If Only We'd Consulted Madison Avenue Sooner

According to yesterday’s Post, the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid Rand Corp. $400,000 to study the “brand failure” of the U.S. presence in Iraq. The study was titled “Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation,” and its gist, as the Post sums it up, is that the “key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves ‘shaping’ both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light.”

The rest of the study is chock-full of helpful, cutting-edge military-marketing research.

For instance:

Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the “force” brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies' competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been “We will help you.” That is what President Bush's new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq's security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.

Also:

In an urban insurgency, for example, civilians can help identify enemy infiltrators and otherwise assist U.S. forces. They are less likely to help, the study says, when they become “collateral damage” in U.S. attacks, have their doors broken down or are shot at checkpoints because they do not speak English. Cultural connections -- seeking out the local head man when entering a neighborhood, looking someone in the eye when offering a friendly wave -- are key.

Furthermore:

Wal-Mart's desired identity as a friendly shop where working-class customers can feel comfortable and find good value, for example, would be undercut if telephone operators and sales personnel had rude attitudes, or if the stores offered too much high-end merchandise. For the U.S. military and U.S. officials, understanding the target customer culture is equally critical.

Wait – this is a lot of information to process, so I want to make sure I’m receiving it correctly. This study is telling us that, when the U.S. occupies a foreign country, it would be more helpful to project a helpful image than a threatening one? And that killing civilians will make other civilians less likely to help our forces?

Jesus. I’ve been thinking about this all wrong.

If your blood pressure doubled while reading these excerpts, I don’t blame you. It’s truly infuriating to think that, as 20-year-olds are getting blown up daily in Iraq, this is the level of sophistication at which their superiors are operating.

Also posted at Campus Progress.

The Bush Years: The Relaunch

On April 26, 2007, I wrote:

"I'm in DC and will be posting sparsely for the next few days. Upon my return early next week, I will resume my heroic schedule of up to five posts per week."

This, uh, didn't happen. Since then I've taken a job as an associate editor at Campus Progress, and I blog regularly here. I haven't forgotten The Bush Years, however; it's time to get back on this crazy train. I'll be mirroring all my CP blog posts here and will probably be writing some TBY-exclusive posts as well. So stay tuned.