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Initially after the attack the date was written in a variety of ways -- 09/11, September 11, etc. -- but we are now all clear that the format to use is consistently 9/11. The constant use of 9/11, an American month/day format, and the snappy
graphic strength of 9/11, have a lot of the characteristics of a global brand. If simply representing a date, newspapers would not confuse ours with a foreign method. We obviously needed a simple way of indicating a complex event in two cities that was an attack and a tragedy, and a media spectacle all at once.
If 9/11 is a brand, with the strap line "The Tragic Events of 9/11," then it will have brand values and brand equity. I feel that the values are yet to come as clear as the identity, but fear that they could become words like unilateral, pre-emptive and good vs. evil. As for equity, Western media and President Bush have the controlling stake in
9/11.
What concerns me about a branded piece of history is that a brand has the ability to unify and homogenise so as to smooth the complexities o history itself. Alternative understandings become hard to express as they are, in sense, off-brand.
-- Ben Reason, letter to the editor, the London Guardian
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