US ‘Brand Identity’ Tarnished...’show of force’ model...should have been `we will help you’

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/25/2745/

US ‘Brand Identity’ Tarnished
Study says ’show of force’ model marketed by military should have been `we will help you’
by Karen DeYoung

WASHINGTON - In the advertising world, “brand identity” is everything. Volvo means safety; iPod means cool. But since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, its “show of force” brand has proved to have limited appeal to Iraqi consumers, according to a recent study commissioned by the U.S. military.

The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves “shaping” both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a new identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd Helmus, the author of Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation, a 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000 (U.S.).

Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the “force” brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and has lost ground to enemies’ competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been: “We will help you.”

That is what the new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq’s security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.

more...

[rocktivity]

1. The problem isn't that Bush didn't say, "We will help you"

The problem is that Bush DIDN'T HELP THEM.

:headbang:
rocknation

[C_U_L8R]

3. Absolutely. Branding is much more about what you do

than what you say. And dopey repuplicans think they can say one
thing and do another without anyone noticing.
Nobody likes a huckster.

[enid602]

5. branding

Didn't Bush bring back branding at Abu Ghraib? Or was that waterboarding?

[yurbud]

7. Bush didn't go there to help--he went to steal. Papa Bush & Clinton tried help shtick in Somalia

they didn't fall for it. Why would Iraqis?

[On the Road]

2. They May Have Been Shocked,

but they definitely weren't awed.

[melody]

4. Good, maybe the US will finally focus on its citizens instead of protecting/saving the world

Let somebody else do that for a change.

Yeah, I know, I'm dreaming with the GOP in charge.

[Briar]

6. It isn't either or

We should all of us, wherever we live, help each other, wherever they live. The rich world is under an especial obligation to do so, given where our riches originate. And this is especially so now that global climate change has made us critically dependent on responsible and effective energy and environmental polices carried out by our governments, and those of every other country too.

Time to get shot of narrow nationalism. It will kill us all.

[melody]

8. It is a choice of first things first

First, we take care of our own. If I'm not for myself who will be for me (and to add to it,
if I am only for myself, what am I?).

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Good commentary on this on the 'Unspeak' blog:

We will help you

Rebranding the US military

...

Consider one positioning statement example that is derived from a hypothetical “free from tyranny” concept: To {insert indigenous target audience} who have lived under brutal oppression: U.S. forces will rid your country of tyranny {promise} because we have opposed it for 200 years {reason to believe} and support your living free from tyranny {emotional and benefit}. {p70 n34}

It is a good thing that the authors cover their collective ass by calling this a “hypothetical” “concept”, even though it sounds remarkably like the kinds of things that were said, and are said, about Iraq. This particular version of it imagines the “hypothetical” lucky people to be invaded as idiots, or at best children, who will apparently swallow trustingly the notion that the US has indeed opposed tyranny for 200 years, that being the “reason to believe” that the claimed motivations for the incipient invasion are actual. The imminent “consumers” of military might, naïve and historically ignorant as all such “indigenous” peoples may safely be assumed to be, certainly wouldn’t remember anything like this, would they?

http://unspeak.net.nyud.net:8080/images/rumsad.jpg

...

The U.S. military must take pains to ensure that its operations and other actions do not conflict with intended brand identity, shaping themes, or other strategies designed to earn popular support among local populations. However, the United States and its allies must, at times, risk popular support by conducting kinetic operations. Virtually any kinetic operation has the potential to alienate civilians. {p. 80}

Yup, particularly if it kills them. And here, indeed, resides the melancholic limit of the authors’ scheme: “kinetic operations”, or bombing and shooting people, are inevitably the core of what any military is for. And, despite the authors’ subsequent efforts to suggest that saying sorry and promising to fix things will make it all better, even really great branding won’t overcome the extreme alienation of your average dead civilian.

http://unspeak.net/we-will-help-you/