Branding Citizenship: It's How We Live

If a brand is what you stand for in the mind of your audience, then what does citizenship stand for today? To answer the question, we asked people on Union Square in New York City to describe citizenship in their own words.

• For Sue, age 67, citizenship is "being kind to all people."
• For Jane, 62, it means "helping people across the street."
• Kiana, 30, said that citizenship is "where you're from, it's where you were born."
• Lane, 42, said "being a good citizen means you vote," while Ben, 24, said "citizenship means participating and just being aware."
• And for Remi, 8, citizenship means "taking care of each other."

Does citizenship mean so many different things that it means nothing at all?

The ideas represented in our informal poll reflect how citizenship today has taken on manifold meanings and actions -- voting, volunteering, social awareness, and place of birth. While all of these characteristics are true, they raise an important branding question: Does citizenship mean so many different things that it means nothing at all? For most Americans today, is citizenship resonant, urgent, and relevant to their daily lives?

Let's step back and explore the heart of citizenship, to identify the core of the citizenship "brand" and seek insights that can make it mean something more to millions of Americans today and in the future.

Simply put, branding is the art and science of creating a unique message, image, and experience that defines who you are and differentiates you from all others. A successful brand offers a unique promise that meets the needs and aspirations of its audience. So what is the unique message, image, and experience that defines citizenship and differentiates it from all other ideas and actions? What is the unique promise of American citizenship that meets the needs and aspirations of its people?

To paraphrase the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the ideal of citizenship is the foundation of a free society and the best hope of individuals to realize their full potential. American citizenship, he notes, emerged as the culmination of long historic tendencies -- the Judeo-Christian conception of human equality and dignity, the Greek confidence in human reason, the Roman belief in law, and the passion of the Enlightenment for the natural rights of men and women.

From these traditions, American citizenship has embodied the hopes of every generation to confront the challenges of the day and the constant work of building a more perfect society. For Thomas Jefferson, citizenship was the opportunity and duty of an enlightened people to influence their government and safeguard democracy. For Theodore Roosevelt, citizenship was a question of character and the obligation to be honest in one's dealings with others, faithful to friends, fearless in the face of foes, and of sound heart, mind, and body. John F. Kennedy called on the American people to "ask what you can do for your country," sharing a vision of citizenship as the world's best hope in the fight against tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

And Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquently challenged the very notion of America by equating citizenship with the moral obligation of promoting equality and social justice in word and deed.

Across the landscape of American ideas and experience, then, citizenship has come to stand for a series of enduring principles:

• The belief that with our rights and freedoms come social, political, and moral responsibilities;
• The belief that the individual and the community are deeply interrelated and that each is necessary for the other to achieve its full potential; and
• The belief that only the informed participation of the people can guarantee the success of a democratic society and defend against dictatorship and totalitarianism.

If these ideals help us to define the citizenship brand, then how can the practice of branding make citizenship more meaningful to more Americans? Branding is existential. Actions speak louder than words, and who you are is what you do. From a branding perspective, the only way to bring the unique promise of citizenship to life is by closing the authenticity gap between our aspirations and our actions.

It's understanding that citizenship means more than voting once every two years, more than volunteering each month, and more than charitable giving for the holidays, as important as all these actions are. Beyond a series of attributes or actions, citizenship speaks to soul. It's a way of being in the world.

Citizenship comes to life every day, in every single action we take. It's deciding in each moment whether we will act only for ourselves, or in relationship with others. It's asking why our leaders act the way they do, and asking why not do better? Citizenship is the self-conscious awareness of our own motivations, of our relationship with others, and of the chasm between the ideals and the realities of our society. It's understanding that to not act is to act, that to not decide is to decide, that not speaking out speaks all too loudly.

Only by connecting the rights, responsibilities, and relationships of citizenship to our daily lives can we achieve our individual potential and realize the full promise of America. By helping us focus on our core beliefs and align our values with our actions, branding teaches us that citizenship is in our hands.

And that's something to stand for.

Raphael Bemporad is co-founder of Bemporad Baranowski Marketing Group (BBMG), a New York-based marketing agency dedicated to helping socially responsible businesses and organizations harness the laws of branding to stand out, build relationships, and inspire action. For more information, visit www.bbmg.com.