Word: ms
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...women's movement got under way. Up to then I'd been a free-lance writer, rebelling secretly but hoping no one would notice. Even after feminism began, I thought the movement was just something I would do for a couple of years--to help get things started, like Ms. magazine, the National Women's Political Caucus--and then I would go back to my real life. I was still imagining that my real life hadn't happened yet when my 50th birthday came along in 1984. My friends asked to make it into a gala benefit for Ms. magazine...
...Among the one billion Muslims around the globe, brand USA is in decline. As Ms. Beers surely knows, we don't have a brand awareness problem - America is the quintessential global brand - we have a brand perception problem. For many Muslims around the word, America is a selfish, self-righteous, self-absorbed monster that pays lip-service to democracy but supports despots throughout the Third World. And at the moment they see the U.S. as the instigator of a great humanitarian disaster...
...Americans are befuddled about this. There have been reams of stories written under the banner of "Why They Hate Us," but in advertising-speak, that comes under the heading, 'How we Re-Position the Brand.' Which is where Ms. Beers comes...
...Ms. Beers is said to be considering using famous athletes and entertainers in ads for America. That's fine, but we know that a goodly percentage of the people we're looking to convert don't have televisions. And may not even know who Michael Jordan is. And if what she does is just a version of the "I Love NY" campaign writ large, it's certainly bound to fail. She is said to be behind the use of former ambassador Christopher Ross, who is fluent in Arabic, on al Jazeera TV, and that's certainly a good thing...
...product problem is not for Ms. Beers to solve. That can only be remedied by large policy changes, like supporting the right to self-determination in the Islamic world and perhaps even starting a Marshall Plan for Muslim countries after the war on terrorism is won. That will go a long way to repairing the product itself, and then, as they'll tell you in the ad business, the image problem will start to solve itself...