Can Obama save Brand America?

 

From the land which gave us Gordon Gecko and “Greed was good”, brand "America" has suffered one hell of an esteem crash.

The 'sub prime' scandal is now rated as the biggest, foreign influence debacle since Chernobyl. If only the effect of those sub prime loans, like Enron, could have be contained to their own shores. Instead, a tidal wave of damage has crashed through nearly every economy across the globe. Not only are US banks nervous about lending to each other, foreign banks are now wary of dealing with banks in other countries. The ramifications are making exporting a tad tricky and that simply isn’t good for business.

Who can blame the banks. It is just like catching one of your neighbour's kids robbing your house. Their whole family somehow is disgraced, tainted by the values you assume, that they must all hold in common as a family unit. That is what happened to brand America. One of their kids brought down the banking system and now all of American banking is suspicious.

American capitalism stood for everything that was white, male power tinged with a touch of arrogance. That is why in this Presidential election everything fitting that description has been pushed under the covers. (Even President Bush was kept well hidden during last weeks of the Presidential campaign.) There just had to be a new face to brand "America" and the more distance from the family that caused the woes, the better. 

Obama, the “twenty dollar president”, had his campaign funded by a mass of twenty dollar donations from ordinary Americans. Their small donations easily matched the contributions from bigger business interests. Then, this campaign was put to work online in a manner never before seen in a Presidential campaign. Obama’s internet campaign, for example, was rumoured to have cost around $4.5 million. "Obama Everywhere" showed that he was featured on all the online networks like Linkedin, mySpace, facebook, youtube, Flickr, twitter, Eventful, BlackPlanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, Migente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, DNC Partybuilder. Now, that is one sophisticated online social networking list.

Obama has given a new image to American politics. In those live debates he never lost his cool. We learned about his ties to both his roots in Kenya and  the families in Indonesia where he lived for four years during his student days. Both places he  visited in the final two years of his campaign sending a very strong message to all peoples about his views and personal links.

Many people outside of America actually started to get interested in the elections once they realised that Obama might make President. At the same time we all knew that like other American leaders in the past, that there was also a possibility that that he could be assassinated before he made Office. However, fortune was on his side and Obama became president and the world breathed a sigh of relief and rejoiced at the prospect of a new broom. (Although, the bookies are still not paying out until his inauguration.)

Can Obama rebuild brand "America"? I believe he can because he represents a substantially different image for America than any of the administrations before him. The effect of electing Obama for brand "America" was just like hanging the sign “Under New Management” in the window of a business that desperately needed a change of hands.

Countries as with business, people eventually will come back to give it a second go. As a result, Obama now has the eyes and ears of local and foreign public opinion. With an ailing economy the last thing America needs is her overseas clients to turn their backs on her completely and trade only amongst themselves. This is where the hope for rebuilding brand "America" now hangs in anticipation of something new and different. So here are the issues as I see it from a brand perspective:

Even though the majority of the American public chose Obama, there is still a part of their culture that doesn’t want him in Office and are committed to removing him by what ever means possible. Obama like Mandela represents a complete re-branding of the American brand. If American's can't protect Obama they will lose what I see as the only opportunity in the near furture to redeem the esteem for brand America.

Secondly, nothing kills public esteem faster than a new brand that heralds no change. Re-brands cause the public to look again at what is new in your offering. A re-brand or re-image is a strategic public relations exercise.

In the case of America, electing a coloured man couldn't get more noticed by the world. It is the closest thing to an apology from the American public that the last elected administration didn't quite get it right. Unfortunately, the press has also jumped on board and dubbed George Bush "the worst President in American history"—a label no leader would want to own at the end of his tenure.

So, a second opportunity that exists for Obama to bring about policy changes that could re-inspire confidence in the of world of business, banking and the media. By far the strongest adversary to his success and yet, at the same time ally in increasing public confidence is the media.

In the past the media maintained consumer confidence, when our spending went spiraling out of control. Now it seems hell bent on sending us into a depression with its wonder lust for stories of economic doom. If I was Obama one of my first agenda items would certainly be paying Murdoch a call, if his election coverage was any indicator of his position towards him.

"Change we can believe in"—we certainly watch with interest in Obama coming up with the goods to fulfill this promise of this positioning statement of his election campaign.

 

 Responses by email:

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'
Thomas Jefferson 1802 — C.P. 14/11

80 years ago the USA enthusiastically elected a new president, who was expected to turn around the 12-month bear market and set the country back on its feet. If the racial situation had been more advanced they may well have elected an African-American, but it wasn’t, so they did the next best thing – they elected a geologist!
 
Herbert Hoover failed to turn things around during his term, instead we had the Great Depression. Some years later he wrote:
 
Our reconstruction from the war had proceeded with such steady success, and the other impulses to progress were so very great that, with the growing optimism, they gave birth to a foolish idea called the New Economic Era. That notion spread over the whole country. We were assured that we were in a new period where the old laws of economics no longer applied.
 
The Federal Reserve Board had deliberately created credit inflation.  The government contended that by the control of discount rates, open market operations and currency issues, business crises could be eliminated. A contribution to optimism and the belief in a New Era was the illusion that the economic system was thus completely immune from financial crises. Bankers, accepting this illusion, neglected many of their own responsibilities.
 
One trouble with every inflationary creation of credit is that it acts like a delayed time on them is an interval of indefinite and sometimes considerable length between the injection of stimulant, and the resulting speculation.
 
Our overpriced stocks and real estate were bound to come down, and the degree of down is influenced by the degree of up, which means they descend from overvalued to undervalued. The boom had lifted securities and real estate far up and to this degree was to deepen further the slump by the downward swing.
 
(OK, Hoover’s career was as a mining engineer, but his qualification was in geology).
—P.H. 14/11

 

---