The Fourth of July means Amer­i­can flags, fire­works, bar­be­cues and a slew of mar­ket­ing col­lat­er­al from brands eager to cap­ture con­sumer inter­est. Like many mar­ket­ing moments, this, in the­o­ry, is not sur­pris­ing as brands scram­ble to reach the right con­sumer on the right device in the right moment.

Patri­ot­ic themes are cer­tain­ly one way to forge a con­nec­tion with a broad swath of con­sumers. But they also raise the risk of com­ing across as disin­gen­u­ous and/or alien­at­ing con­sumers.

In fact, brand loy­al­ty and cus­tomer engage­ment research con­sul­tan­cy Brand Keys recent­ly released the results of a sur­vey of Amer­i­can brands that con­sumers actu­al­ly find the most patri­ot­ic, includ­ing Jeep, Coca-Cola, Dis­ney, and Ralph Lau­ren.

In a release, Brand Keys Pres­i­dent Robert Pas­sikoff said believ­abil­i­ty is the key here more than sim­ply wav­ing a flag.

“The more engaged a con­sumer with a par­tic­u­lar emo­tion­al val­ue and the asso­ci­at­ed brand, the more like­ly they’ll trust that emo­tion and act pos­i­tive­ly on that belief,” Pas­sikoff said. “Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, where a brand can estab­lish a real emo­tion­al con­nec­tion, con­sumers are six times more like­ly to believe and behave pos­i­tive­ly toward the brand.”

Using Patri­o­tism To Forge Emo­tion­al Con­nec­tions With Con­sumers

Patri­ot­ic themes are cer­tain­ly one way to forge an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with a large audi­ence.

To wit: While flag-wav­ing may be more close­ly aligned with con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues, patri­o­tism can help brands con­nect with con­sumers no mat­ter what their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion.

For his part, John Znidar­sic, senior direc­tor of social influ­ence at cre­ative agency the AdCom Group, points to both Bud­weis­er, which incor­po­rates patri­ot­ic col­ors and mes­sag­ing on its pack­ag­ing, as well as Whole Foods, which calls atten­tion to local­ly sourced prod­ucts, as exam­ples of brands with tar­get con­sumers that are per­haps on dif­fer­ent sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Yet both, he notes, dri­ve sim­i­lar emo­tions.

“Con­sumers want to be proud of [their] coun­try as a pro­duc­er. I think they are even will­ing to pay a pre­mi­um for that,” Znidar­sic said. “Both sides of the aisle express patri­o­tism in dif­fer­ent ways.”

The Pow­er Of The Amer­i­can Flag

Brands can also lever­age patri­o­tism to drum up spe­cif­ic feel­ings with­in con­sumers.

Znidar­sic points to a rise in patri­ot­ic cloth­ing among Mil­len­ni­al males from brands like Row­dy Gen­tle­men and Chub­bies.

“As a mar­keter, I see the oppor­tu­ni­ty that these brands are pur­su­ing. As [few­er] Mil­len­ni­al males engage in tra­di­tion­al­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed careers [like con­struc­tion, mil­i­tary ser­vice and trades], they still have a need to feel mas­cu­line,” Znidar­sic said. “So, they grav­i­tate towards a sym­bol of free­dom, fight­ing for inde­pen­dence and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. The Amer­i­can flag.”

Real-Time Mes­sag­ing With Patri­ot­ic Themes

There are also cer­tain cul­tur­al moments when con­sumers are more open to patri­ot­ic mes­sag­ing.

Richard Laer­mer, CEO of RLM PR, points out that many brands uti­lize real-time mes­sag­ing with patri­ot­ic themes tied to news­wor­thy moments like Supreme Court deci­sions, elec­tions, and sport­ing events.

But in order to dri­ve desired emo­tions with patri­ot­ic themes, like any cam­paign, the brand mes­sage must still ring true.

“Any brand can hoot and holler about Inde­pen­dence on July 4th, just as they do about four-leaf clovers, Dads and Grads, San­ta Claus and the #BigGame dur­ing the rest of the year,” said Niko­las Allen, author of “Heavy­weight Mar­ket­ing: Knock­out Strate­gies for Build­ing Cham­pi­on Brands.” “That does­n’t mean the pub­lic will view them as patri­ot­ic. That just means their con­tent mar­ket­ing intern actu­al­ly has a defined top­ic on her social media cal­en­dar to post about.”

So how does a brand go beyond sim­ply hoot­ing and hol­ler­ing?

Why Brands Should Tap Into Patri­ot­ic Themes

For starters, a brand that wants to roll out July 4 con­tent should real­ly have patri­o­tism built into its DNA and expressed in an ongo­ing fash­ion so it doesn’t appear disin­gen­u­ous for hop­ping on a patri­ot­ic band­wag­on.

But that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean a brand has to shout, “USA! USA!” 365 days a year.

In fact, per J Bar­bush, vice pres­i­dent and cre­ative social media direc­tor at ad agency RPA, patri­o­tism is about “dis­play­ing the qual­i­ties that have made this coun­try great.”

It there­fore makes sense for brands like Levi’s and Jeep — which coin­ci­den­tal­ly did well in the Brand Keys sur­vey – to tap into patri­ot­ic themes because they embody val­ues like stead­fast­ness, free­dom and hon­esty, he said.

“It’s real­ly about rep­re­sent­ing the ideals of our coun­try, often­times in ways that are not so overt. I would even say some brands that are wav­ing the rain­bow flag are patri­ot­ic to me, rep­re­sent­ing the strug­gle for equal­i­ty and the same ideals for which many have risked, fought and died so they can be achieved,” Bar­bush said. “Those are the brands I admire, but it has to make sense. If they are jump­ing on a band­wag­on, and have no rea­son to be in the con­ver­sa­tion, peo­ple become skep­ti­cal.”

Jason Parks, own­er of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency The Media Cap­tain, agrees patri­ot­ic mes­sag­ing doesn’t have to be a hard sales pitch, but should sub­tly find its way into dif­fer­ent mes­sag­ing through­out var­i­ous cam­paigns.

And part of that is depen­dent upon whether a brand uses its authen­tic voice to talk about patri­o­tism year-round, Znidar­sic said.

“I think you risk alien­at­ing your cus­tomers when you do some­thing that doesn’t seem to fit with your brand iden­ti­ty,” Bar­bush said. “Levi’s is about Amer­i­can crafts­man­ship. It’s about hard work and toil. It’s about stick­ing with some­thing, and doing it right. It’s a clas­sic. So when Levi’s waves the flag more overt­ly at times, they are believed. They are trust­ed. That becomes an exten­sion of the brand they built.”

Is Patri­ot­ic Con­tent Good For Your Brand?

So how does a brand fig­ure out whether patri­ot­ic con­tent is a good fit for its ethos, voice and/or audi­ence?

Accord­ing to Sas­try Rachakon­da, CEO of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency iQuan­ti, brands should opt for a quan­ti­ta­tive approach using ana­lyt­ics to exam­ine issues like:

• Ana­lyz­ing search trends on patri­o­tism.
• Mod­el­ing data to find the cor­re­la­tion between a giv­en brand and patri­o­tism.
• Min­ing the cus­tomer base to do a demo­graph­ic match and under­stand patri­ot­ic propen­si­ty.
• Pro­ject­ing the poten­tial impact from positive/negative per­spec­tives.

Matthew Lang­ie, CMO of visu­al mar­ket­ing plat­form Curalate, agrees it’s about under­stand­ing the audi­ence and lever­ag­ing data and ana­lyt­ics to fig­ure out whether a brand is actu­al­ly con­nect­ing. That includes look­ing at data from pre­vi­ous cam­paigns that will indi­cate how well patri­ot­ic con­tent has per­formed.

“The risk in any­thing you do in busi­ness is deliv­er­ing the wrong mes­sage to the wrong tar­get audi­ence,” Lang­ie said. “So we look at it more as ‘mea­sure what you’re doing and you’ll see return or lack of return based on con­sumer response.’ Yes, there’s risk in every­thing you do, but how can you mea­sure that?”

This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant because con­sumers are smart and can see through con­tent that isn’t authen­tic.

Instead, smart brands ask con­sumers to engage in con­ver­sa­tion or help inspire con­ver­sa­tion, Lang­ie said.

“From the 650+ brands we work with, the ones that are most suc­cess­ful and engag­ing are inspir­ing those con­sumers to be cre­ative and cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to have con­ver­sa­tions through social plat­forms like Insta­gram and Pin­ter­est,” Lang­ie said. “But the brands that real­ly lean for­ward and do right are the ones that are engaged in all of those facets ver­sus an edi­to­r­i­al-dri­ven cal­en­dar.”

How do you feel about brands incor­po­rat­ing patri­ot­ic messaging/themes?