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Marketing experts say war is a tough sell by Caroline Said 
Marketing experts say war is a tough sell; Sound bites, slogans strive for image of quick, clean war BY Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, March 30, 2003 ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback With the first MBA president in the White House, the war with Iraq has showcased modern principles of marketing and image management. Bush administration sound bites and slogans from "Operation Iraqi Freedom" to "leadership targets" attempt to frame the conflict as sanitary and tidy, remote from the ugly realities of bloodshed, marketing experts say. " 'One sight, one sound, one sell' is classic brand management," said Peter Sealey, adjunct professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and former head of global marketing for the Coca-Cola Co. "When you have this kind of blizzard of intensity, you need to focus on a single proposition." By and large, the Bush administration has done that, he said, distilling a huge geopolitical conflict with multiple underlying political causes down to a simple message of "freeing 23 million Iraqis." But as the war fails to live up to its initial billing as a quick surgical strike with few or no casualties, the marketing campaign will become a tougher sell, experts say. And the media's up-close and detailed battlefield coverage makes it harder for the administration to sway public opinion. Slogans are no match for stark images of death and destruction on the evening news and the morning's front pages. "The war is not going as well as the American people expected," said Steven Siegel, professor of political science at UCLA. "People expected a walk in the park -- (Iraqi) people cheering our troops in the street, an easy (battle) against an evil regime. Now it looks like something much more dangerous, much longer. You can't continue to go on sound bites." The administration's approach to selling the war is not that different from any other brand campaign -- pushing buttons like patriotism, using buzzwords and staying on message, experts said. "The president is basically a CEO. His entire management style is right out of an MBA handbook," said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a New York brand and customer loyalty research firm. "That can be very successful in both the world of commerce and the political world. He's been successful in packaging and positioning the military effort so that the messaging, the communication all resonates with real American values -- duty, responsibility, protection -- all wrapped in the flag." He added: "As a veteran (of the Vietnam War), I'm not being sarcastic. Whether you support the war or not, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, (you must admit) that they're doing a good job of communicating." AVOIDING TERMS OF WAR One way Bush has tried to spin the war is to avoid actually calling it one. "Operation" and "conflict" have been the words of choice. "When the president spoke on Wednesday, March 19, the 'shock and awe' talk to say we're bombing Iraq, he only used the word 'war' once in that entire four-minute speech, and that was in a broad context, not describing our action, " said Jane Elmes-Crahall, a professor of communications at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. "He used 25 to 30 euphemisms for 'kill' and 'war.' 'Decapitation strategy,' i.e., kill Saddam Hussein. 'Aggressively remove the dictator.' " The White House's designated moniker for the conflict encapsulates its message. " 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' is very descriptive of what the administration either believes or would like us to believe the objectives are," said Fredric Kropp, a marketing professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "If the undecided American citizen hears something called 'Operation Iraqi Freedom,' it's more empathic than 'Operation Totally Destroy the Enemy,' " EXPERT NOT IMPRESSED As president of Lexicon Branding in Sausalito, David Placek has crafted such well-known product names as the Intel Pentium, the Subaru Outback, the Apple PowerBook and Embassy Suite Hotels. He isn't impressed with Bush's plainspoken naming strategy. "With a little more thought, they could have come up with something more memorable, easier to say, more eloquent," he said. "It's not quite Churchillian in stature, not 'this vast iron curtain stretching across Europe. ' That was a very rich metaphor." Alan Burgis, president of San Francisco advertising agency Exile, said naming the war "Operation Iraqi Freedom" trivializes it, "branding a war just as we create a brand for detergents. It's so trite, it seems so wrong, especially when people are dying," he said. "What purpose does it serve, other than to make it (sound) more glamorous and more exciting?" But others said the name plays well in Peoria. "For the vast majority of Americans, only 15 percent of whom have a passport, this is very effective rhetoric," said Nancy Friedman, principal of Wordworking, an Oakland name-branding and consulting firm. "It's cowboy lingo, dead or alive, combined with this puritan mission. It makes it seem we're missionaries of freedom as opposed to an army that is bombing the bejeezus out of them." GULF WAR STARTED TREND War propaganda is nothing new, of course. The first Gulf War -- initially dubbed "Operation Desert Shield" by the first Bush administration, then "Operation Desert Storm" -- is widely considered the first instance of a brand-centric war, consciously tailored for the mass media. The current war is even more heavily wrapped in advertising theory and jargon. Ironically, the war's most repeated catchphrase, "shock and awe," is recycled. It dates to concepts of achieving rapid dominance espoused by the Chinese military writer Sun Tzu around 500 B.C., revisited in the 19th century by Austrian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, then summed up in a 1996 Pentagon publication by two former military officers. Chronicle staff writer George Raine contributed to this report. / E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle |