To Rebrand America, Unbrand Aid

October 19, 2009

Bono argues in Sunday’s New York Times that President Obama has already taken major and very welcome steps to “rebrand” America in the eyes of the world. How? By making this statement at the United Nations:

“We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year’s summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time.”

And by appointing a team of people in the National Security Council, the Departments of State and Defense who have spoken out about the central position of development in U.S. foreign policy. Says Bono:

“From a development perspective, you couldn’t dream up a better dream team to pursue peace this way, to rebrand America.”

That “dream team” has some work to do. Let’s start with progress toward “country ownership” of aid programs and a “whole of government” approach, which are routinely invoked in discussions of the administrations initiatives in global health, agriculture and food security, and aid more generally. The administration has to find ways to demonstrate what its approach to aid looks like, and how it differs – if at all – from the orientation of the Bush years.

Here’s one way to do that part of the rebranding: Unbrand.

Unbranding means ending the practice of using multiple logos and labeling projects with clever acronyms. Under aid programs initiated during the Bush administration, including and particularly the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Account, branding has become rampant. It is common for the vehicles and equipment purchased using U.S. dollars, and the infrastructure built, to be prominently labeled with the distinctive logos not only of the branded programs themselves, but also the insignias of one or more of the multiple agencies channeling the funds (USAID, CDC, HRSA, DOD). These are layered on top of the long-time practice of contractors and “cooperating agencies” applying their own organizational logos as frequently as possible as well as the names of five-year projects. It is honestly quite hard to believe aid programs are “country owned” or follow a coherent “whole of government” approach when every poster, SUV, training manual, and building sign is covered with a half-dozen seals of U.S. organizations.

Unbranding could start with the stroke of a pen, and is in control of the executive branch. Ambassador Eric Goosby, head of PEPFAR, and Daniel Yohannes, MCC CEO nominee, could get the ball rolling by issuing guidance to partner agencies and contractors: From this point forward, no branding of new purchases. Whoever joins the “dream team” as USAID administrator, can make administrative changes to stop the costly practice of naming five-year projects and permitting each implementing organization to create a whole new project identity with every winning bid.

We are unlikely to see complete unbranding, and there is admittedly a foreign policy rationale for making visible to aid recipients the generosity and goodwill of the U.S. taxpayer. But if this administration wants to rebrand America, it’s time to make the stuff procured with our aid dollars look more like it belongs to the countries we’re trying to help and less like pop-up ads for U.S.A. Inc and its wholly-owned subsidiaries.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Kevin Says:
   October 19th, 2009 at 10:38 pm

   What the Obama Administration should do to make aid more effective is stop putting all sorts of conditions on the aid, and stop manipulating the aid money back to US corporations so that for once the aid can have its benefits maximized. US aid to Africa for HIV drugs is required to be spent on US pharmaceuticals that are far more expensive than the generic alternatives, thus there are less drugs to go around and more people die while drug companies profit.

2. Nancy Birdsall Says:
   October 20th, 2009 at 10:47 am

   Great idea to un-brand U.S. assistance. Plastering donor agency logos on things purchased with foreign aid highlights a deeper problem: aid transfers tend to make recipient governments accountable to the donor, undermining accountability to the country’s own citizens. This can undermine democratic processes and the social contract instead of helping to build them. Un-branding would be one small step in trying to moderate this tendency. The political difficulty of doing un-branding is an indicator of the fundamental tension around external transfers, especially for state-building.

   Our proposal for Cash-on-Delivery Aid http://www.cgdev.org/section/initiatives/_active/codaid is one way to square this circle: letting donors (and thus their tax payers) proudly point to outcomes (e.g. more kids getting an education), while taking a hands-off approach to implementation that would strengthen rather than undermine the government-citizen social contract.

3. Nandini Oomman Says:
   October 20th, 2009 at 1:07 pm

   Nancy’s point about undermining accountability to the country’s own citizens is such an important one. I continually find myself thinking about this with the PEPFAR program, which in its first phase completely undermined the social contract between governments and their people, especially in PEPFAR focus countries. With PEPFAR branded aid, it is true that non-governmental players were able to participate in the AIDS response, but as “implementers” of PEPFAR programs rather than stewards of their own response to AIDS. This type of process makes it even more difficult to hold national level leaders accountable to their own people. Looking forward, PEPFAR is re-orienting its approach to make governments their true partners in the fight against AIDS through its partnership framework agreements with countries (see an earlier blog post http://blogs.cgdev.org/globalhealth/2009/06/pepfar-partnership-frameworks-baby-steps-for-the-long-walk-ahead.php on partnership frameworks), but several questions remain unanswered about how this is going to make countries “own” and “lead” their response with PEPFAR branded dollars.

4. Charlie Flickner Says:
   October 24th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

   If I understand this discussion, our President should immediately order agencies to cease branding projects funded under the Stimulus as Recovery Act Projects, less the branding reduces citizen confidence in state and local governments. Did I miss something here?

5. Ruth Levine Says:
   October 26th, 2009 at 12:35 am

   Responding to Charlie Flickner’s interesting comment: I think there is a fundamental difference between the labels on projects financed by the Federal government (e.g., the Recovery Act Projects) and the donor-branded projects in countries receiving aid. In the case of the Federal government, the “beneficiaries” are voters, who can use the ballot box to express their displeasure or gratitude to the President, Congressional representatives, and local officials. In contrast, donors who place their insignias on health facilities, vehicles, etc., are removed from that sort of accountability — and, as I think my colleagues were pointing out — that can get in the way of the relationship between governments and citizens.

   As I said in the original post, I appreciate that there are reasons for branding; and I know efforts are underway in various quarters to grapple with the question of when and how to recognize the role of different agencies. I think donors might want to consider the default being no branding, and then permit one or more logos to be used when and only when there is good reason. At a bare minimum, the guidance around when to use / not use logos should be based on whether their use improves the chances of success of the aid program over the long term — not whether particular agencies are adept at lobbying for their contributions to be visible to the next CODEL.

6. Mimi Says:
   October 29th, 2009 at 11:20 am

   BRANDING
   In fragile states and conflict situations US and USAID branding is often simply dangerous. Consider this example: The back – to – school bags given to primary and secondary school Iraqi boys and girls contained very large USAID branding for all to see, including the insurgents bent on attacking all things American.

   The Africa Education Initiative – Ambassadors’ Girls Scholarship program (AEI-AGSP) was a very worthy presidential initiative of the Bush administration. However, conspicuous branding on every conceivable product – -T shirts, books, pamphlets, — related to the HIV/AIDS mentoring of primary school girls often caused confusion in the communities in which the girls lived. Branding messages were sometimes interpreted by the public to mean that the wearer of T shirts or other personal items was infected with HIV/AIDS! A totally unintended message.

7. Lawrence MacDonald Says:
   October 29th, 2009 at 8:32 pm

   Yikes! Mimi’s stories show just how out of control the whole branding thing really is. They suggest that at a minimum there should be some rethinking and approprite guidelines on these logos. Hey, I know, let’s have the new USAID administrator look at this! What, nobody appointed yet? Surely that can’t be true. http://blogs.cgdev.org/mca-monitor/2009/10/get-out-your-calendar-get-out-your-vote-will-we-have-a-usaid-administrator-by-years-end.php

We value frank and constructive exchanges and encourage you to use your real name in your comments.