Lucky Charm Offensive
The brand promise of Trump America is a lie
Americans “get” branding. But that’s not to say they really understand it. They get the brand promise at the core of Trump, but they don’t understand that in order for it to operate successfully, the people believing in that brand promise have to be more than willing to be locked into its spell.
Since the 1950s, Americans have been learning all about branding, from soup and cereal to oil companies and automobiles. We’re studied up with plenty of on-the-job training thanks to our consumerist economy. But we’ve never really stopped to think about what any of it means.
We sort of know why we pick up the box of Lucky Charms from the shelf or drive the Chevy off the lot. But after the fact we don’t think much about the decision to buy a particular brand over another.
There are those of us who respond quite favorably to the Trump brand. The wealth and the shine, the big chair and the take-no-prisoners management style. The self-made man with the power, the penthouse, and the women. All posed with great flare and certainty. He’s really rich, remember? And that’s all anyone needs to know. That, and he tells it like it is.
But here’s the thing with branding. Everything with the Trump brand can be true and a lie at the same time.
When you really believe in a brand, nothing else matters. Surely not evidence, surely not truth.
Just like with greenwashing, when corporations convinced consumers buying more was good for the planet, Trump convinced millions of people of things that aren’t true, him being a self-made man at the top of the list of deceptions. (He most certainly is not a self-made man.)
How did he do this?
With branding.
Setting out with hundreds of millions of his father’s money along with the help of tabloid journalism and primetime television, it was easy for Trump to be whatever he wanted to be. It would be easy for anyone to be whatever he or she wanted with that much on their side. Smoking makes you a man and Donald Trump is out for the little guy. Both have been believed in the core being of millions of people. Both are not true.
The way the brand is forged is of no concern to us. We only care about the end product. No one wants to see how the sausage is made. Not the chicken McNugget and not Donald J. Trump.
For some of us, we just want that Trump gold to shine on us. And we’re still holding out for it. Hence the hovering of a plus 40% approval rating. We will hold out until the end of time. Which, given this president’s brand of diplomacy when it comes to our adversaries, could be any day now.
