“If there is anyone out there who doubts that America is a place where anything is possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
Those are the words with which Barack Obama declared himself as the next president of the United States. Truly a historic day and one that will do a lot of good not only for Americans, but the world-at-large. But aside from politics, I have another interest in the subject of Obama’s election.
Grant already touched upon this subject briefly, saying that either candidate winning would have effects on culture and commerce alike. Certainly, given how president-centric the US political structure is made to be, whoever is sitting in the White House will have an enormous influence on people’s daily life and perception of self. It’s my perception that for Americans the “idea” of America has more of an effect on the self than in most countries: the idea of the self-made man, the belief in democracy, America’s manifest destiny as the leader of the free world etc.
All these core American beliefs have been toiling in crisis pretty much from the start of George W. Bush’s presidency – especially for liberal Americans who happen to populate the majority of America’s biggest cities. I believe the Iraq war and John Kerry’s unlikely and crushing defeat in the 2004 election had left many liberals disillusioned and disappointed in America. As Douglas Holt points out in “How Brands Becom Icons”, one of the biggest drivers for consumption of identity products is how people aspire to meet a given culture’s or society’s identity models or “myths”, as Holt puts it. When there’s a disconnect between your own life and what you perceive your immediate culture expecting from you, this is when the tension and anxiety will create the most opportunities for brands and other cultural products (especially movies and music) to soothe these anxieties.
If we go back 30 years, we’ll find one of the most classic examples of a cultural product soothing national anxieties. As George Lucas himself put it: Star Wars was “really about the Vietnam War”. America had lost a big chunk of its belief in itself as the hero of the world after what conspired in Vietnam. In large part this was because this was the first fully televised war, people got to see the brutality of war in its fullness. The nation was badly divided when the war was over (as Obama said, even worse than it is now because of the Iraq war) but Star Wars, while it didn’t totally heal the American spiritual wound left by Vietnam, gave America the permission to believe in heroism and American ideals again. I’m sure the movie would have been a colossal success even without Vietnam, but it would have never found this kind of cultural resonance on its own. Similarly, I think Obama would have found followers and support on his own, but his message and persona hit a cultural key that really resonated. A lot of people say that without the financial crisis Obama wouldn’t have won. I say without the “crisis of democracy” (as Al Gore put it), a transformational figure like Obama wouldn’t have even been in the running.
I have some theories of how consumption and culture was shaped during the Bush years. I for one think that the DYI consumer movement was in part fueled by a sense of distrust and cynicism towards the establishment and any authority – especially by liberals in America. The Bush years have provided academics with a very interesting historical era to mine; not only politically but also culturally and commercially. I’m sure we will be reading about these findings a lot in the near future, but right now I just know that marketers shouldn’t neglect this newly found trust in old American ideals. It will be interesting to see which (big) companies will capture this new zeitgeist first, and which ones will do it best, not by just playing lip service to “change”.
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