Brand USA

By Naomi Klein, AlterNet. Posted March 13, 2002.

TORONTO -- When the White House decided it was time to address the rising tides of anti-Americanism around the world, it didn't look to a career diplomat for help. Instead, in keeping with the Bush administration's philosophy that anything the public sector can do the private sector can do better, it hired one of Madison Avenue's top brand managers.

As undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, Charlotte Beers' assignment was not to 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.

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. "There 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." Besides, he said, "She got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice." 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 "opinion-makers," it didn't 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. "No matter how hard you try to make them understand," he said, "they don't."

The misunderstanding likely stemmed from the fact that Beers views the United States' 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't managed, in Beers' words, to "get out there and tell our story." In fact, the problem is just the opposite: America's 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's with family fun and Nike with athletic prowess. And they expect the U.S. to live up to its promises.

If they are angry, as millions clearly are, it's because they have seen those promises betrayed by U.S. policy. Despite President Bush's insistence that America's enemies resent its liberties, most critics of the U.S. don't actually object to America's 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's problem is not with its brand-- which could scarcely be stronger--but with its product.

There 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, "requires a carefully crafted message delivered with consistency and discipline." Quite true. But the values Beers is charged with selling are democracy and diversity, values that are profoundly incompatible with this "consistency and discipline." Add to this the fact that many of America's staunchest critics already feel bullied into conformity by the U.S. government (bristling at phrases like "rogue state"), and America's branding campaign could well backfire, and backfire badly.

In the corporate world, once a "brand identity" is settled upon by the head office, it is enforced with military precision throughout a company's operations. The brand identity may be tailored to accommodate local language and cultural preferences (like McDonald's serving pasta in Italy), but its core features--aesthetic, message, logo--remain unchanged.

This consistency is what brand managers like to call "the promise" of a brand: It's 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's overall strength. That's 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.

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