Fences and Windows (19 page)

In this case, the god is economic growth, and it promises to save us from global recession. New markets to access, new sectors to privatize, new regulations to slash—these will get those arrows in the corner of our television screens pointing heavenward once again.

Of course, growth cannot be created at a meeting, but Doha can accomplish something else, something more religious than economic. It can send “a sign” to the market, a sign that growth is on the way, that expansion is just around the corner. And an ambitious new round of WTO negotiations is the sign they are praying for. For rich countries like ours, the desire for this sign is desperate. It is more pressing than any possible problems with current WTO rules, problems mostly raised by poor countries fed up with a system that has pushed them to drop their trade barriers while rich countries kept theirs up.

So it’s no surprise that poor countries are this round’s strongest opponents. Before they agree to drastically expand the WTO’s reach, many are asking rich countries to make good on their promises from the last round. There are major disputes swirling around agricultural subsidies and dumping, about tariffs on garments and the patenting of
life forms. The most contentious issue is drug patents. India, Brazil, Thailand and a coalition of African countries want clear language stating that patents can be overridden to protect public health. The U.S. and Canada are not just resisting—they are resisting even as their own delegates head for Qatar popping discount Cipros, muscled out of Bayer using exactly the kind of pressure tactics they are calling unfair trade practices.

These concerns are not reflected in the draft ministerial declaration. Which is why Nigeria just blasted the WTO for being “one-sided” and “disregarding the concerns of the developing and least developed countries.” India’s WTO ambassador said last week that the draft “gives the uncomfortable impression that there is no serious attempt to bring issues of importance to developing countries into the mainstream.”

These protests have made little impression with the WTO. Growth is the only god at the negotiations, and any measures that could slow profits even slightly—of drug companies, of water companies, of oil companies—are being treated by believers as if they are on the side of the infidels and evildoers.

What we are witnessing is trade being “bundled” (Microsoft-style) inside the with-us-or-against logic of the “war on terrorism”. Last week, Zoellick explained that “by promoting the WTO’s agenda & these 142 nations can counter the revulsive destructionism of terrorism.” Open markets, he said, are “an antidote” to the terrorists’ “violent rejectionism.” (Fittingly, these are non-arguments glued together with made-up words.)

He further called on WTO member states to set aside their petty concerns about mass hunger and AIDS and join the economic front of America’s war. “We hope the representatives who meet in Doha will perceive the larger stakes,” he said.

Trade negotiations are all about power and opportunity, and for Doha’s Kamikaze Capitalists, terrorism is just another opportunity to leverage. Perhaps their motto can be Nietzsche’s maxim: What doesn’t kill us will make us stronger. Much stronger.

December 2001

Since the release of the Video, Osama bin Laden’s every gesture, chuckle and word has been dissected. But with all the attention on bin Laden, his co-star in the video, identified in the official transcript only as “Sheik,” has received little scrutiny. Too bad, since no matter who he is (and there are several theories), he offers a rare window into the psychology of men who think of mass murder as a great game.

A theme that comes up repeatedly in the giddy monologues of bin Laden’s guest is the idea that they are living in times as grand as those described in the Koran. This war, he observes, is like “in the days of the Prophet Muhammad. Exactly like what’s happening right now.” He goes on to say that “it will be similar to the early days of Al-Mujahedeen and Al-Ansar [similar to the early days of Islam].” And just in case we didn’t get the picture: “Like the old days, such as Abu Bakr and Uthman and Ali and others. In these days, in our times &”

It’s easy to chalk up this nostalgia to the usual theory about Osama bin Laden’s followers being stuck in the Middle Ages. But the comments seem to reflect something more. It’s not some ascetic medieval lifestyle that he longs
for, but the idea of living in mythic times, when men were godlike, battles were epic and history was spelled with a capital H. Screw you, Francis Fukuyama, he seems to be saying. History hasn’t ended yet. We are making it, right here, right now!

It’s an idea we’ve heard from many quarters since September 11, a return of the great narrative: chosen men, evil empires, master plans and great battles. All are ferociously back in style. The Bible, the Koran, the Clash of Civilizations,
The Lord of the
Rings—all of them suddenly playing out “in these days, in our times.”

This redemption narrative is our most persistent myth, and it has a dangerous flip side. When a few men decide to live their myths, to be larger than life, it can’t help having an impact on all those whose lives unfold in regular sizes. People suddenly look insignificant by comparison, easy to sacrifice in the name of some greater purpose.

When the Berlin Wall fell, it was supposed to have buried this epic narrative in its rubble. That was capitalism’s decisive victory.

Francis Fukuyama’s end-of-history theory was understandably infuriating to those who lost that gladiatorial battle, whether they favoured a triumph for global communism or, in Osama bin Laden’s case, an imperialist version of Islam. What is clear post-September 11, however, is that history’s end also turned out to be a hollow victory for America’s own Cold Warriors. It seems that since 1989, many of them have missed their epic narrative as if it were a lost limb.

During the Cold War, consumption in the United States wasn’t only about personal gratification; it was the economic front of the great battle. When Americans went shopping, they were participating in the lifestyle that the Commies supposedly wanted to crush. When kaleidoscopic outlet malls were contrasted with Moscow’s grey and barren shops, the point wasn’t just that we in the West had easy access to Levi’s 501s. In this narrative, our malls stood for freedom and democracy, while their empty shelves were metaphors for control and repression.

But when the Cold War ended and this ideological backdrop was yanked away, the grander meaning behind the shopping evaporated. Without ideology, shopping was just, well, shopping. The response from the corporate world was “lifestyle branding” : an attempt to restore consumerism as a philosophical or political pursuit by selling powerful ideas instead of mere products. Ad campaigns began equating Benetton sweaters with fighting racism, Ikea furniture with democracy and computers with revolution.

Lifestyle branding filled shopping’s “meaning” vacuum for a time, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy the ambitions of the old-school Cold Warriors. Cultural exiles in a world they had created, these disgruntled hawks spent their most triumphant decade not basking in America’s new uncontested power but grousing about how the U.S. had gone “soft,” become feminized. It was an orgy of indulgence personified by Oprah and Bill Clinton.

But post-September 11, History is back. Shoppers are once again foot soldiers in a battle between good and evil,
wearing new Stars and Stripes bras by Elita and popping special-edition red, white and blue M&M’s.

When U.S. politicians urge their citizens to fight terrorism by shopping, it is about more than feeding an ailing economy. It’s about once again wrapping the day-to-day in the mythic, just in time for Christmas.

March 2002

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 Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Charlotte Beers had the assignment not to improve relations with other countries but rather to perform an overhaul of the U.S. image abroad. Beers had no previous State Department experience, but she had held the top job at both the J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather ad agencies, and she’s 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: to sell 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 L. Powell shrugged it off. “There is nothing wrong with getting somebody who knows how to sell something. We are selling
a product. We need someone who can re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy.” Besides, he said, “She got me to buy Uncle Ben’s rice.” So why, only five months in, does the campaign for a new and improved Brand U.S.A. 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 U.S. 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 about 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 the United States’ 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’s 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. Schoolchildren 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 U.S. to live up to its promises.

If they are angry, as millions clearly are, it’s because they
have seen the promises betrayed by U.S. policy. Despite President Bush’s insistence that America’s enemies resent its liberties, most critics of the U.S. 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 in the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay. The anger comes not only from the facts of each case but also 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 U.S.A., and it has to do with the nature of branding itself. Successful branding, Allen Rosenshine, chairman and CEO 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, and backfire badly.

In the corporate world, once a “brand identity” is settled on by 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 offering hot sauce in Mexico),
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, whether by pirating its trademarks or by spreading unwanted information about the brand on the Internet.

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 this fanaticism for homogeneity with them. 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 have 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 U.S.—admiring its creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards—doesn’t mean you are “mixed up,” to use Olins’s phrase, it means you are paying attention.