This is a marketing column, right? So, what’s with the political analysis.
Well, in truth, this is not so much about political analysis as an evaluation of what our media coverage (or lack thereof) of our presidential election is doing to the brand known as USA. Tim Rutten, in his LA Times piece on our national political coverage, only covers half of the issue. Rutten starts off with an interesting observation:
“The most serious problem confronting the American news media today is neither creeping political bias nor the tensions between new and old technologies … [but rather] corporate managers’ growing inability to distinguish between the public’s interest fascination with entertainment and celebrity and the public interest a deference to the common good.”
Rutten’s complaint is clear and valid. Big media – specifically the three major television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) have made a business decision with significant editorial and civic implications. By reducing their coverage of the political conventions to no more than an hour a night, they’ve abdicated coverage of the political process to a patchwork of newspapers, magazines, radio stations and cable networks.
And while I share Rutten’s concerns vis a vis domestic coverage of the political process (the last thing we need are uninformed opinions going into November) – he’s missed a very important point. There are 15,000 journalists at the DNC this week – and one would assume a similar number of journo’s covering the RNC in August. In both cases, the number of journalists covering the story will outnumber the delegates attending.
And not all of those journalists will be Americans.
In fact, what is happening on this country’s political horizon is of the utmost importance and interest to people living around the world and their media is here to cover it as well. Embarrassingly so, coverage on many foreign television networks will be much more thorough than what most American’s will be seeing on the big television networks that command most of the eyeballs in our country.
Everyone is here from Al Jazeera to the BBC. There are media representatives from as far away as Nepal in attendance.
Apparently, there’s just not enough reality television in the world to bring everyone to our level.
But my concern centers around what the implications are for Brand: USA if we’re disinterested in our own political conventions while the rest of the world watches and wonders. What’s the signal we’re sending?
Much as the contentious situation in Florida in 2000 was widely misunderstood and misinterpreted by the world at-large when it happened, I fear we’re treading down the same path again in 2004. It’s in our own best interest to be actively engaged and invovled in this election, no matter who’s side you’re on. The more engaged the US population is in the electoral process, the stronger the signal we send to the rest of the world that the American people stand behind “our” brand.
And that will count for something.
If you travel abroad, you know that people in other countries are often quick to say that while they don’t like America, they like Americans. What’s that mean? It means they create a clear distinction between what our country does and the people they meet from the USA. That’s understandable. It’s much easier for people to “hate” a nameless, faceless institution rather than a person with whom they can make a one-to-one connection.
The secret to branding success, of course, is to create as much of a personal relationship between the customer and the brand as possible. In this example, if people from other countries see and can identify with the people in America who stand behind Brand:USA, they’re less likely to dismiss concerns, fears, policies or decisions as being unilateral. And, just as importantly, the more engaged the American public is in creating its brand’s promise, the more likely our policies will take these international relationships into consideration.
The end result, I think, will be a brand we can all stand behind.
Later.
15,000 journalists and still a dearth of coverage