the face of it. As with the old slaving days and the opium days, the masses in the First World countries must be convinced that the activities of their governments are absolutely altruistic. "Helping," "economic development," "anti-terrorism," "assisting democracy," "winning hearts and minds," and of course the "communist menace" are images used to camouflage what is really happening, which is the control and operation of an industrial empire who’s vast flow system needs massive amounts of raw materials and equally massive markets for the products."

The policy that supports modern industrialism is militarism and control. And every policy of militarism and social control leads us back to the stirring-up of fear and anger. It's simply the way business is always done. In order to sell something with your "good" face, you quite frequently have to take it from someone with your "bad" face. Perhaps it was simply decided that the "bad" face needed to get a whole lot "badder"....

Comments

[Igor]

I generally agree with this "American Brand" post.

Though IMHO Steven gives too much credit to current (US/UK) leadership by suggesting that they are able to conciously implement long-term policy at global level according to some grand plan.

Take for example the Iraq affair. I remember in the period before the invasion I was puzzled why did the-then Spain govment signed up to that adventure ?

I could easily imagine why US gov did:
1)after 9/11 american people demand blood
2)9/11 was done by Saudies, on Saudi money and with Saudi support
3)but Saudies are biz-friends of bushes and other cheneyes
4)so american rage must be diverted
5)saddam is good target, dubya wants to revenge his father, neo-cons want to play god in middle east, Irag's oil will give leverage for future manipulations, rumsfeld wants to erase memory of his shaking hands with saddam, etc

OF COURSE, this is JUST MY PERSONAL OPINION

but why did Spain ???

It was puzzle to me until I saw footage from bush-blair-spainPM meeting on Azores before war:

there was a fotoshooting opportunity and the leader were mingling with aides, smiling and posing for reporters, and spainPM at one moment realized he had been shoved aside from bush.

immediately his smile disappered, he cut coversation he was engaged in, frowned and actually started sqeezing thru the crowd towards bush.

bush was standing embracing blair, and spainPM sqeezed between them from under bush hand! I could hardly belive to my eyes ! and bush confusedly smiled, moved aside and patted spainPM on his back : "here, here, my man"

and then I understood - spain gov, particularly spainPM just jumped onto the opportunity to mingle among high and mighty.

again - this is just my personal opinion

in short: I think US (and other) leadership are more just self-concerned opportunists, than dark leaders with global agenda

[Igor]

Steven,

it seems you know a thing or two about financial markets.

I ask for your opinion: i had heard the following from a friend of mine who worked for investment division of a major bank (beer talk):

the usd dropped compared to euro because after 9/11 saudies were selling us assets and were investing into eu markets.

do you think it is credible ? the timing looks ok ...

[m]

If we are going to think about this branding topic and believe that the US is able to brand its product via foreign policy etc, a useful exercise might be to work backward starting with the results and see what the results say.
What the results say (again if a person believes the US can brand itself effectively) is that the US has branded itself as a bully that doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks, an entity that wants to foster islamic terrorism (through mis-adventures such as Iraq), an entity with no concern for the environment or the planet, wants to forment and spread fear through out the world (look at nuclear weapons policy and the information coming from US leaders talking about Iran, etc and the whole torture issue), wants to foster civil war within the different factions of Islam, and overall wants to foster mental chaos, confusion, anger, hate on every level - international, national, local, personal (an example if a person trusts/supports Bush: then they in general hate the left, liberals, and possibly all Arabs - I've run across man bigots and racists that follow this line. if a person doesn't trust or follow Bush: they in general follow the opposite line of thought and many times with a similar anger and expression of hate is involved).
After looking from the results backwards and assuming that it was meant in a general form to play out this way, then the next question is why and for what purpose. The toughest piece of information to really know is for what purpose. The purpose is given as the offical line: TV, MSM etc (which morphs and changes fairly rapidly), the possible purpose is given at sites such as this one and many others that realize that the offical line is crap and are trying to piece the puzzle together. This purpose puzzle is tough because of the heavy levels of disinformation, etc, yet looking at the results and working backward I think is useful.
"The policy that supports modern industrialism is militarism and control. And every policy of militarism and social control leads us back to the stirring-up of fear and anger. It's simply the way business is always done." So I agree with this conclusion in part. The thought that keeps rising in me is that we are in a new paradigm and although past patterns are a good indicator to explain present patterns, they are not guranteed. How would we know the paradigm shift? Really hard to say, because we would have to look for the (difficult to figure) purpose shift. Even those that were in the know about the supposed real purpose in the past might not know a change unless they are still plugged in. Anyway, only so much fear and anger can be supported within the system of a culture and society before industrialism or corporate interests are being injured. Looking at the big picture from many angles (economic and finacially, geopolitically, socially, evironmentally) seems to show that the injuries to industrial interest, etc are on their way. So where does that lead us in terms of a purpose? Again many trains of thought and opinions on the web (many of the major alternative ones are linked through this page) and very hard for an individual to know.

[Segovius]

There are two brands: one, the 'good US' is for Mr and Mrs America and always has been, the second, 'bad US', is of relatively recent coinage and is aimed at other people - in this specific time and place Muslims in places like Iraq but more specifically Iran and Syria.

The purpose is of course to demoralize and to instill fear as a softening up tactic in a psychological war which is only a prelude to a real one.

Look at it this way: Abu Ghraib, Qur'an desecration, summary torture and human rights violations - as well as carefully leaked stories about 'nuking Iran' etc: this is all branding. it is intentional. The only option is tp assume they are all consecutive and momentous mistakes made by stupid people.

These two 'brands' have been traditionally kept apart - the problem now arises that since the advent of the internet, memes from the 'bad' brand have come to the attention of the general populace who are the target audience of the 'good brand'.

This results in two phenomena: extreme anger and denial by those unable to assimilate the 'bad' brand (ie those who have invested most heavily in the good and who would otherwise feel betrayed) - this is most often channelled into the hate of 'liberals' that is a rising phenomena and leitmotif of the right in these times.

The second is the growing number of people who refuse to buy into the bs. This is a massively growing group and comprises people one would never normally suspect. An elderly and respectable upper-class neighbour recently harangued me for over an hour with 911 conspiracy theories.

This is why I have hope actually - the golden rule of branding is trust. Never, ever, do anything that is at variance with your branding - this destroys trust. Never disrespect your market, this destroys trust. The Bush cabal do all these things - ergo they will crash.

[albion]

i think the problem is more fundamental than what kind of brand to market. in my experience with non-americans, i have noticed an instinctual skepticism of the very concepts of marketing and branding, which sales-minded americans would consider cynical but which i would consider level-headed. the american preoccupation with marketing comes off as shallow, self-conscious and fake to many non-americans and (i dearly hope) an increasing number of americans. it doesn't take a marketing genius to win converts with sex drugs & rock n roll, but a lot of people will instinctively reject as insincere any obviously contrived attempt to market to them, no matter what the 'product' is. unfortunately most americans don't have finely tuned enough bullshit detectors to notice how little non-americans think of their ridiculous, incessant glad-handing. so in a way the 'war on terror' brand is definitely much more honest than 'freedom and democracy.' but i think the real question is 'why should i be interested in your snake oil at all'?