Decline of Brand America
James Wolcott: On Borrowed Time (II)
This is brilliant. I've been thinking about the critical importance of aggressive self-marketing, hyping and promotion of Brand America to the success of American consumer goods companies and Hollywood. What will be the economic consequences of its reduced brand equity as the world becomes increasingly aware of, and increasingly resents, the perennial American hypocrisy of speaking for lofty ideals like freedom and democracy while aggressively acting to subvert them in practice? In other words, who will buy Coke from
The Rattlesnake? In a world that is beginning to prefer Al-Jazeera to the shiite spewed forth by CNN or Fox, I think the erosion in the value of Brand America as it fails to deliver the promised benefits to its "consumers" has a huge potential as a disruptive force in consumer goods industry, as people dump a piece of Americana for its emerging competitors. It is interesting to think about the potential anti-Americanism as business strategy. How can any American company compete against someone like that? This is classic case of disruptive strategy : turn the very premise of a competitor's existence into its biggest liability. BTW, Note to Rupert Murdoch : Globalization is *not* Americanization, and we like it that way : thank you very much.