Editorial: Going to war against sloganeers

Opinion

Whoever dreamed up the phrase "war on terror" must be miffed. It is pithy and to the point, so much so that it became an instant part of the lexicon of life after the destruction of New York's World Trade Centre.

Yet now we have been informed by New Zealand advertising guru Kevin Roberts that it was always a pallid expression.

It never, he says, had "a lot of positive equity going for it".

The Saatchi & Saatchi chief executive's recommendation, delivered on request to the Pentagon, was to call the struggle against terrorism the "fight for a better world". This, according to Mr Roberts, was "more inclusive, more optimistic and more engaging". It was also a sure sign of a wordsmith who had lost touch with reality. Someone who had forgotten that whichever way you try to spin an event, the facts do not disappear.

Those facts confronting the Bush Administration are not about to be changed by more optimistic or engaging words. Beamed every night into households throughout the United States, they include suicide bombings around the world and American troops dying in the quagmire that is Iraq. Acknowledging those facts while explaining the bigger picture is, according to the public relations handbook, the first step towards controlling the damage from such a parlous situation.

Not in Mr Roberts' world, however. He brought to the Pentagon a speech entitled Loyal Beyond Reason, the ideas for which are set out in his 2004 book, Lovemarks: the Future Beyond Brands. This supposes that some products engender "loyalty beyond reason" in consumers, a sentiment that goes beyond mere respect and trust. It is, according to Mr Roberts, about the emotions that people bring to products they really like. Its focus is the way they base their selection from the supermarket shelf on their hearts, not what their heads tell them about the functionality of a product.

Mr Roberts appears to believe that it should be possible to make the same emotional connection with the White House's foreign policy as with a packet of toilet tissues. As such, changing the way US officials describe the war in Iraq is the key to branding the war more effectively.

It is something of a commentary on those officials' perplexity, and the draining of support for President Bush, induced, in part, by the conflict, that at least one of Mr Roberts' suggested phrases was apparently taken up. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others began talking about "the global struggle against violent extremism". They may have been convinced that it was more inclusive, more optimistic and more engaging. But those who heard it saw it for what it was - and showered it with ridicule.

Unsurprisingly, US officials have gone back to talking about the war on terror. Perhaps they realise that just as there is no prospect of securing repeat sales of a flawed product - whatever the advertising industry's best efforts to solicit an emotional connection - there is no point in seeking to dress up the grim reality of Iraq. And that the heart will always struggle to surmount the head when lives, not laundry detergents, are at stake.

Mr Roberts might now acknowledge that clever words and phrases are not the solution to every problem. He might also ponder his entry into this field. It would be a dark day, indeed, if citizens were to become "loyal beyond reason" to their government's foreign policy. Only in a totalitarian state like the Soviet Union does a phrase like the Great Patriotic War get to be used for World War II. And only there should a phrase like the "global struggle against violent extremism" stand a chance of being accepted.