Rebranding America – Paper Magazine (12 Total)

May 20, 2009

Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairmen of Crispin and Porter Advertising

Paper magazine asked 15 top “visual communicators” to show us ideas on how to rebrand America. They ended up getting submissions from ad agency big wigs like Crispin’s Alex Bogusky and Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts and famous artists like Ron English and Shepard Fairey.

Below is the letter they received from Paper:

From: Kim Hastreiter
Subject: Rebranding America
Date: March 16, 2009 4:54:26 PM EDT
To: Alex Bogusky, Dan Wieden, Ivan Chermayeff, Kevin Roberts, Andy Spade, Shepard Fairey, Ron English, Peter Buchanan-Smith, Steve Powers, Chris Johanson, Jonathan Horowitz, Mike Mills, Geoff McFetridge, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Alex Kalman

Hello! I’m a great fan of yours so I wanted to approach you about participating in a piece I am producing for my annual Design issue of the magazine (themed “homesweethome”). I felt compelled to include you in this piece as you are truly some of my personal favorite fearless creative communicators.

As the times we are living in are so radical, I think radical ideas are needed to help save our proverbial asses and to create a new path forward into what I like to call the “new normal”. The best part of being in deep shit is that with it comes a unique opportunity for progressive thinking because the status quo is desperate. I thought it appropriate to dedicate the issue to home, and so the subject of one piece I am producing is about our homeland: The U.S. of A.

I have chosen a stellar list of my favorite mavericks (you are one!) and invited you all to create a visual page —as if it was an ad— for America. HOW WOULD YOU REBRAND AMERICA??? (we certainly need it desperately!) How would you make people love us again? How would you change our brand image? Our perception abroad? How could you project our future to our citizens? If America had a new ad campaign, what would it look like? I will run the portfolio of these “Ads for America” as the editorial well in the May issue of PAPER.

I know you are big cheeses, and yes, super busy, but I really hope you are inspired to contribute something that will then inspire others. To me this is an opportunity to share with our readers some amazing ideas from the best thinkers I know of using our pages. Can you (or your team) come up with something for this issue?

With Admiration,
K

And now here are a few of their ideas. The rest can be seen here.

Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairmen of Crispin and Porter Advertising