Brand America

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

I enjoyed Nick Wreden’s thoughtful review of Simon Anholt’s Brand America. As someone who finds it hard to keep up I really appreciate the bloggers who digest books for me!

Nick is impressed with Simon’s argument that “Brand America” is in decline but is more sceptical about the proposed solution. I find that a common feature of many business books; I feel quite forgiving because the problem is not simple.

I wonder though if the whole concept of America as a brand is itself the problem. Branding is a school of thought hitherto largely dominated by Americans and with it goes the idea that a few people can somehow determine how a thing is seen. In the end, they lapse into thinking they determine how it is.

So when Simon proposes a

“single Brand American working group

Share Post

More Posts

Waterfalls and chaos

I linked to this paper on wicked problems the other day and Chris Corrigan commented “there’s a lot in that paper eh?”. Which is true.

Passion branding

Passion brands bring people together based on common interests and excitements. I’m particularly interested in ones created from the bottom up, as opposed to driven by producers concerned mainly with profit.

Medinge Moments

Just back from another extraordinary gathering at Medinge where the community that has produced Beyond Branding meets each summer. I was planning to keep this

The volatile chemistry of trust

Interesting research from Stanford suggests that exciting brands get more trusted after making mistakes and putting them right whilst more “sincere” brands start with more trust but lose it more easily. Perhaps the sensible interpretation is that second-guessing customers can be a waste of time!

What brand are you?

Thanks to Matt Tucker at Smith Associates for telling me about What Brand Are You. It strikes me that lots of companies waste money on

New Abbey

So the Abbey National is rebranding itself this morning. As I write this entry, they are revealing their new look, their shortened name (just “Abbey”)

Just Undo It?

The AntiBrand: blackSpot sneakers, a project by Adbusters attacks Nike directly. In doing so they take on what has become one of the great icons

Putting humanity into branding

We live in a world of too much marketing and too much branding. People’s faith in advertising has fallen to new lows as we simply

More Updates

Emotional debt

Releasing the hidden costs of pent up frustrations

Aliveness

Finding the aliveness below the surface of stuck

Johnnie Moore

Planning… for the rest of us

Chris Corrigan has a great post about strategic planning. Most of the small non-profits I work with seem to think it’s wise to use mainstream business strategic planning frameworks to

Johnnie Moore

iRiver

So I have finally succumbed to the urge to get an MP3 player and got myself an iRiverH320. I realise I’ve been a bit behind the curve here but wow

Johnnie Moore

London workshop: Difficult Conversations

I’m going to run a one-day workshop on Difficult Conversations in London on February 20th. I’m doing with this my friend and collaborator Kay Scorah. As we say in the

Johnnie Moore

The Wisdom of Crowds

Dave Pollard has posted a great summary of The Wisom of Crowds. I’d like to focus on this bit: The group’s answer he shows is almost invariably better than any