Marketing Abortion Rights

This month, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) announced a multimillion-dollar campaign to punch up its image and launch a new line of defense against the Bush administration's back-door assault on reproductive rights.

NARAL's very first step? A name change.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, as it's now called, is repositioning itself to send a broader and more centrist message. "The essence of America is the right to determine the course of one's own life, to make one's own choices and shape one's own destiny," NARAL announced the day of its name change. Any resemblance to the Declaration of Independence or the preamble to the Constitution is probably not coincidental.

But how much of a difference will this name-change make? Salon asked Al Ries, who has written more than 40 books on marketing, including "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding" and "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind." Speaking from his office at Ries and Ries in Roswell, Ga., the marketing guru talked about NARAL's strategy, the significance of labeling the battle, and what he would say if Adolf Hitler asked him for public relations advice.

SA: How significant are decisions like choosing a name in the political arena?

AR: I think it's pretty clear that branding can be an effective weapon to position an organization. Look at Amnesty International and Greenpeace and other brands that have been built in this age. PETA's another one that has done a perfect job.

SA: What about the name "NARAL"?

AR: That's a problem. Nobody's ever going to know what that name means.

SA: What do you think about the change to "NARAL Pro-Choice America"?

AR: The "pro-choice" part will be established, and when people hear that name they'll talk about the pro-choice group. They'll just drop "NARAL." Acronyms, oddly enough, can become brand names. The Internal Revenue Service is typically known as the IRS, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the FBI, but normally people have to know what NARAL stands for before they can ever remember the initials. So when they see that name now, they'll just call it "the pro-choice organization."

SA: What about switching the emphasis from abortion to choice? Do you think that's effective?

AR: I think that's brilliant. Who can argue with it? Because you want to present the message in as positive a manner as possible. You don't want to be against something, you want to be for something. Who wants to be against choice? On the opposite side of the street, look at what the anti-abortionists call themselves: pro-life. No one wants to be against life. The same thing happened, incidentally, in terms of the estate taxes. They've changed that name to death taxes. People say, "Gee whiz, you're charging me for dying? How can you fine me for dying?"

By using the right name, it makes it much easier to get acceptance for your idea or concept.

SA: Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying, "They want to talk about pro-choice, but it's not choosing between chocolate and vanilla. We are talking about the right to kill an unborn child." What kind of strategic move is he making?

AR: Again, he's twisting the argument from a word like "choice" to a word like "killing." Obviously, the abortion movement is not pro-killing. It has to do with the definition of the word "killing." And again, the opposition is doing what most oppositions do -- it's exaggerating the issue. The proper response is to say that the pro-choice movement is not about killing, but about giving the mother the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Both sides tend to exaggerate the issue. The pro-choice movement has done a good job of changing the rhetoric. It's easy to be against abortion; it's harder to be against choice.