Re-Branding America

In Clay Risen's Boston Globe article "Re-branding America" he discusses how marketing gurus think they can help 'reposition' the United States - and save American foreign policy.

Referring to Charlotte Beers as the country's post 9/11 American Ad Queen (where she oversaw blitzes in the Middle East with pro-American advertising and PR campaigns), Risen reports that Beers responded with gusto: During her 17-month tenure, the new Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs oversaw the launching of everything from a monthly pro-American, Arabic-language newsmagazine called Hi, to be distributed around the Middle East, to a series of TV spots featuring smiling Muslim Americans.

But Beers's PR campaign turned out to be a PR disaster. ''The US can't be sold as a brand,' like Cheerios,'' wrote the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board. To Naomi Klein, a columnist at The Nation and the author of "No Logo,'' Beers's efforts echoed the propaganda efforts of Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes. ''It's no coincidence,'' wrote Klein in the Los Angeles Times in 2002, ''that the political leaders most preoccupied with branding themselves and their parties were also allergic to democracy and diversity.'' Beers left before many of her programs even got off the ground. Either way, even Naomi Klein wrote that ''America's problem is not with its brand-which could scarcely be stronger-but with its product."