Why Blind Obedience is Killing Your Business

Picture three men racing through a tall hedge maze.

The first man runs off and begins following paths randomly, hoping to stumble upon the exit.

The second man is more methodical. He puts one hand on a wall of the maze and resolves to keep moving forward slowly, never taking his hand off the wall. Eventually, thanks to the rules of topology, he knows he’ll find the outside.

The third man pushes and shoves directly through the hedges in a straight line, finishing in thirty seconds flat and declaring himself the winner.

Did the third man cheat?

Maybe. But he also won.

How to cheat in business

If you’ve read everything in the world about how to make your business better and it’s still not better, I bet I know what the problem is.

If you’re doing everything right, but find yourself unable to stand out from your competitors and are barely able to keep your head above water, I can guess what’s missing.

The problem is that you’re listening too closely. You’re implementing too literally. You’re following too many conventions, societal norms, expectations of friends, “the way things have always been done,” and best practices.

To stand out, you need to think outside the box. You need to play by fewer rules.

Am I really going to advocate cheating here? Well, sort of.

And also, not really.

See, if the hedge maze race I’ve described above was a formally sanctioned Hedge Maze Runners of Northern Michigan competition with a prize purse at stake, and contest rules clearly stating that no contestant may run directly through the walls of the maze, then we can safely call our third man a dirty cheater and say he’s a miserable human being, and so on and so forth.

But what if the three men were racing out of the maze because a child was drowning in the lake outside? Do we call the third man a cheater now? Or do we call him smart and probably even ahero, because he thought of a lightning-fast solution that didn’t occur to the others?

There are two important points I’m trying to make here with my silly maze metaphor:

1. Whether or not “defying the normal way of doing things” is brilliant or a travesty is a matter of circumstance, and a matter of opinion. Breaking rules isn’t right and it isn’t wrong. It just is.
2. We are all, right now, in a maze of our own. Some of the rules of the maze called “life” serve us and protect us, but some are forcing us to plod along with one hand on the wall, making our way slowly to the finish, while the kid drowns in the lake.

The rules you’ve been following have nudged you into a box. And if that box is serving you and everything is perfect, then great.

But if life could be better — if you don’t have all that you’d really like in your business, your life, your relationships, your family, and everything else — then it might be time to take a close look at those rules and see which ones you can start to disobey.

How to be crazy in business

If anyone thinks I’m going to suggest cutting out the middlemen in the wealth-acquisition chain by robbing a bank, relax. I don’t want anyone to do anything stupid.

Quite the contrary. I want people to stop doing stupid things, like taking the long route instead of the shortcut simply because the map says they should.

I recently heard from a man who had a job in the city.

He hated his job, but he had to have the job so that he could afford his house. He didn’t like his house much either, but it was all he could find that was close to the city. And he had to be near the city to keep the job he hated, so that he could afford the house that he didn’t like but had to keep because it allowed him to keep the job he hated.

So he quit the job and moved to the country, where the land was cheap, and became a freelancer, working remotely for a lot less money. His old job was an impressive, professional job that he had worked hard to get, and everyone thought he was crazy for throwing it all away, going independent.

But he didn’t think he was crazy.

He was making less money, but because of his new, lower cost of living, he was netting much more. He’d found a way to make less money and have more money, which is just about the easiest way ever to get a raise.

All of the most successful people do things that others call crazy, because innovation always comes before genius, and innovation is — by definition — always new. If you’re the first person in your group of peers to do the most brilliant thing in the world, your peers will still think you’re crazy because you’re breaking out of step. But that’s exactly what’s required to be successful.

Look at Steve Jobs.

Look at wacky old Albert Einstein.

I even know this lawyer dude who gave it all up to start a blog, and people thought he was crazy, too. (Only, he really is crazy. Seems to work for him, though.)

Want to really make a change? Then you need to look at what you’ve always done and what most people do and ask if there’s a better way. You need to ask if you want to keep playing by the rules that don’t serve you. You need to be willing to be called “crazy.”

A primer in entrepreneurial disobedience

I’m hosting a webinar on March 2nd that’s all about learning to identify, question, and (if necessary) break the rules that are stopping you.

It’s called Breaking Rules for Fun and Profit: 21 Lies About Business, Money, and Life That You Don’t Even Realize Are Holding You Back, and What To Do About Them, and you really should attend.

Here are a few of the 21 lies I’m going to talk about:

• You need money to start a business (including big ones, like restaurants).
• You need to have a product in order to sell a product.
• You have to have a niche.
• You are unable to do X, Y, or Z skill (for 99% of all letters of the alphabet).
• You need to have a plan, goals, or an idea where your business is going.
• You need a lot of money to live on a yacht, live in an island paradise, or travel the world.
• You don’t have any connections or know any of the right people.

None of the above is true. If you’ve been mistaking lies for the truth, you’re cutting off vast areas of possibility.

Be sure to sign up, and try to be there early because it’s first-come, first-served.

You can sign up for the March 2nd webinar here.

But don’t go signing up just because I said you should. That would be entirely too obedient of you.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant just released his novel The Bialy Pimps despite the fact that it’s totally crazy for a business and human potential blogger to write a novel about fame and bagels.

The Branding Comedy

The Country’s Blandest Yogurt?

I never thought the day would come but, these days, I would much rather have a tart frozen yogurt sprinkled with blackberries and coconut shavings than a creamy chocolate ice cream sprinkled with chocolate chips. Years ago, it was fat over fat-free. Perhaps the boom of the “froyo” craze, fueled by Pinkberry, of the mid-2000s had something to do with it, which has positioned this treat as a cool, groovy, healthy swirl to consume. Not even remotely associated with the upheaval of the froyo is TCBY (The Country’s Best Yogurt), the forefather of consumer frozen yogurt that opened its first store in 1981 and now has over 900 franchise locations, approximately 400 of those outside the United States. I remember the TCBY in a mall in Mexico, it was full of hippie foods and it couldn’t shake the old school health attitude if its granola depended on it. In the last ten years in the US, I don’t recall, once, seeing a TCBY outpost. Surely, I have, but it has receded into the background against its contemporary, colorful rivals. In June, TCBY announced plans to change all this, introducing a new store design and identity created by Salt Lake City, UT-based Struck/Axiom.

“We feel like the tone of the experience, energy, and choice self-serve offers the consumer is not only a dramatic departure from our current experience, but a departure from the category as a whole,” says Timothy Casey, CEO of TCBY. “Today’s announcement is the culmination of tremendous strategy, research and creative execution by our internal team and agency, StruckAxiom, to bring this trifecta — concept, design, and brand identity — to a realization. More important, it’s symbolic of the new TCBY, a pioneer ready to infuse and lead the movement around a growing frozen yogurt category. Today is one of many steps in that direction.”
— Press Release

The following images are of directions presented, not chosen. Provided for your process enjoyment.










End of process images.

TCBY requested a simple, yet empowering logo that would remain a recognizable, iconic depiction of the company’s trademark acronym. Along with Foster Research & Consulting, StruckAxiom conducted focus groups on TCBY’s behalf to gauge consumer sentiment on the refreshed logo. Consumers felt the new logo and identity were clean and simple, and spoke to freshness, health and relevancy. TCBY will incorporate variations of the updated logo on in-store and outdoor signage, packaging, employee uniforms and marketing collateral.

The old logo had a clumsy playfulness that didn’t come across too endearingly, not committing fully to being more daring and fun. The new logo, in contrast, commits to something: trendiness. The magenta color, the thin geometric letterform, the lowercase… it’s not a particularly good or bad logo, but it doesn’t offer anything new. I can appreciate the “y” in the shape of the cup and the well-balanced length of the ascenders and descenders but that’s where the yogurt stops serving. The name spelled out next to tcby is too tight and mashed together, the complete opposite message of light and airiness that one might prefer to associate with frozen yogurt.

With a distinct color palette and welcoming social lounge, the new store design boasts a clean, progressive personality with smart functionality for both consumers and employees. Mindful of the concept’s vision, TCBY has created a self-serve customer experience that is both accessible and attractive. Upon entering the store, customers are greeted by 10 to 16 soft-serve flavors boasting 98 percent fat free and sugar free frozen yogurt and sorbet options. After choosing their favorite flavors, guests approach an extensive toppings bar brimming with fresh fruit, granola, and a variety of dry and hot toppings to finalize their creation. Pricing is done by weight at $.39 per ounce.

The new store design does feel more engaging and welcoming. I’m also a fan of anything that allows me to interact less with bored teenagers waiting for costumers to pick a flavor. The self-serve stations, which are now the de facto model in most froyo chains, is indeed a boon. TCBY is getting a big visual boost with this concept, but all those franchises still need to adopt the new look and feel, and that may take a long time. TCBY is already a step behind the competition, it may be too many steps more before it catches up.

Photos from the soft opening of a new concept store in Salt Lake City.

JWT works on ‘Brand USA’ - the country’s first global consumer brand

JWT has created what claims to be the United States’ first-ever global consumer brand, the Brand USA project, for US government organisation The Corporation for Travel Promotion.

The identity is set to be unveiled in London on 7 November.

Working with WPP sister consultancy The Brand Union and PR agency Hill & Knowlton, JWT’s New York office has named the brand, developed an identity and a brand manifesto.

The CTP did not start searching for its consultancies until July and the consortium of agencies were not appointed until late August.

WPP says its consultancies beat ‘two undisclosed global agencies in a pitch’.

The CTP, which is understood to have a $200 million (£125 million) budget, was set up in 2010 as a partnership between the travel industry and federal government to market the USA to international visitors and in turn create jobs in the industry and economic growth.

Launching at the World Travel Market in London on 7 November a discussion of the ‘rigorous strategic positioning and brand identity process’ is promised by CTP.

http://www.designweek.co.uk/

Simon Anholt on Brand Egypt

At Business Today there’s a very interesting interview with Simon Anholt about Brand Egypt:

How does a nation benefit from branding itself?
Branding a country is very different from branding a product, because it’s not simply a matter of conceptualizing an image, then creating a marketing strategy and ad campaign. In my opinion, that would be propaganda and a huge waste of money. That’s not what I do. I don’t work on tourism campaigns, either. Instead, I advise governments on how to change the complete reputation of their country abroad. I work on innovation strategies with governments, which involve making real policy changes, then getting that message across to the rest of the world.

Does that mean the changes have to take place first before the branding campaign begins?
No, the two can take place simultaneously. A country in the process of reforming itself is a fact that you can use to build a brand — provided that the reforms are real and not just propaganda on the part of the government. A work in progress can be a brand.

Do developing economies need branding more than their fully industrialized counterparts?
Yes, definitely. If you look at the results of the quarterly country surveys that I conduct as part of my nation brands index [see www.nationbrandindex.com], developed countries have the strongest brands. They rank as the top 20 countries in the survey. It’s the developing nations that need stronger images. If the image doesn’t change, nothing will move forward; it has to go hand in hand with any development strategy.

Is now the right time for to brand itself?Absolutely. Actually, Egypt already has a brand — it has had one for about 5,000 years. The problem is that is hasn’t been able to successfully manage it. I would say that it is about 500 years too late in getting around to managing it.

Are you working in an official capacity with the government of Egypt on a branding campaign?
No, I am not currently working with the Egyptian government — but would very much like to.

Should Egypt brand itself as a complete destination for business, investment and tourism with a unified image campaign, or can each aspect be tackled separately?
Branding must be approached as a comprehensive effort. You can’t tackle tourism alone, for example, and ignore the rest. It wouldn’t be effective.
This is actually the problem that Egypt, and many other developing countries, are suffering from today. They put out a lot of conflicting messages. On the one hand, you have the messages coming from the Tourist Board — those are always the shiniest and the loudest, promoting Egypt as a wonderful tourist destination with amazing hotels, beaches and ancient monuments. It’s not false advertising, but then you have the other images that come from the media: the negative political climate, the occasional terrorist attack, the failing economy.
These are all conflicting images that people have of Egypt, so the overall image is very fragmented. People outside don’t understand a thing about the country. They see a very weak economy — I’m talking about the average person on the street, not necessarily the investors — and political turmoil, but an interesting holiday destination despite the hardships.

How do you deal with these conflicting messages?The way to deal with the terrorist threat is not to ignore it, but rather get the message out about how the government is working on fixing the problem. I think most tourists acknowledge the fact that it is not the fault of the government that these incidents happen, but they are interested in knowing what is being done about it. Denying that it exists is not very effective.

Have the Pyramids become a liability rather than an asset? There is talk here that we rely too heavily on them as a ‘brand’ for Egypt.
You can’t deny the fact that Egypt is famous for the Pyramids. That’s not a bad thing. I mean, less than one fourth of the countries in the world today are famous. Egypt is one of those famous countries.
Clearly, you cannot rely on the pyramids or your ancient history alone with your branding strategy, but they don’t have to be erased. Doing so would be a mistake, because they are too heavily entrenched in people’s minds.
The trick is to try to make links between the past and the future. That is the challenge. The Pyramids will not bring in foreign investments or improve trade deficits, but they are better than being invisible.
You have a better situation than a country like Bangladesh, which isn’t famous for anything. It’s much easier to change the course of a conversation about Egypt from Pyramids to industrial growth and GDP than it is to start a new conversation about Bangladesh.

Many business leaders here believe that this focus on the old —like the Pyramids —is part and parcel of why we make little effort to innovate and create like Dubai has.
You can’t compare Egypt to Dubai on any front. In fact, it’s difficult to compare Dubai to any other country in the world, because [it is] run more like a corporation than a country. It’s very easy to market and brand a corporation. There is no challenge there whatsoever.

Does your Anholt Nation Brands Index include Egypt?
Yes, it does. Egypt ranks 28 out of 35 countries, 35 being the weakest brand, which is not so good, I’m afraid.

What’s your methodology?We survey 28,000 ordinary consumers all over the world and ask questions in six specific categories: governance, culture, people, products, tourism and business climate.
Egypt does incredibly well on culture. It actually ranks number one in this area. Cultural heritage is your strong point, and that’s something you should be capitalizing on. Egypt ranks reasonably well on tourism, but could improve.
The areas in which you rank the poorest are governance and products. When, for example, the consumer is asked the question “If you buy a product, take it home find a ‘Made in Egypt’ label on it, would you feel that you have overpaid, underpaid or paid a fair price?” The answer was always overpaid. So “Made in Egypt” currently adds no value to a product. Egyptian products ranked 34th out of 35, with Japan being the top country.
Egypt’s business climate also ranked poorly: 33rd out of 35.
But keep in mind that it was a general audience that was being surveyed, not investors, who may be more familiar with the repercussions of the recent reforms and legislation.
We also asked questions like, “If your company were to relocate you to Egypt, would you be happy about the move?” The answer was usually “No.” That puts into play other factors like the perceived quality of life.
Egypt also ranked 33 out of 35 as a destination for education or a place to study.

How can we go about improving our overall image?Well, the way I would go about it is to create a single public-private partnership made up of government — the ministries of trade, investment, foreign affairs and tourism — top business people and civil society. They would be responsible for putting together a brand strategy and overall direction for the country.
The participation of civil society here is very important. You need to have the participation of religious leaders, educational leaders and intellectuals in order to come up with some clearly defined goals. It isn’t an easy process. National image is very slow-moving — it can take 20-30 years to build, so even if there are positive improvements in Egypt on the economic and business front, they won’t trickle down to street level either at home or abroad for quite some time.
But the positive stories have to be well managed, highlighted and made public. Egypt has done a very poor job of that thus far. It’s the negative images that get out. This is not unique to Egypt: Most countries suffer from the same problem because of the nature of the media. Bad news sells better than good news.

Your survey also tries to quantify what national brands are worth.
Yes, right now Egypt’s brand is worth $67 billion, which is only 20% of its GDP. A very strong brand like Germany, for example, is worth double its GDP. Clearly, we can see that Egypt is under-performing in terms of image.

How you calculate how much a brand is worth?
It’s complicated, but basically, 50% of the calculation comes from consumer research and the other half comes from economic data — things like foreign investment, tourism revenues etc. What boosts the brand worth of countries such as Japan and Germany, for example, are the strong brands that they are known for, including Mercedes, BMW and Toyota.
Famous exports can be powerful ambassadors. Egypt doesn’t have any famous exports. Egyptian cotton is perhaps Egypt’s most famous product, but it is not really a brand.

All of this ties into the global power of brands you postulate in Brand New Justice?
The book is about branding and economic development. Brand value is an incredibly powerful economic force. It is responsible for a quarter of all the wealth on the planet.
It isn’t a coincidence that countries that are very good at branding are also the wealthiest. Branding is the most powerful tool that humanity has created for distributing wealth, and it is branding that can close the gap between rich and poor nations. If we teach developing nations how to brand, it can dramatically change their plights. There are well-established policy routes that can help the nations of the developing world change their image.

So how can Egyptian industry change its poor image abroad?
In the 1950s, Japan was a poor country; today, they are an industrial superpower. The Japanese government basically adopted a strategy they called ‘backing winners,’ which meant that they gave their full support to companies that were promising. Things took off from there.
For Egypt, I think the route to changing the poor perception of Egyptian products will not be through the manufacturing of consumer electronics. It is very important to understand consumer psychology. Even if Egypt starts producing good-quality consumer electronics, it is cultural heritage that is Egypt’s strong point in the minds of consumers worldwide. It would be very difficult to get them to buy electronics manufactured in Egypt — at least for the time being.
So start with something that is easy for the world to accept. I think fashion and textiles might be a good start, since the association with cotton and art are already there. Egypt already makes much of the clothes that are sold in the developed world, so coming up with indigenous textile and clothing brands is the next stage.

What do you hope to achieve with your participation in Egypt’s Economist Conference?
I will be participating in a session with Minster of Tourism Zohair Garana on branding. I hope to feed some ideas into the minds of the government. This is a globalized world, but I think developing countries sometimes work on strategies that completely ignore the marketplace.

How did you decide to get into ‘place’ branding?
This is what I love and believe in, so I created this business based on that. I have been in the field of place branding for 10 years or so, serving as an advisor to governments. Before that, I had extensive experience in the field of corporate marketing, but I got bored with companies.


http://nation-branding.info/2006/05/02/brand-egypt-anholt/

A Rebranding Concept That Could Make Ladies Love Car Accessories

Vinh Pho's AutoZone packaging makes car accessories appealing to the fairer sex (and more accessible to everyone).

If motor-oil canisters are any indication, women don't buy oil. Ever. The packaging has so many muscular angles and mannish colors and all-cap type treatments, you half expect it to go marching into a meeting of No Ma'am. Which should make sense to precisely no one. Women drive. Some even (gasp!) know how to change their oil. Shouldn't motor oil -- and all auto accessories for that matter -- appeal to the fairer sex?

Enter Vinh Pho, a student designer living in France, who has snipped away all that dudishness to produce a refreshingly simple (and, yes, gender-neutral) packaging concept for car gear sold by the spare-parts giant AutoZone. The products include hand tools, microfiber pads, a drying cloth, and, of course, motor oil, and each is done up in a sleek graphic scheme of orange, gray, and white, with minimal text and lots of lower-case letters; think Method instead of Nascar.

As for the shape of the packaging, it suggests a light feminine touch: The oil comes in a capsule that resembles a Glade PlugIn, microfiber pads in something that could easily pass for a compact.

Sure, some men might scoff at an oil canister that doesn't look like Axe body spray on steroids. But set aside all this gender talk, for a moment, and think about this: Pho's design is leaps and bounds easier to read than most car-accessory brands. Look at his oil capsule, which makes the most important information, the oil grade, the biggest feature. That's great news for ladies and guys alike -- nothing's less manly than pouring the wrong oil in your car.

[Images courtesy of Vinh Pho]
 

Harmony Amid Chaos: Another Brand of Brotherhood in Egypt

As the world gazes upon and analyzes the uncertainty in Egypt, much focus has been given to the radical "Muslim Brotherhood" group. Well, there's another Egyptian brotherhood that's caught my eyes recently.

Last week I was touched by a picture posted here on Revelife in which a group of Egyptian Christians surrounded their Muslim countrymen so that they could safely worship/pray amid the chaos in the area. And I was just as moved several days later by other images showing Egyptian Muslims returning the favor, joining with and protecting their Christian countrymen in worship. So indescribably beautiful.

I once read about a similar situation somewhere else in the Middle East. I want to say it was in Iraq, but I'm not entirely positive. In the midst of Christianity vs. Islam, Christians and Muslims cohabited a city together with no suicide-bombers, no gunshots in the street, no egg'd porches or TP'd lawns -- no conflict whatsoever. Further, the Muslims and Christians in this town would immediately stand up and defend the other whenever outsiders came in to try and disrupt the peaceful community they'd built.

Why don't we hear about these kinds of stories more? It's always bombs here, battles there, and it's all just so disheartening.

I can't stand conflict. Drives me nuts. Especially conflict between Christians, or caused by so-called "Christians" against non-Christians, who don't at all extend the love that Jesus taught and exuded. I hate divorce, despise constant arguments that go nowhere. Why can't we all just get along on this earth? Why can't we all follow this beautiful example of Egyptian brotherhood, arms across shoulders, crosses and Korans within inches of each other with no fists flying?

Lord haste the day when we know nothing but peace for all eternity.

[ Diamond Beads ] on the Behance Network

[ Diamond Beads ] on the Behance Network

The Rise of Egyptian Aspirations, The Fall of the American Brand

It’s been exhilarating to watch Tunisians, Egyptians and Yemenis take to their streets and demand an end to the dictatorial regimes controlling their lives for decades. But it’s exhilaration mixed with dread, doubt, disappointment and embarrassment.

The dread: That the guns trained on the protesters of Tahrir Square in Cairo will eventually open fire, just as they did in China’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, ending that country’s brief grab for democracy after three weeks of demonstrations. The Egyptian military tells protesters it won’t open fire as long as the protests are peaceful. That’s a cue for the government’s agents provocateurs to light the fuse when the time comes.

The doubt: That the follow-through in any of these Arab nations will be as democratically sustained as the revolutionary passions fueling the movements. Too few credible opposition leaders are ready to assume leadership. That’s what happens after decades of dictatorship: there are no trained leaders to step in. And too many forces are arraigned against the movements, including, sadly and pitifully, the United States.

The disappointment: To see the rest of the Middle East, where freedom and democracy are no less alien, sit out the movement. Where are the protesters of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran, each a nation with unelected, illegitimate leaders? Where, for that matter, are the protesters of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the American illusion of democracy is not nearly as convincing as the authoritarian regimes in place now? Qatar’s al-Jazeera has been providing gripping, round-the-clock live coverage of the revolutions. Egypt just censored al-Jazeera’s broadcasts anywhere in Egypt and revoked the accreditations of the satellite station’s journalists in Egypt. But it’s not as if Hamad al-Thani, the leader of Qatar, who founded and funds al-Jazeera—enlightened and more liberal than most Arab leaders as he may be—is any more legitimate than his cohorts elsewhere in the region. He breaks fewer skulls, Qatari prison conditions are not significantly different than Florida’s, but he’s still an unelected leader ruling by those old and wacky presumptions of hereditary or divine right (the Moroccan king actually thinks he’s a descendant of Mohammed, though by DNA he has more in common with Pee-Wee Herman).

The embarrassment: To hear the leader of the Arab League—a league of 22 nations, 20 of them entirely undemocratic and therefore illegitimate—call for multi-party elections in Egypt, as he did Sunday, after sitting out that sort of declaration for as long as the league has been around. That’s to be expected from the current crop of Arab leaders. Far more embarrassing is to hear Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sound no different than the leader of the Arab League: vague declarations about the need for elections, but no commitment for democracy now, no conviction, no inspiration for the protesters, certainly no endorsement of their demonstrations, and continued tacit support for Mubarak. It’s American-made tear gas, after all, that’s been raining down on protesters, part of the $1.5 billion in military aid the United States sends Egypt every year. No let-up of that rain in the forecast.

“This is an ongoing conversation that American officials have had for 30 years,” Clinton told an interviewer on Sunday. And what has that achieved?

It’s Not Just the Last 30 Years

There’s also a false demarcation between the Mubarak years and the years that preceded them. Democratically speaking, Mubarak was neither an improvement nor a step back from the regime of Anwar el-Sadat that preceded it, no matter how much and how justifiably the West admired Sadat for making peace with Israel. Sadat, too, was a dictator in his 11 years as Egypt’s president, as brutal and unforgiving as Mubarak. It was in Sadat’s prisons that Ayman al Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s Number 2 man today, was tortured, and in his prisons that Zawahiri’s vision of a Muslim caliphate turned from a peaceful one to a violent one. Sadat was no improvement from the preceding regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, no matter how much the Arab world admired Nasser for briefly appearing to give Arabs some dignity in the face of Western or Soviet designs. Mubarak, in sum, extended by 30 years a non-democratic, dictatorial habit of rule that has defined modern Egypt and the greater Middle East.

Which is what makes these demonstrations so remarkable, and so tenuous.

Not Quite the Middle East’s 1989

The comparison with Eastern Europe chucking off 45 years of Soviet oppression in 1989 is tempting. But it’s inaccurate. It raises false hopes resting on false parallels, particularly since this time around the United States is on the wrong side of history, the down side of influence, the backside of respect: you don’t see on Tahrir Square, as you did in Tiananmen Square 22 years ago, anyone brandishing replicas of the Statue of Liberty. You won’t even see Barack Obama’s face on placards and mugs, as you did in Cairo two years ago, when he delivered another one of what, in retrospect, was an empty-hope speech about the West’s relations with the Muslim world.

In 1989, the nations of Eastern Europe were liberating themselves from oppression with unqualified American support. They were returning to the democracies they’d been before World War II. They were getting rid of the Soviet Empire’s hold, an empire that itself would vanish two years later. But the Middle East today, from Morocco and Mauritania in West Africa all the way to the border of Pakistan in South Asia, is what the Soviet empire was in the 1980s—a black hole of repression and regression—with significant differences.

Four Differences

First, Eastern Europe’s oppressed nations were still well educated, so they were well positioned for a re-start in 1989. And they’d all had democratic traditions before 1939. Education in the Greater Middle East is so poor and so discriminating that it ranks somewhere in the neighborhood of crimes against humanity. And aside from Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, Israel and, briefly, Iraq, the Middle East has never known democracy. It has no place to re-start from. It would all be brand new.

Second, Eastern Europe’s oppression was largely imported and fueled from Moscow. In Egypt, in Algeria, in Saudi Arabia and all the other undemocratic abysses of the Middle East, the oppression is home grown, one independent from the other, though each reinforcing the other as if by tradition and solidarity, the way Europe’s old monarchies reinforced each other before 1789. Leaders like Mubarak and the now rather putrid monarchies of Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, play on the cult of personality, the father-of-the-people fantasy that appears to have a few frames left in the reel.

But the majority of the Middle East’s autocracies and dictatorships—including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan—are all American client states, all aided and armed by the United States. Their police states’ thugs are trained by the United States. Their truncheons and ammo are manufactured by the United States (jobs! Jobs!). Their dictators are legitimized, wined, dined and largely enabled, in the eyes of each country’s masses, by the United States. In oil-producing nations, those dictators are largely financed by American gas-guzzling: the difference between the Saudi Arabian and North Korean police states is one of degrees, not of substance. In some degrees—women’s rights and the religious policing of “vice”—Saudi Arabia is more oppressive, making it little different than the Taliban. Yet Saudi Arabia is one of America’s closest allies—without, of course, a peep from the American public’s conscience (a conscience whose civil and human rights synapses have been brain dead roughly for as long as Mubarak has been in power anyway).

Third, when Eastern Europe was breaking its Soviet chains, the Soviet Union was exhausted economically. The United States isn’t there yet, though at the current pace it’s on its way. American dollars still finance Arab and Middle Eastern oppression. American troops are still on Arab soil in more than half a dozen Middle Eastern nations. And American strategy still hinges on that axis of authoritarianism that keeps the people quiet: it’s easier for American presidents to deal with less than two dozen robed and titled thugs than to deal with the noisy democracies of 350 million Arabs.

Fourth, American calculations over Eastern Europe weren’t distorted by American vassalage to Israel and American distortions of the Islamic threat. They very much are in the Middle East today. The Obama administration’s reluctance to endorse democracy in Egypt as in the rest of the Middle East results from fears that, as in Gaza, democratic elections would lead to Hamas-like leadership by such parties as the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a narrow-minded, frankly stupid and often bigoted view that reduces and defines all Arabs according to American prejudices and ignorance—as opposed to American ideals and traditions.

An Avalanche of Fearful Misconceptions

There’s not enough space to set straight a half century of American stereotype about Arabs and Islam, so let’s just take the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the closest thing Egypt has to an organized opposition: It is not a clone of al-Qaeda. It explicitly rejected al-Qaeda in the 1990s because of al-Qaeda’s embrace of violence, just as it rejected violence as a legitimate, let alone an Islamic, tactic. It is a conservative organization, but in the sense that America’s religious right organizations are conservative. It has no less democratic aspirations, and respects social work on behalf of the poor as an institutional responsibility far more than the American religious right does. That’s largely where the Muslim Brotherhood gets its respect in Egypt—from masses in a country where the majority of its 82 million people live in abject poverty, to the indifference of the government.

Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. But Sunni Egypt in 2011 is not Shiite Iran in 1978: the revolution unfolding in Egypt is not ideologically driven. It is politically driven. Iran wanted to spread the Shiite creed in 1978. Egyptians just want to have their own democracy. They have zero interest in spreading anything, being too busy trying to survive, and needing, at most, to spread a little wealth around at home. They need the peace treaty with Israel the way they need to keep the Suez Canal safe and sound: both have been among their few economic boons. So has the break from going to war every seven years. They’re not about to mess that up.

“A Republic, If You Can Keep It.”

Benjamin Franklin was asked on the street about what had just been achieved. The question elicited one of his more famous quips: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Egyptians could create for themselves the same hopeful circumstances, in roughly the same, unfortunate isolation as the United States were in 1787, though the Egyptian model would unquestionably have an Egyptian, not a western, imprint.

It would be wrong to say that America is losing legitimacy in Arab eyes for refusing to embrace the democratic movement, that legitimacy having been squandered many times over in the past few decades, the past 10 years especially. To Arabs, American prevarication, the rank hedging of bets, is no longer surprising. It’s the usual hypocrisy, the usual cynicism of the last several decades.

Besides its shaky legs, that’s the most disheartening thing about the Egyptian revolution, and its echoes elsewhere in the Middle East: The imprint of American ideals, of inspiration, of aspirations, is gone. The United States is no more revered politically in the Middle East today than the Soviet Union was in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. In some regards it’s despised (think American indifference to human rights violations, think blind American support for Israel). It is still revered for its materialism, for its KFC’s and sitcoms and shoot-em-up movies, even for its universities for the lucky rich few who can make it there. But materialism is no substitute for the more powerful emblems once indistinguishable from the American brand abroad: liberty, democracy, support for the oppressed.

That brand is no longer sold in Egypt or the Greater Middle East, except in the souvenir shops of old sentimentalists.

Egypt named again as world's Best Country Brand for History

Egypt has once again been named as the world's Best Country Brand for History in the fourth edition of the Country Brand Index (CBI), edging out other historically rich country destinations like France, Italy, Greece and China.

Mario Natarelli, Co-CEO, FutureBrand

The top ranking also shows Egypt's continuing success in being able to market the country's rich historical heritage and positioning itself as one of the prime tourist destinations in the world.


The 2008 Country Brand Index also puts Egypt in the top three list of world's Best Country Brand for Arts and Culture and is also cited for being in the top five list of world's Best Country Brand for Authenticity.


Now in its fourth year, CBI continues to provide a comprehensive branding study that includes rankings, trends and travel motivations of tourists around the world. Over 2,600 international travelers take part in the annual study conducted by FutureBrand, a leading global brand consultancy, in conjunction with Weber Shandwick's Global Travel & Lifestyle Practice.

CBI examines how countries are branded and ranked according to key criteria and aims to provide an extensive overview of the challenges and opportunities within the worlds of travel, tourism and country branding.

Mario Natarelli, Co-CEO, FutureBrand, said:


"Egypt has once again proved that it is the number one tourist destination in terms of historical appeal. It has successfully positioned itself in this spot by leveraging its rich history, ancient sites and mystical structures such as its pyramids, which have contributed in making Egypt one of the most popular destinations for travellers from around the world."


This year's study also cites Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that have made it to the distinctive list.