This Brand is Your Brand: Selling the American Dream

The US is the country second most visited by foreigners. France is Number One.

Since 'We're Number Two!' is not the rallying cry most likely to inspire respect and admiration, a new travel promotion office called Brand USA has been created to better sell the benefits of tourism to the land of the free and home of the brave.

In doing its research, the new agency quickly discovered that the USA brand has some positives and some negatives. On the plus side, no one needs to be told what or where the US is. That saves some time. But on the negative side, the US has seen its share of global travel spending plummet. This is not due, as some might wish, to its foreign policy, domestic politics or obesity crisis. It is, however, self-inflicted: turns out that when you make obtaining a visa to visit both onerous and expensive, demand does suffer accordingly.

Since no one can agree on almost anything about the GWOT (global war on terrorism), those restrictions are unlikely to be lifted anytime soon. So the new agency is accentuating the positive, focusing on cultural attractions like music and movies, natural wonders like the Grand Canyon and Brooklyn, and the US as a place where dreams come true (no data available).

It is too soon to tell whether this first ever advertising campaign to attract visitors to the US will work. Americans are not notably patient, but they do like a good tale well told. JL

The Economist Reports:

ASK people what they think about America, and the multiplicity of opinions will be matched only by the diversity of the country itself. Some find its foreign policy odious; others admire the ideals on which it was founded. Few, however, respond with a blank stare. Even the geographically illiterate and politically unaware have heard of the United States.

Yet in May a new travel-promotion office, Brand USA, launched America’s first-ever campaign to attract visitors from overseas
Against a backdrop of majestic landscapes and shots of attractive people having fun, Rosanne Cash (daughter of Johnny) and a multicultural assortment of musicians tell the world that, “It’s closer than it seems; come and find your land of dreams.”

America may seem to have no need to advertise. It is the second-most-visited country in the world (after France). But the campaign is long overdue. Between 2000 and 2010 America’s share of spending on global travel fell by a third, from 17.2% to 11.6%. According to McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy’s research arm, global long-haul travel increased by 31% in the decade to 2009 while foreign visitors to America (excluding from Canada and Mexico) dropped by 2m, to 24m. McKinsey calculates that if its market share had been retained, the United States would have had 67m additional visits and $214 billion in extra revenue over that period.

Some of the blame for the decline in numbers can be attributed to harsh security put in place after the terrorist attacks of 2001. Surly immigration officials do little to enhance America’s claim to be a welcoming country. But JWT, the ad agency that created the campaign, found other reasons for the decline. Being the world’s most powerful and best-known country works against America: as a Brazilian respondent told the agency, “The United States did such a good job of turning Brazilians into Americans that it’s not really different.” Others said they were turned off by “brash and arrogant” Americans. And the rise of emerging markets has taken the sheen off America’s claim to be the new world.

Brand USA was created to change those ideas. Among its duties, as laid out in the Travel Promotion Act passed by Congress in 2010, is “to identify, counter, and correct misperceptions regarding United States entry policies around the world”. Advertising reliably pulls in visitors, says Simon Anholt, who advises governments on their international image. But other factors contribute to how a nation is perceived. In 2007 and 2008, deep into George Bush’s second term, the United States ranked seventh on a list of the world’s 50 most-admired countries, according to a survey Mr Anholt conducts with GfK Roper, a market-research firm. In 2009, the year Barack Obama assumed office, America jumped back to number one, where it remains.