With each episode of Rebranding America, a post will be added with the transcript, resources and homework. If you have questions or want to engage in kind, thoughtful dialog, please do so in the comment section!

HOMEWORK:

Worksheet for Episode 1Download

RESOURCES:

The Declaration of Independence

James Truslow Adams book

Robert Shiller

Langston Hughes

TRANSCRIPT:

America has been built on the ideals of equality, liberty and justice  for all,  leading us to believe that this is the land where everyone has a chance to prosper if we just work hard enough. Somewhere along the line, these values have gotten muddled, proven false for some but not others, or worse, lost entirely. But what if we actually became who we said we are? What if we went back to the beginning in an effort to rebrand America? In each episode of Rebranding America, we will explore how Americans can shift their behavior to become the nation we’ve always aspired to be. It starts with us. With each individual shift, we can collectively turn America into the promise of an experience worthy of everyone. 

Welcome to Rebranding America, a series that explores the question: who would America be if it actually became who it said it was? 

Whether or not you believe America is living up to its highest ideals, one thing we can agree on is that being an American right now is full of tension. Agreeing on anything seems like a utopian idea, let alone choosing something to stand for that reflects who we are as a nation. The solution is to create a new path forward that roots all of us in the same values and vision so we can move forward together. 

We’ll be exploring this idea through the lens of marketing and branding. I have dedicated the last twenty years of my life to the study of brands, how they’re made, why we feel so strongly about them (and why we don’t) and what gives them the power to shape culture by influencing how we behave. In the past decade, I have guided nearly 200 brands through a process that gives them language to define what they stand for. What I know for a fact is that brands are built by people. And in order to rebrand America, we must first rebrand ourselves.  Messaging done well and consistently over time is where you get the emotional connection to brands like Nike and Apple.  They connect us to a piece of ourselves we want to be known as: We want to believe we can be more athletic by buying a pair of shoes or think differently and create something revolutionary if we were the face aglow behind that Apple logo on that MacBook Pro. It’s human nature to want to belong and to matter. We’ll buy into anything that sells us a version of that idea that also elevates how we appear to other people. 

Here is what I’ve learned after putting my research into practice with nearly 200 brands: 

A brand is the promise of an experience.

Brand is not a logo, color scheme or ad campaign ran during the SuperBowl. While these are elements of expressing a brand, what these pieces represent is the actual experience consumers buy into. 

The job of marketing  is to deploy as many tactics as possible to reach the audience the promise was intended for.  Marketing is most effective when the brand promise hasn’t been broken. 

It could certainly be argued that the first promise America made dates back to the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–

As a marketer, my job is to take that brand promise, deliver it to the people it was intended for – then relentlessly fight to ensure that the promise is, in fact, real.  

If the experience promised isn’t real … if it’s merely an aspirational lie, I will always fail as a marketer. Why?  Because people don’t like to be lied to. So marketers try and come up with shareable, repeatable phrases that can summarize the complexities of an entire brand experience into a short tag line. Often times they are vague. And, over time, they begin to mean something different depending on how someone has experienced the brand in their own life. For instance: Think Different. Just Do It. Because You’re Worth it. I’m Lovin’ It. 

On their own, these tag lines don’t mean much. It’s my job, however,  to paint a picture of how these statements are a launch pad for the consumer to visualize themselves having a better life as a result of what that phrase stands for. That language evolves as the consumer evolves, but it is to always point back to a promise of an experience the product or service delivers. 

So if I’m branding America and trying to communicate a promise of this very complex experience that’s relatable, shareable, and summarizes what it hopes everyone experiences when they interact with it, I can find no greater modern-day example of this than the coining of a phrase like, “The American Dream.”

In 1931, Historian James Truslow Adams wrote a book entitled, “ The Epic of America.” In it, he described,

“That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

James Truslow Adams

It’s because of this book that Adams is often cited as the person responsible for making the idea of the American Dream popular.

The words “American dream” gradually began to appear in newspaper articles and books in the mid- to late-1800s. Back then it often referred to pioneers who headed west to seek fortune, or to European immigrants who arrived in search of better jobs and homes. By the early 20th century, it was a euphemism for upward economic mobility — you know, the rags-to-riches story we always hear about. 

When it was coined by Adams, it had more to do with morality than material success. In a NYTimes article by Robert Shiller it is noted:

“Mr. Adams emphasized ideals rather than material goods, a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” And he clarified, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and recognized by others for what they are. His achievement was an innovation in language that largely replaced the older terms “American character” and “American principles” with a forward-looking phrase that implied modesty about current success in giving respect and equal opportunity to all people. The American dream was a trajectory to a promising future, a model for the United States and for the whole world.”

Robert Shiller

To rebrand America, is to rebrand the American Dream. It would place morality over materials, people over profit. It would include all people and serve as a form of accountability to the promise our founding fathers accidentally made when they aspired to be a better version of themselves. We don’t need a new promise, we just need to deliver it to all Americans.

For the rest of this series, we’ll dive into my rebranding process. With each step, I’ll introduce a bit of history to serve as context for how we got here as a brand and what we can do as individuals to make the promise true for all Americans. We’ll dive into the initial discovery process, identify core values, define a vision, craft a message that resonates with our intended audience, uncover the power of symbols and design a plan for action.  If you call yourself an American, this is your home. It’s our responsibility to fix it so it’s habitable. How do you want to live here? 

If we pull this off, America can live up to the promise of equality, liberty and justice for all. If not, its just a fancy ad campaign to support a few people at the expense of everyone else.  

We’re going to dive into this together. As a 37 year old white female, born and raised in this country, I’m just scratching the surface of what it means to be American. I’m not a historian, I’m not a politician, or a lawyer. I’m just a girl who knows that what we’re doing isn’t matching who we say we are. Instead of deducing my efforts to retweeting the words of our most prolific activists, I’m going to give us a chance in each episode to DO something different in our own lives to create an American Dream that gives all of us a chance at upward mobility. I’ll take you through the process the way I would with any executives of a company but, this time, I’m joining you. If we all lived with this kind of intentionality, it still won’t be utopian. But it could effect policy. It could even make us more aware when we’re drinking in the lies of those who want the dream all for themselves.

So start simple for today: What does the American Dream mean to you? Do you see it being true for everyone?  Where has it failed you? Where have you seen it work for you? Do you feel like the meaning has changed as you’ve gotten older? Take some time this week to think through some of these questions and be ready. Because next week, we’re going to do the work of uncovering what ties us to one another so we can build the America that has yet to be.