Failure of Brand USA
by Naomi Klein
 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 to
overhaul the image of the United States abroad. Beers had no previous diplomatic
experience, but she had held the top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and
Ogilvy & Mather ad agencies, where she had 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: selling 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 Powell shrugged it off. "There is
nothing wrong with getting somebody who knows how to sell something," he
said. "We are selling a product. We need someone who can rebrand American
foreign policy, rebrand diplomacy." Besides: "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 United States 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 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 America's
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 United States to live up
to its claims. 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 United States 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 of Afghan prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
The anger comes not only from the facts of each case, but 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 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.
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. 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's best friends.
When brand managers transfer their skills from the corporate to the political
world, they invariably bring along this fanaticism for homogeneity. For
instance, when Wally Olins, co-founder of the Wolff Olins brand consultancy, was
asked for his take on America's image problem, he complained that people don't
have a single clear idea about what the country stands for -- but rather dozens
if not hundreds of ideas that "are mixed up in people's heads in a most
extraordinary way. So you will often find people both admiring and abusing
America, even in the same sentence."
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 United States -- admiring its
creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards -- doesn't mean you
are "mixed up," to use Olins' phrase. It means you have been paying
attention.
Besides, much of the anger directed at the United States stems from a belief
-- voiced as readily in Argentina as in France, in India as in Saudi Arabia --
that the United States already demands far too much "consistency and
discipline" from other nations; that beneath its stated commitment to
democracy and sovereignty, America is deeply intolerant of deviations from
"the Washington consensus." Whether these policies, so beneficial to
foreign investors, are enforced by the International Monetary Fund or through
international trade agreements, critics generally say the world is already far
too influenced by America's brand of governance (not to mention America's
brands).
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's no coincidence that the
political leaders most preoccupied with branding themselves and their parties
were also allergic to democracy and diversity. Think Mao's giant murals and red
books, and yes, think 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
brand consistency: centralized information, state-controlled media, re-education
camps, purging of dissidents and much worse. Thankfully, democracy 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's by creating a comforting brand
image, but the United States is not made up of identical grains of rice,
assembly-line hamburgers or Gap khakis.
America's strongest "brand attribute" is its embrace of diversity,
a value Beers ironically is now 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.
Making his pitch for Brand USA in Beijing recently, President Bush argued
that "in a free society, diversity is not disorder. Debate is not
strife." The audience applauded politely. The message may have proved more
persuasive if those values were better reflected in the Bush administration's
communications with the outside world, both in its image and, more importantly,
in its policies. Because as President Bush rightly points out, diversity and
debate are the lifeblood of liberty. And they are the enemies of branding.
 This article is reprinted with permission from the magazine In These Times,
?2002. Naomi Klein writes the No Logo column for In These Times, an independent
newsweekly based in Chicago. For more information about subscribing or to read
articles from the magazine, visit http://www.inthesetimes.com
Info/Order
the book "No Logo" by the author.
About the Author
Born in Montreal in 1970, Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and
author of the international best-seller, No
Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Translated into 22
languages, The New York Times called No Logo "a movement
bible." Naomi Klein?s articles have appeared in numerous publications
including In These Times, The Nation, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Newsweek
International, The New York Times, The Village Voice and Ms. Magazine. She
writes an internationally syndicated column for The Globe and Mail in Canada and
The Guardian in Britain. For the past six years, Ms. Klein has traveled
throughout North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe, tracking the rise of
anti-corporate activism. In December 2001, Ms. Klein was named as one of Ms.
Magazine?s Women of the Year. Visit her website at http://www.nologo.org
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