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Follow Your Heart, And Your Heartstrings Will Follow
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What’s black and white, and red,
white and blue all over? Give up? Our war with Iraq. Way before it began, it didn’t take much to see that political factions on both sides of the barbed wire wanted to eliminate every shade of gray in existence. They couched things in completely stark, emotional terms. If you weren’t in favor of the war, you supported terrorism. If you weren’t against the war, you supported slaughtering civilians. Boom. End of story. No wiggle room. Fortunately, most of us tend to use our brain beyond just skull-filler, and recognized this left-or-right-no-middle rhetoric for what it was – paper-thin propaganda. So we steadfastly held our original positions. Some felt we should have taken Saddam out in the first Gulf War. Some didn’t like the idea of the U.S. being the initiator. Some felt sorry for the Iraqi people. Some want to see anything even remotely Middle Eastern bombed. Some didn’t want more American soldiers lost. And some remembered we’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 18 months with absolutely no sign of Osama. A million opinions, all of them right. Or wrong. But once the invasion began, there was one viewpoint that sounded totally clichéd right out of the box, although it still managed to pervade our collective thoughts: “Now that we’re in it, it doesn’t matter anymore if you’re for or against. We need to support our military personnel.” We wanted them to get the job done and get home. We may not have vocalized it as much as some, but it’s a reasonable assumption that we all felt it. And, as before (Gulf War #1, 9/11), the channels of American business and American cynicism ran deep and parallel. Within a day of the initial strike, imprinted products with patriotic or “support our troops” themes began showing up – everything from coffee mugs to T-shirts to stickers to lapel pins. And not long after, others began to condemn those selling or offering those same products as white-cold profiteers, out to make a buck on our soldiers’ blood. But for the most part, they were wrong. There are always few genuine leeches and bottom-feeders, but generally, firms mean well. Not to sound even more clichéd, but these are frightening and troubled times we’re living in. Helping people – on any scale – get behind a common objective can be nothing but positive in terms of bumping up morale. And speaking of positive, these products represent an incredible opportunity for a company to grab some ultra-beneficial PR. It’s almost foolproof. Who, after all, can argue with supporting our troops? Who would really want to? If you decide that star-spangled isn’t your firm’s style, why not something the troops themselves can use? Lip balm. Pens to write letters home. Bandannas to keep out the sand. Flashlights. Survival tools. And each time that soldier, sailor or Marine uses it, he or she sees your logo. Can good PR get any better than that? And lest we forget, the answer is yes – those selling patriotic goods are indeed making a reasonable profit on them. In other words, they’re merely supporting what’s been the essential cog in the American business machine ever since we broke our chains to England. Making money continues to be a key part of the American Dream. It’s become essential to our way of life and a religion, a cause, a raison d’être for most businesses. With a few exceptions (Enron, Worldcom), profit means growth, not greed. How far would your own company have gone without it? Fortunately, at this writing, the war is essentially over. Many troops are heading stateside, mission accomplished. But not all of them. There’s still work for them over there, not to mention Afghanistan or anywhere else they might be needed. So if you feel the need to do something about any conflict that may develop in the future – talk to your counselor about patriotic promos. There are all kinds of creative ideas waiting to be launched. Logoed products last a long time, but patriotism of that sort should be forever. Thanks for reading. Arn Bernstein abernstein@asicentral.com |
