Countries are among the most powerful brands on the global marketplace. Love it or loath it, never has there been a bigger or stronger brand than the United States of America. More than any other country, America has been blessed with a huge range of positive brand attributes. The country is associated with the definitive youth lifestyle (Coke, MTV, Levi’s); with sporting prowess (Nike, NBA, Timberland); and with technological supermacy (Microsoft, Dell, IBM). America is well-informed (CNN, Time, Newsweek) and, naturally, wealthy (American Express, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs). Of the top 100 international brands, 64 of them are American-owned. The core of America’s potency lies in it being the country of origin for the world’s three most valuable and profitable business sectors: entertainment, merchant banking and IT. This makes America the world’s most powerful public domain brand. American brands simply hitch themselves onto this powerful national brand, and a cultural and commercial trail is instantly blazed for them around the world. This book traces American history, the values of Brand America and the growth of anti-Americanism upto the Obama presidency. America is truly the greatest branding story of them all, and this book tells it for the first time.

Anti-American feeling is at an all-time high. Other nations and cultures have singled out our businesses, government, and way of life for harsh scorn, widespread resentment, even violence. Rebuilding Brand America is an exploration of anti-Americanism, from its causes and earliest manifestations to current efforts to mitigate it. Martin explains why many of these efforts failed, and reviews the many prescriptions formulated by more than a dozen task forces. He then bases his recommendations on the best practices of leading companies, and on his own 32-year career in public relations and brand management. Rebuilding Brand America features exclusive interviews with journalists, media and PR professionals, and executives from global icons like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and FedEx, and analyzes the groundbreaking work of thought leaders such as: * Pollster John Zogby, whose insights into the Muslim world continue to inform policy in the Middle East. * Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria, whose essay on the 9/11 attacks shed new light on the Islamic mind. * Keith Reinhard, president of Business for Diplomatic Action, a non-partisan business group organized to fight anti-Americanism by addressing its causes in U.S. business practice. Based on a deep understanding of anti-Americanism’s roots, Rebuilding Brand America is a call to action that will help U.S.-based companies prosper in global markets.

This title presents the fascinating story of how the USA became the greatest and most powerful brand of all.

For Latin America, the Cold War was anything but cold. Nor was it the so-called “long peace” afforded the world’s superpowers by their nuclear standoff. In this book, the first to take an international perspective on the postwar decades in the region, Hal Brands sets out to explain what exactly happened in Latin America during the Cold War, and why it was so traumatic. Tracing the tumultuous course of regional affairs from the late 1940s through the early 1990s, Latin America’s Cold War delves into the myriad crises and turning points of the period—the Cuban revolution and its aftermath; the recurring cycles of insurgency and counter-insurgency; the emergence of currents like the National Security Doctrine, liberation theology, and dependency theory; the rise and demise of a hemispheric diplomatic challenge to U.S. hegemony in the 1970s; the conflagration that engulfed Central America from the Nicaraguan revolution onward; and the democratic and economic reforms of the 1980s. Most important, the book chronicles these events in a way that is both multinational and multilayered, weaving the experiences of a diverse cast of characters into an understanding of how global, regional, and local influences interacted to shape Cold War crises in Latin America. Ultimately, Brands exposes Latin America’s Cold War as not a single conflict, but rather a series of overlapping political, social, geostrategic, and ideological struggles whose repercussions can be felt to this day.

Upon becoming a television news commentator, Noelle Nikpour had a realization: She, like everyone, has a brand.A native of Arkansas, Noelle was already a successful Republican consultant and strategist who had raised funds for various political candidates.When she started appearing on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, HLN, and other television and national radio broadcasts, she realized she had a role to play.Branding isn't just about corporations building relationships with consumers through advertising. It's also become an important part of political campaigns – more important than candidates' ideas and certainly more important than their qualifications. Barack Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy proved that. Meanwhile, branding has become an essential part of modern life for every American. These days, everyone has a brand.In some ways that's good, and in some ways it's bad, but it's definitely today's reality. Her new book, “Branding America,” traces how branding has moved from the corporate world into politics and then into Americans' personal lives. It describes today's most important political brands: the Democrats, who have a terrible brand; the Republicans, whose brand is in need of repair; and today's rising brand – conservative women. And it explains how Americans can take advantage of this new reality to succeed in the workplace and in life.

The second annual volume of the International Place Branding Yearbook; this collection looks at the case for applying brand and marketing strategies and to the economic, social, political and cultural development of cities, towns and regions around the world to help them compete in the global, national and local markets.

Professional football today is an $8 billion sports entertainment industry--and the most popular spectator sport in America, with designs on expansion across the globe. In this astute field-level view of the National Football League since 1960, Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and at the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life. New to the paperback edition is Oriard's analysis of the offseason labor negotiations and their potential effects on the future of the sport, and his account of how the NFL is dealing with the latest research on concussions and head injuries.