BRAND AMERICA: Yankee doodle branding.

Brand Strategy, December, 2004

With growing anti-US sentiments worldwide, Bush's unpopular war on terror and a country split over the election, Ruth Mortimer says it's time Brand America redressed its global reputation

The movie is called Churchill: The Hollywood Years. It is a spoof film about a group of Hollywood executives who travel to the UK to make a feature about British war-winning prime minister Winston Churchill. When the executives discover that Churchill is an obese, elderly man, they replace him with a younger, gun-toting, more virile American version. The joke is that the Yankees can't see past their own narrow, US-centric view of the world.

But it doesn't take a satire to show that Brand America's relationship with the outside world is under scrutiny. Julian...