America, the Brand. (On Marketing).

IT SEEMS EVERYONE HAS BEEN taking (or at least claiming to take) the challenge of "branding." Corporations, nonprofit organizations and even individual athletes and celebrities have jumped into the act.

What is a brand? I've seen brands defined as everything from "the name, symbol or design that sets a product apart from its competitors" to "that what don't come off in the wash."

Brands are essentially a psychological connection that consumers make to you or your product or service. In a time of increasing competition, when consumers perceive fewer tangible differences among competing products, a successful branding process has become vital.

Well, if you have some ideas and experience in building brand, then you might be poised for more than just business success. You can do some good for the country.

The federal government is aggressively seeking the help of marketers in creating a sort of Brand America. Charlotte Beers, a former executive with advertising agencies J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather, recently was appointed to our State Department to head the effort. Beers was quoted in Advertising Age as saying, "We are having people who are not our friends define America in negative terms. It is time for us to reignite the understanding of America."

There's plenty of precedent for such an effort. The Creel Commission, a government-led wartime information and propaganda effort during 1917-18, received donated advertising services and media. The Advertising Council, a private, nonprofit group that is the country's leading producer of public service commumcations programs, grew from propaganda efforts during World War II. (For example, Smokey Bear was created because we feared the Japanese would try to start forest fires by shelling the West Coast.)

There's also plenty of American marketing and advertising expertise waiting to be used. Why can't we do for the country what we've done for Coca-Cola, Nike and Britney?

I ask this without sarcasm, by the way. The task of crafting and communicating the message of America could make a real difference for years to come.

Here are a few thoughts on our new national effort, taken from good branding practices in the private sector:

* Good branding understands reality but deals in the currency of perceptions. Beers put it quite well when she said, "We are forced into a dialogue of great emotional context." Branding requires control over communications at all points of contact and across all audiences. Otherwise, even as realities remain fairly constant, perceptions can become wildly separated.

* Good branding is consistent with audiences both outside and inside. Beers' job puts her in charge of both the State Department's public affairs side (which handles messages for American audiences) and its public diplomacy side (aimed at foreign audiences). That's good. I'm afraid that, overtime, many in our country have lost (or never gained) any sense of what America is about. Perhaps this branding effort, conceived in response to views expressed in the Arab world, will help energize and inform a new generation at home.

* Good branding will coalesce around a unifying theme. Coca-Cola is about unity and refreshment. Nike is about personal improvement through sports. American Express is about membership. What is the central idea of America? Perhaps it's freedom -- not just the freedom to get or do what you want, but the freedom that breeds confidence, tolerance and optimism.

* Good branding doesn't happen overnight, and it won't work with everyone. Those "people who are not our friends" are not going to be receptive to efforts to sell America. In fact, some of those people will never be swayed. The important audiences for this effort around the world are those who are just forming an opinion (and whose views of our nation are probably dominated by "Dynasty" reruns and music videos).

You won't need to watch al-Jazeera to see the first steps of the campaign. Officials say some of the U.S.-targeted messages will be appearing by spring.

Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous and rewarding 2002.

Jim Karrh, Ph.D., is assistant professor of marketing and advertising in the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's College of Business Administration as well as a marketing consultant.