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D A M O N TA B O R : I N S E A R C H O F G O L D I N F R E N C H G U I A N A

HARPERS MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2011 $7.99

A SUPER BOWL SPOT FOR UNCLE SAM Can Madison Avenue Make Us Love Our Government? A Forum with Perry Fair, Mark Fitzloff, Thomas Frank, Marc Sobier, and Con Williamson TINY LITTLE LAWS A Plague of Sexual Violence in Indian Country By Kathy Dobie ALWAYS RAINING SOMEWHERE, SAID JIM JOHNSON A story by John Edgar Wideman Also: Robyn Creswell and Adam Hochschild

A SUPER BOWL SPOT FOR UNCLE SAM


Can Madison Avenue make us love our government?

uring the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, polls showed that more than 70 percent of Americans trusted the federal government, purveyor of such beloved products as the interstate highway system, the G.I. Bill, and the Social Security check. Then, abruptly, in 1966, the governments favorability ratings began to fall, and fall. Last September, when the pollsters at Gallup asked Americans to describe the federal government in one word or phrase, 72 percent of the responses were pejorative. The federal government was a constipated, obese, crappy bureaucracy run by a bunch of yahoos, or by a bunch of [profanity deleted]. We may be more politically polarized than ever, but when it comes to the federal government, we stand united in our disgust. One often hears that we should run government like a business. What would a business do if it saw brand loyalty give way to such brand hostility? Wouldnt its executives summon the alchemists of advertising? The day after last Novembers midterm elections, Harpers Magazine gathered creatives from four ad agencies and assigned them a daunting task: to develop a television spot for the federal government. And not just any television spot. We wanted one both memorable enough and entertaining enough to compete in the most expensive televised-marketing event of the yearthe Super Bowl.
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The following forum is based on a discussion that took place in November at Keens Steakhouse in New York City. Donovan Hohn and Thomas Frank served as moderators. PERRY FAIR is a creative director at the Grey Group. He has worked on campaigns for, among others, Nissan, Gatorade, and Target. MARK FITZLOFF is an executive creative director at Wieden+Kennedy. He has worked on campaigns for Nike, Coca-Cola, and Levis, and oversaw the 2007 rebranding of Old Spice. MARC SOBIER is an associate creative director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. He has worked on campaigns for Doritos, Hewlett-Packard, and Hyundai, and is the creator of the Trunkmonkey ads for the Suburban Auto Group. CON WILLIAMSON is a chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi. He has worked on campaigns for Heineken, Jaguar, and Kraft, and is the creator of Dos Equiss Most Interesting Man in the World. THOMAS FRANK writes the Easy Chair column for Harpers Magazine and is the author, most recently, of The Wrecking Crew. DONOVAN HOHN is a senior editor of Harpers Magazine. His first book, Moby-Duck, will be published by Viking next month. I. THE BRIEF donovan hohn: Imagine that the federal government has hired Tom Frank and methis is far-fetched, I knowas marketing consultants. Seeking the largest television audience money can buy, were looking for an advertising agency to produce a Super Bowl spot for our client. By federal government we dont simply mean Congress and the White House but all the branches and twigs, from the post office down the street to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The distinction matters, because heres the curious thing: Although according to the Pew Research Center, only 22 percent of Americans now trust the federal government, particular federal programs and agencies remain highly popular. Even the IRS has improved its polling in the past few years con williamson: I love those guys. hohn: 47 percent of us trust the IRS compared with 36 percent ten years ago. The U.S. Postal Servicea whopping 83 percent of us like them. 61 percent like NASA. 67 percent like the Centers for Disease Control. And when you ask Americans what they want to cut, they want to protect their Medicare, they want to protect the military, they want to protect Social Security, they dont want to cut spending on education and highways. A marketing consultant might reasonably conclude its the federal brand we hate, not the product. thomas frank: I opened up todays Washington Post, and heres an article by Mitt Romney Slay the Job-Killing Beastabout what we have to do to government, and thats kill it. This even in some of the hardest times that most Americans have ever seen. A big part of our political energies in this country is dedicated to hating government. Knee-jerk anti-statism is the unexamined assumption of our time. The Tea Party movement, rock music, the Chicago school of economics all join together in hating the federal government. mark fitzloff: When I found out you guys wanted me to come do this, I did what we all do when we have to do a pitch for a new client in a category we know nothing about: pathetically surface-level research so that we at least dont feel like complete idiots. I went to Powells Books, this amazing bookstore in Portland. I went to the floor where I felt Id seen the government section before, and I found a row of stacks that said politics. Im looking up and down these aisles, and its all political points of view, from Ann Coulter to Al Franken. I found one book in the entire

a n a d c r e at i v e s g l o s s a r y
brief: a summary of market research, presented by a client or an account manager, that advertising creatives consult while developing a spot or a campaign button: an extra little joke placed at the end of a TV commercial, just after the logo is shown buy: the purchase of advertising time or space, e.g., a $3 million network-television buy mnemonic: an auditory device in a broadcast commercial meant to be used as a recurring element of branding over time a ninety, a sixty, a thirty: a 90-second, 60-second, or 30second broadcast spot pod: the group of spots that make up an entire commercial break super: type or graphics superimposed on the picture in a TV commercial

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aisle that was nonpartisan, The Complete Idiots Guide to American Government. I kind of sheepishly grabbed it, went up to the counter, and said, Do you guys have a government section? The clerk, a young guy, looks at me and says, Well, government is politics. It was kind of a profound statement: The largest independent bookstore in the U.S. doesnt have a section for government, only one for politicsand within that, they had only one pathetically sad idiots guide. hohn: Did you buy the book? fitzloff: I did! It read like a high school civics class textbook, and it was great. Not to get melodramatic, but you read about the beauty of checks and balances, how these three branches work well together, and you cant help admire the incredible amount of foresight. Its really moving to read the actual text of the Constitution. You look at it and youre like, Holy shit. I think for starters you can say that the number-one marketing challenge the government has is that its primary communications outlet is political campaigning. hohn: I can think of other marketing challenges, like the security lines at the airport. The body scans. The frisking. fitzloff: I wonder how much those experiences ladder up to a general feeling about the U.S. government. I think that people can, to a certain extent, compartmentalize their interactions with the government, which maybe is why you get poll results that say people love the CDC or the post office. hohn: We all know our postal workers, right? The mail comes every day. fitzloff: And postal workers havent killed anybody in a while. perry fair: The problem is, you dont say, The U.S. government brought me my mail today. You say, The mailman brought me my mail. Youve divorced the country from the things that government provides for you. The train station I use has a huge sign saying, this renovation brought to you by the stimulus package. Im like, By who? Theres no branding. I walk away all, like, Thank you, thats nice. This is the worst print ad Ive ever fucking seen. hohn: Right. So theres no federal brand. Its not just that we need to rebrand. We need to brand. frank: There used to be a brand. Remember Roosevelts four freedoms? Norman Rockwell depicted them. Two we still hear aboutfreedom of speech, freedom of religion. But then there are the other two: freedom from fearwhooping Nazi assand freedom from want, which Rockwell depicted as a family enjoying a big turkey dinner. If you ask somebody in the Tea Party movement, What is freedom?, theyll tell you, Freedom is the absence of the state. They explicitly equate the freedom from want with so-

cialism, with un-freedom. So Im wondering if there isnt some way that our Super Bowl spot could remind viewers of those other meanings of freedom. Government has a unique selling proposition: It delivers safety and security, really basic things that should be easy to sell. Liberty itselfthats what government is all about. hohn: Its not just the Tea Party. The left also distrusts government, though the sources of its distrustthe CIA, Wall Street lobbyists, wiretapping, the Defense of Marriage Actusually differ from the rights. And lets be clear, there are good reasons to distrust the federal government. williamson: People who work in advertising tend to be a pretty liberal crowd. Our clients dont always line up with our morals and standards. We tend to check our politics at the door. Our job is to sort of blindly believe in what we sell. hohn: Excellent. Lets check our politics at the door and believe blindly in the federal government. marc sobier: I have a question. Arent we talking about propaganda? Isnt that what advertising for the government is? hohn: Whats the difference between advertising and propaganda? Between Nike saying, Look at these amazing shoes that all these sexy athletes wear, and the government putting up an ad saying, Look at these awesome windmills we helped build? fitzloff: Propaganda implies a certain level of dishonesty. sobier: I think the public would perceive any advertising by any government to be propaganda, no matter how honest it is. fitzloff: Propagandas purpose is to influence the way you think, and advertisings purpose is to influence what you buy. Theres a difference.

Illustration by Tim Bower

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We dont care what you believe as long as you buy our shoes or our phones. williamson: I dont buy that, though. At least some clients want you to believe in their brand. fair: But only because if you believe in the brand you will eventually purchase it. frank: One of the first books about PR, published in the 1920s, was called Propaganda. It was written by Edward Bernays, Freuds nephew. Because of that book, Ive always thought that brand-building did have a certain element of propaganda to it, the construction of a whole system of meaning, and so did the larger

project of getting us to think of ourselves as consumers. As far as government advertising goes, were not aiming for anything dishonest. Thats what the Soviets did. If the Soviets said it, it was propaganda. fitzloff: They had some really nice posters, though. hohn: To bring it back to the Super Bowl ad, maybe what we need to do here is to make government advertising that doesnt feel like propaganda, even if it is. Perry distinguishes between selling a product and selling a belief. So whats the product were selling? frank: Maybe our goal is to convince people that they are already buying the federal government every day. I mean, you go on public transportation and youre buying it. You go to the post office, you buy it. Every time you write a check, its processed by the Federal Reservethe most hated arm of the government. Or take the FDIC. Whats the bank in California that went under? IndyMac. They had a line of people stretched around the block, and the FDIC came in and saved them. Nobody says those people took a bailout, but thats exactly what they did.

And we take it for granted. We dont say, Thank God for the federal government. We think, That was my money and I got it back. sobier: Our spot could show those people checking their balances and say, Heres all the good we do. fair: Somebody would counter, You didnt do it for me. hohn: Earlier Tom and I were trying to think of the branches of government that have already done television advertisingnot public relations, not spin, not press conferences or publicservice announcements, but advertising. The most prominent example is the armed forces. In the Seventies, in the wake of Vietnam and the abolition of the draft, their approval ratings were lower. Now the Armed Forces are hugely popular even when the wars theyre fighting arent. Presumably the allvolunteer military has something to do with that. But I wonder if the ads do, too. williamson: I spent nine years in the Army as a paratrooper. We all thought those Army of One ads were bullshit. It was never an Army of One; it was an Army of a Lot. When I was in, and we were all up at four in the morning going for a run, the slogan that everyone thought of was, We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. We not I. Whether theyre for a particular war or not, Americans know those guys are serving. We recognize the sacrifice. fitzloff: None of the current ads for the Armed Forces are about patriotism or service. Its Whats in it for me? I can either take this job or this job, and whos paying the best, and whos setting me up for a better job after I get out? I think those guys marketing the Armed Services are intentionally creating a brand separate from the U.S. government. They read the same polls that you guys did. williamson: But maybe you could use the same formula to sell the federal government: Separate it from politics. Sell the government as an innovation company. Think of that Air Force campaign, Its not the future, its not science fiction, its right now. How could we show off what the government does? Make it cool? hohn: Certainly an agency like NASA should be able to do that. The manned space program may not be worth our tax dollars, but its sure great PR, right? The heroism? The danger? Talk about sacrifice. Selling the IRS may be a little harder.

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Freedom from Want, from The Saturday Evening Post, March 6, 1943, and Freedom of Speech, from The Saturday Evening Post, February 20, 1943, by Norman Rockwell Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts/Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis

frank: I live near Washington, D.C., now, and one of the things you discover is that people who work for these agencies, say the EPA or the Department of Commerce, they also understand themselves to be doing a kind of service. Employees with advanced degrees dont make anything near what they would if they were in the private sector, all the, um, propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding. williamson: We work with the Healthy Weight Commitment [Foundation], so we just met with Michelle Obamas staff last week in D.C. These are, like, lawyers, doctors, and Im sure they make $17 an hour or something. But theyre there because they believe in it. This one woman cried about what it means to have this job. hohn: Perhaps that could be the theme of our Super Bowl spot: service. When Gallup asked Americans to describe the federal government, no one they polled mentioned service. One word that did come up a lot is bureaucracy. We can say: Public service is a noble thing. We can think of the sacrifices made by Marines, or astronauts, or members of the Peace Corps. And yet overshadowing this idealistic notion of service is the idea of bureaucracy. frank: In conservative circleshell, maybe in liberal circles tooyou see that all the time, revulsion with public workers, especially now, during the downturn, because their pensions are so good. sobier: Dont you think the media shares some of the blame for our hatred of government? By the Sixties, everyone had television. Theyd seen pictures coming back from southeast Asia. It just hits closer to home. And now youve got how many channels? How many of those pundits have their own half-hour or hour-long slots that they need to fill? I feel like since the Sixties, thats kind of just fueled the fire of politics. hohn: A historian by the name of Marc Hetherington argues that the decline in confidence in government begins before the antiwar movement of the Sixties, in response to LBJs Great Society. Much of the electorate started to perceive federal spending as a form of redistribution, not simply from rich to poor but from rural to urban, from white to blacknever mind how much we subsidize agriculture, or states like Alaska. The federal government became associated with welfare queens and all the rest, and thats when you begin to see the decline. Whereas under the New Deal, the iconic beneficiaries of the government were white and rural, the Okies. frank: To play devils advocate here, Im going to say its your fault, you advertising guys, that the government cant be cool. Think about Apples classic 1984 sledgehammer-to-IBM ad. IBMs image in that ad resembles ours of the federal government. Gray. Impersonal. Big Brother. We all

want to imagine ourselves as rebels standing up to authority. What were asking you guys to do is to turn that around. To sell the authority figure. In a Super Bowl spot. Can it even be done? 2. THE BUY fitzloff: The Super Bowl is a unique assignment within the small world of advertising. Once that brief comes across your desk with the words Super Bowl at the top, youre like, Fuck. williamson: That ad meter that USA Today publishes the day after changes the way you work. fitzloff: The best Super Bowl commercials Ive been involved with were not assigned to me as Super Bowl commercials. They got momentum late in the game because of the disorganization of the client, or because the client liked the work and said, Should we go buy a Super Bowl spot with this? Otherwise, like anybody, you try to emulate past successes. If you want to do well in the USA Today polls, there seem to be some ingredients. Weve all, in our darker moments, staring at a Super Bowl brief, thought, Ill just throw in a car wreck, some dancing babies, some explosions. sobier: I work on Doritos, and they host a contest every year called Crash the Super Bowl where they get consumers to do their own commercials, and theyll run the ones the most people vote for online. The smart ones have figured out that, yes, there is a formula. Those guys are not afraid to kick somebody in the groin. fitzloff: We always talk about how theres gonna be a Super Bowl party happening, attended by a bunch of drunk idiots who like football. Its not exactly a forum for a thoughtful, earnest message. Take Hal Rineys famous spot for the Reagan campaign, Morning in Americaif they had launched that on the Super Bowl, I dont think Reagan would have been reelected. Do we have to do a Super Bowl spot? How about the NCAA championships? Theres a lot less pressure. williamson: I like the challenge of the Super Bowl, but how do you justify spending that much on a single buy? Its kind of a ridiculous waste. fitzloff: We certainly tell our clients that. People are going to notice that you just dumped a million dollars-plus on the buy, probably close to a million dollars on production, and theyre not gonna be cool with that. hohn: Well, our whole premise here is a fantasy. This would be killed as a wasteful earmark. fair: Is the government going to focus-group this spot with the Green Party, the Tea Party, Democrats, and Republicans, and make sure no ones offended? hohn: Is that what a client would normally do? fitzloff: Not if we can help it.

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fair: Some of them will test it until its baby food. hohn: Okay, then, no focus groups. No baby food. frank: Mark, you mentioned that there were some typical ingredients of a Super Bowl ad. What are they? fitzloff: Funny. Thats the main ingredient. But humor is tricky. As the product or service youre advertising goes up on the personal importance level, the value of irreverence and humor goes down. We do Old Spice deodorantvery easy, because no one cares about deodorant. I would not suggest taking the Old Spice Man and having him spoof the U.S. government. It would just fuel cynicism. It doesnt mean you cant be honest or even slightly self-deprecating. What you cant be is silly or goofy. fair: No one wants a silly bank. No one wants a silly doctor. No one wants a silly Army. No one wants a silly government. Thats why all the senators you see doing Pepsi and stuff were already out of office. You dont want to laugh at Bob Dole while hes making your decisions. Al Frankenhe is not a comedian anymore. He is pure government. hohn: So then we have to avoid, on the one hand, the empty sentimentality of Morning in Americaflags waving, amber waves of grain but also the silliness of an ad for deodorant. frank: But wait a secondwhy are you giving up on the flags waving? The one thing weve got is those noble buildings in Washington, the national anthem, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. Those are part of the brand. fitzloff: Its just harder to use them for your nefarious purposes. We use them so much. hohn: What about those Budweiser ads with the Clydesdales? Theyre kind of nostalgic and sentimental in a Norman Rockwell sort of way. williamson: Its almost an obligation with Bud we have to do those ads that way. fitzloff: And you can imagine the agency creatives handing out that assignment: Youre gonna do the funny Bud Light one, and you you get to do the Clydesdales. Thats getting sent to Siberia. hohn: There are different kinds of funny, though, right? Theres the Doritos ad with the guy falling out of a coffin filled with tortilla chips at his own staged funeralslapstick. Then there are ads that are more like sketch comedy. Betty White playing football. But then theres also, say, that Monster.com spot, filmed in black-and-white, with these kids saying, When I grow up, I want to be in middle management. Theres a sad kind of irony to the joke. fitzloff: I worked with the team that made that spot. I doubt that one got briefed as a Super Bowl commercial. It doesnt reek of having too much pressure placed on it. Its a smart, quiet, edgy-but-thoughtful spot.

frank: When they first aired that ad, I remember thinking, This is a classic example of the kind of advertising cynicism Im talking aboutall these little kids talking about how awful middle age is. You sort of cringe. But maybe theres a way to use that kind of cleverness and that kind of attitude, cutting through to something we all know is true, to make the sale. fitzloff: I will say that anytime, as an advertising creative, you get a sense that theres an elephant in the roomthat everyone is talking around something theyd rather not think aboutits a problem but also an opportunity. We just put out a commercial for LeBron James for Nike. And its all about what he was thinking when he made that disastrous decision to turn his move to the Miami Heat into some sort of me hour on ESPN. People really respond well to that kind of candor: Finally theyre saying what I know theyre thinking, and what Im thinking, and could we all just say it publicly? williamson: I actually like that. Lets state the obvious: Hey, we know we suck. We think so, too, and heres what were doing. I mean, just be honest. fitzloff: Maybe we just have the founding fathers walking down the halls of some federal office building, bitch-slapping everybody. Back at your desk! sobier: We can use last years powdered wig from the Dodge Challenger commercial. williamson: You have that still? frank: How about something that punctures cynicism itselfthats cynical about cynicism? Im reminded of a civics textbook from World War II, either 44 or 45, obviously written for kids in school, called We Are the Government. It has this almost blithe interpretation of who government is, Government is us, which is almost funny because at the time we were engaged in a war with a totalitarian state. Think Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The politicians, the members of the Senate, are incredibly corrupt theyre so vile. But the government itself is this noble principle that Jimmy Stewart is willing to do everything to protect. hohn: One of the elephants in the room for us is that theres one party that actively encourages us to dislike government, to think of government not as We the People but as They the Parasites, the Kenyan socialists, the elites. fitzloff: Theres got to be some kernel of what the government is that is above the fray of partisanship, and that both sides revere, a greater good that were all striving toward. I think thats what World War II certainly provided; we always say how that war ended the Depression and changed a mood. Thats what we need to do, short of starting a war Wag the Dogstyle. hohn: Not another one!

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frank: Mark, you mentioned being in that bookstore in Portland where all the books were by these pundits yelling at one another. People are so sick of that, and yet those books sell. People tune in to Fox News. But the government itself, the machinery of the state, churns on regardless of that stuff. If we could just separate the government from the politicians. fitzloff: We can talk all we want about how well were connecting the Postal Service or the IRS to the government, but when I think of the government, I think of Congress and the White House. D.C. And thats the problem. fair: I dont think theres a campaign on the planet that you can produce that would get people to say, Hey, senators arent that bad. sobier: No matter what, youre not going to get people to forget how much they hate Washington by reminding them of the highway system. 3. THE SPOT hohn: I think weve aired the complexities of the problem. Were going to advertise for the federal government as distinct from the politicians, though we might have to deal with the politicians in order to do it. But the product is the federal government. Where do we begin? A talking animal? They seem popular. Celebrity endorsements? fitzloff: Lets mate a donkey and an elephant and have their offspring talk. fair: A donkephant. A green donkephant. sobier: Greens too polarizing. hohn: All the colors are taken! fitzloff: Purple. hohn: No, purples got some problems. fair: Is our assignment to do one ad? Or are we doing a campaign? hohn: Because there are four of you, and youre from different agencies, we can come up with a few different ideas. We might want to have an ad thats going to appeal to the Archie Bunker demographic. And maybe we want to have an ad thats going to appeal to a youthful demographic. fair: But that, to me, is a great challengetaking a brand and spreading it across demographic and ethnographic ranges. fitzloff: Something like the gover nment probably has to rise above advertising. Since

you asked us to go there, well go there. But just like I think they cant do comedy, they cant pander. Targeting can very easily cross

that invisible line into pandering, where you feel it. fair: I actually agreeit needs to be a broader statement that encompasses everyone. hohn: So we cant target. williamson: I guess the bigger question is, Whats the government willing to do? Were putting a spotlight on the problem, but how do we fix it? Advertising, thats no ones fix. Whats the client willing to do to back up the ad? I go from that ad, and of course theres gonna be a website or a landing page, theres gonna be an iPhone app. You know, whats the follow-up? frank: The governments going to start delivering perfect service. fair: Thats the part, to me, that actually needs to happen. williamson: Complaints-dot-gov. Did you see the videos of Old Spice Man responding to peoples requests? I mean, that was really good shit! He took daily notes from people. hohn: Thinking of Old Spice Man, it occurs to me that political cartoons are full of this sort of iconographic shorthand. Could we make Uncle Sam a character in the spot? fitzloff: Cartoons are a great source of raw material. Weve all looked through the Far Side books when we were gathering creative stuff. Its like, That works fast. That could work in thirty seconds. And then you just make that Far Side cartoon into a commercial. It speaks volumes in quick visual-and-line combinations. Whether you actually borrow the ico-

Freedom from Fear, from The Saturday Evening Post, March 13, 1943, and Freedom of Worship, from The Saturday Evening Post, February 27, 1943, by Norman Rockwell Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts/Curtis Licensing, Indianapolis

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nography or not, youd find a lot of source material that way. williamson: Uncle Sam should be your Most Interesting Man in the World. hohn: He should. Maybe he can tweet. fitzloff: I think we need to see politicians humiliated. That desire needs to be fulfilled. I wouldnt want to see them singing a cappella or taking their pants off, but if you saw them delivering mail, or being self-deprecating in some way. I mean, how much are people dying to see Boehner and Nancy Pelosi playing tug-of-war or having a pillow fight? williamson: Theres the one show about the bosses who go and work in their companies. Talk about humbling, these guys look like complete idiots. The CEO moving the trash around the dumpI love seeing that. sobier: What if you had all the past presidents who are still living, everyone who ran for major office in the last electionyouve got Boehner, youve got Pelosi, Palin, Obama theyre all going to the Capitol building and the White House, and underneath every podium theres a microphone, and they all disconnect a huge container labeled b.s. thats attached to the microphone. And they all do it together. Its almost like a task force. Were gonna go and clean the b.s. out and get down to business. fitzloff: I want to see them read my copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to Government. fair: Think of it almost like buying a car. You hate the dealer, you hate going to the dealership. You hate the process, you feel like theyre lying to you, you know theyre trying to get their percentage off you. But you want the

product. Youre buying from Dodge, but you know you have to get past the gatekeeper, which is the dealer, to get the Charger you want. We want to advertise the car, but we really want you to buy into the brand. De-vilify the dealer. fitzloff: Saturn tried to do that years ago. They made the dealers really great guys. They addressed the entire experience. frank: I thought Saturn was a great brand, but a sucky car. fair: And by the time they got the brand right, they were out of business! Id almost use the Target modelthey had these great commercials, then you go into the stores and youre like, This is disappointing. Its nothing like what I saw on TV. I can see the same thing happening here: Oh, the government is great, I saw these great spots! Then you open the newspaper: Still not passing that bill. fitzloff: You can go into Target and get a lamp designed by Philippe Starck. fair: Yeah, but you have to battle for it. You have to find it, for one. hohn: Is there a precedent for that? Advertising that actually changes the product as well as the brand? sobier: The old adage is that the fastest way to kill a bad product is with good advertising. frank: So we could start a revolution accidentally. hohn: I think the premise is that there are at least parts of the federal government that are an unappreciated good product. You might want to be picky about which parts. williamson: Like Tom said, we take for granted that the banks are insured. What if we imagined what things would be like without the federal government? fitzloff: You do a spot where you open on the central square of Pyongyang, people goose-stepping; then you cut to Russian oligarchs running off with copper-mine money coming out of their pockets. Then you cut to America. Its like, This is what weve got. And its pretty good. Its got nothing to do with whos in power now. Its the system of government that we value. fair: See, Id almost show it from the point of view of non-Americans. We take our government for granted but people who arent from here appreciate it. hohn: Thats actually an interesting idea. The immigrant storyline is always a powerful one. Have you ever seen footage of a citizenship ceremony? It could make even the governor of Arizona tear up.

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HARPERS MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY 2011

Illustration by Tim Bower

williamson: For one account I worked on, we interviewed a guy on the street. One question was about the American Dream. He was like, Youve got to be an immigrant to appreciate the American Dream. Americans dont appreciate the American Dream. And thats the sentiment were talking about. frank: Floridas new senator, Marco Rubio, sort of said this in his speech on election night. It was very impressive. Ill probably never vote for the man, but what a speaker. fair: Perfect example: Im in a cab a couple weeks ago, and the driver hands me a sheet of paper. He says, Can you please read this to me? And I say, You have been summoned . . . And hes like, I have been summoned? And Im like, Look, reallypay attention to the road. Hes excited that he gets to go to court! Im like, Dude, youve gotta go to court. He asks, For what? I say, I dont know, it says youve gotta be here. What day? Can you please tell me? And he had a full calendar, like, Can you please circle the date for me so I can go to court? I say, Yeah, youve gotta be here at this time. Ill write the time down. You cannot be late. I will not be late! Im like, if you were an American cab driver wed be sitting here talking about how you could get out of going. fitzloff: Was it jury duty or was he actually getting a summons? fair: He was getting a summons! I asked him, Dude, you know youre getting sued. Did you kick this lady out of a cab? No, I didnt kick her out of the cab. We had this whole conversation. But the bigger thing for him was, I get to go to court! fitzloff: Imagine if it was jury duty. Hed be out of his tree. fair: I told him, Dude, I would not be excited. This is the one moment when you dont want to go. Hes like, Is there going to be a judge there? It was that whole process for him. He felt like he was an American. Hes waving the summons around, going, Only in America do I get one of these. williamson: Only in AmericaI love the flexibility of Only in America. It allows for so much. fair: It even allows you to take politicians and say, Only in America would you have two parties that have to decide on one thing, viscerally disagreeing, knowing they have to actually agree at the end of the day. Only in America can that happen. And sort of work! And be this functional thing that is a superpower, even though, if you look at it closely, we hate each other. Only in America can that happen. fitzloff: It would be interesting to see how it would play out. It definitely blurs the lines between a celebration of cultural pride and an advertising campaign for the client.

frank: Part of the problem, to go back to the brief, was that those two thingsAmerica and the federal governmentbecame separate. Whereas if you think of the founding fathers, or of Roosevelts four freedoms, the government and the culture and the nation were inseparable. In a way what were trying to do is reunite this entity, the federal government, with the culture and the nation it governs. williamson: You could hand out 10,000 cheap little Sony video cameras and ask people, Whats your Only in America? Then post the answers on YouTube. fair: Like a stimulus package. If you have a great idea, well pay for you to go out and produce something great for us. Heres a job for yougo make your Only in America thing. Make it awesome. But work with this ad agency so you dont fuck it up. williamson: Well pick your fonts. sobier: Even with crowd-sourced content we do curate the process. The only downside I can see is the anti-campaign that all the anarchists would do. frank: Right. When I hear the phrase Only in America, I think of that punk song by Naked Raygun from the early Eighties: You start your own religious cult/Only in America, Eat your own weight in salt/Only in America. williamson: You have to accept that the idea of Only in America is going to get some knocks too. But thats cool, thats what makes America great. Remember John Edwards. I hated his story: Only in America could a guy like me rise up from a father who worked on a factory floor. Yeah, and only in America do I have the freedom to call bullshit on that guy. hohn: As Tom said at the beginning, that word, freedom, has become the rallying cry for the Tea Party. It was also the rallying cry of the Civil Rights movement, and both of those movements were, initially at least, opposed to the institutions of the federal government. Here were trying to associate the word government with freedom. fitzloff: And that lineOnly in America would probably work well with our overseas propaganda campaign. hohn: Theres an innocence to it, too. And its funny. But not silly. I get to go to court. You can imagine other spots. I get to do my taxes. I get to go through airport security. I get to pay off my student loan. williamson: Which brings us back to your point, Perry: is this a campaign or is it a single spot? Its at least got to be a 90 if its a spot. hohn: Since there are four of you, lets say four spots. They can be totally different in tone, totally different in content. You have complete freedom.

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