The Commons

My book on higher ed branding – The Real U: Building Brands that Resonate with Students, Faculty, Staff, and Donors – is being published later this month by CASE.  Buy one now!

The Real U represents the first book-length manuscript I’ve written since completing my doctoral program, which was largely focused on modern and contemporary American fiction.  And as I was finishing The Real U, I found myself contemplating one of the lasting questions of my doctoral work:  has the Great American Novel been written?  For those of you not part of this particular academic debate, the nature and presence of the GAN has been batted around like a shuttlecock by generations of literary critics, with the usual candidates being The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and other texts.

My argument in my comprehensive exams was that the GAN hadn’t been written because I hadn’t written it yet.  Writers are nothing if not arrogant.  Now, nearly twenty years later, with no more novels having clattered under my fingertips, I’ve revised my thesis.  The Great American Novel is not a novel, it’s a brand.  It’s a brand in that any novel purporting to carry the GAN label has to meet certain established criteria in order to qualify.  But on a whole other level, the Great American Story – which is what any qualifying tome attempts to relate – may not be a novel at all, but may be, instead, a brand.

Our nation has always been about ambition, about establishing something new and making it last.  From John Winthrop describing our “city upon a hill” to Charles Wilson declaring “what’s good for General Motors” to Ray Kroc and Walt Disney and Howard Shultz and Phil Knight and Steve Jobs creating iconic entities, there’s been a long and strong convergence between the essential enterprise of America and the effective force of market-driven organizations.  Our big brands – McDonald’s and Disney and Starbucks and Nike and Apple – contain the American story, with all its strengths and faults, in a way that few if any books have been able to accomplish.

And if you really think about it, America itself is a brand – carrying with it the promise of an experience that we as a people, as an entity, must fulfill if we’re to live up to our collective aspirations.  So buy The Real U, sit down with a venti latte, power up your Mac, and do a Google search for “top 10 brands.”  You’re living the quintessential American dream.

- Rob Moore, Managing Partner

Tags: admissions, brand personality, higher education, nonprofit communications, nonprofit marketing, resources