Post by Philip Tate, APR, Fellow PRSA

Marketing Brew's Kristina Monllos examines the "delicate line" for brands celebrating America250. Some brands are as American as apple pie—and they’ve been hyping as much ahead of America’s 250th anniversary this year. Brands Anheuser-Busch, Mountain Dew, and John Deere have looked to connect their legacy to American history in campaigns leading up to July Fourth. Others, like Coca-Cola and Chevrolet, have opted for messages that showcase the wide-ranging landscape of the country. Some especially lucky brands, including Budweiser and Jeep Wrangler, have milestone anniversaries that line up with America’s 250th, making it something of a double-whammy celebratory effort. The variety of America250 campaigns from brands isn’t surprising, but there’s much to consider before a brand shows up during a major cultural touchstone. America’s 250th anniversary comes amid a fraught, politically divisive landscape where brands can easily get into hot water for seemingly innocuous marketing. Beyond that, patriotic symbols that have a newer political affiliation with one party can color the current celebration—making it all the more important for marketers to delicately navigate a moment where campaigns touch on patriotism. “It’s a delicate line to balance,” David Reibstein, William Stuart Woodside professor of marketing at Wharton, said. “What you want to do is come across being celebratory of America and being pro-America…the balance that firms need to do right now is come across being very pro-American without taking a political stance at all, unless they want to identify their brand with a particular horse in the race.” For some brands, representing wide swaths of America was a way to strike that balance. It’s part of the reason Coca-Cola’s America250 spot features footage from “every corner of the country,” Alex Ames, senior director of content and creative excellence at The Coca-Cola Company, previously told us. For a brand like Coca-Cola, looking back on its history and how it showed up previously for the last major American milestone helped inform what messaging might best resonate now and in the future. That’s why the brand leaned into messaging about “the timeless values that we stand for—[which] we believe [have] stayed true across America and hopefully for the next 250 years—of being optimistic and coming together as communities, regardless of the backdrop of the country,” Ames said. And of course, the brand revisited its “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” jingle from its incredibly famous 1971 ad.