The Battle of Our Den

Does war change branding? Does it modify brands themselves? Well of course. The short answer is that war changes everything. (And on the totem pole of your, my, and Maslow’s hierarchy of anything, branding is of absolute zero importance in comparison to, say, death.)

So, yeah, sitting on our full-scale arses absorbing military conflict on every channel has the canny ability to transform the perception of messages and the thinking that surrounds them — mostly and evidently on the receiver’s side of the equation.

Because brands are merely the stories our brains report to us when appropriately stimulated, the frenetic, DEFCON 5 delivery of messages that happen in life during wartime tend to shift a promise like “Whiter Teeth in 14 Days” down a few notches on the importance scale.

I’ve never supposed that the human brain can only accept a finite amount of information; rather, I subscribe to the belief that the mind has a self-protection mode wherein it raises the criteria required to begin recording stories. You may have also heard this called “modern life.”

For a related perspective, just look at the depths to which non-hurricane-related charitable donations dropped last year after the amazing city of New Orleans was put on life support. Nicknamed the “Katrina Effect,” our usually generous nation felt temporarily immune to pleas for breast cancer research dollars and AIDS walks sponsorships. Indeed, the collective brain could only consent to the same message so many times before shutting out all of them.

And that was just mother nature doing her thing — twist the screws that much harder when it’s humans killing each other (and often themselves in the process) on TV, and we’re rendered numb to the whole concept. As a result, we’re anaesthetized to the ideas of every subject lower on the hierarchy. It’s just our “self-preservation mode” in action, the one that allows people like me to fall asleep in my New York City apartment with car horns blaring on the street below at all hours while my friends, visiting from the Midwest, lay awake wide-eyed until morning. People simply acclimate to their surroundings and adjust their importance criteria accordingly. That’s just the brain. If you don’t like it, donate it to the nearest university.

Okay, now to the ideology of war.

That “i” word has kinda been mutated in the last few decades here in the States. What once meant “belief system” or “principles” has been pulled cursing and screaming into a definition akin to a political calling card, or worse, a moral platform. Chalk it up to the religious wrong.

Branding, as it’s widely defined, is merely a subset of “ideology.” War shifts a nation's ideology to the short-term pragmatism of achieving military goals. In my opinion (and I’m not alone), the most effective and impactful branding campaign in history is what a failed artist from Austria so originally appointed the ‘third reich.’ Wanna talk ideology, influence, mindshare, and results? Look no further than the goose-stepping morons’ 1933 public speeches, their subsequent brainwashing of millions, and the 1938 Time Man of the Year. Those were pre-WWII events, yes, but they were also the causes and fuels for the war following “the war to end all wars.” We know what happened next to 55 million human beings, their families, and the modern world in general.

Branding “good” and “evil” plays a key role in gaining support for everything from poker sites to police actions in Vietnam. We see it every day: Coke vs. Pepsi, Microsoft vs. Apple, Nike vs. adidas. But when it’s someone’s son vs. someone else’s son, our country vs. yours, it takes on abnormal gravity.

The Three C’s of branding are called up for their tour of duty: first, a launch awareness initiative; second, the consideration drivers; next, purchase promotions.

Clarity, Consistency, and Constancy report for the long campaign in the mindshare theatre. Soldiers, voters, and mothers are asked to buy the battle with messages as clear and consistent as they are constant. Welcome to branding, Patton-style. Do it long enough and voilá. People actually find themselves WANTING it to happen. (And hey, tell the Defense Secretary that a massive media buy won’t be necessary. Unlike the days of propaganda posters and newsreels, cable news vehicles will provide 24-hour coverage — er, ad spots — supporting the campaign; for no media dollars, that’s a helluva return on investment.)

Unfortunately, war has become the defining characteristic (brand) of all generations since the Spanish-American. Mine (stupidly titled Generation X) was the first without one. Oh, but we made up for it in spades, ain’t we.

Yeah, every pair-o-decades needs something to define itself. I guess the only spot powerful enough to help us belong is the blood kind.

Just think, for a moment, about the most influential, best educated, highest numbered generation of them all — my parents and millions of Americans like them, born a few months after our boys came home from saving the world from itself.

Does war brand? Just ask some Baby Boomers. Then ask their parents about target audience.