Does America Have a Branding Problem?

From Hollywood to the Disney Channel and Coca-Cola to Levi’s, for much of the 20th century, America was the nucleus of pop culture. Its influence traveled through a globally recognizable set of products and ideals, all centered on the American Dream. Whether consumers bought into the mythology through fashion, music, sports, or entertainment, the underlying proposition was the same: America represented aspiration and the possibility of becoming whoever you wanted to be.

Today, that proposition is harder to sell. The US no longer projects a singular cultural narrative, but a series of overlapping and often contradictory ones. From the resurgence of nationalist politics, Trump and heightened immigration debates, to the rise of fame-hungry Silicon Valley AI bros and West Village girls, America now speaks in multiple cultural registers at once. And the American flag, once a common fashion trope across the globe, has since taken on a less-than-positive meaning. During a press conference at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Team USA freestyle skier Hunter Hess even clarified that wearing the flag “doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the US”.

Hunter Hess represented the United States at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.

“There is a brand problem, but I think it goes beyond just Trump, ICE, or current anti-American sentiment around the world,” says brand adviser Ana Andjelic, author of The Business of Aspiration and writer of “The Sociology of Business” newsletter. “I think there is a wider identity crisis.” That uncertainty, she argues, extends beyond politics into the way American brands understand themselves. Terms such as “Americana” have become catch-all labels, often applied to aesthetics that are better described as prep or varsity. “American brands have always had this incredibly strong clarity of identity,” she says. “Now, I think there’s just a shifting sand of identity.”

That same “shifting sands of identity” affecting American brands is also playing out at a national level. As the country’s shared narrative has fractured, symbols that once felt culturally legible no longer carry a single meaning. American Eagle’s recent Good Jeans campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney illustrates the shift. Visual codes, like jeans and “an all-American girl next door”, that might once have been read as straightforwardly or even universally positive Americana, have instead become the subject of intense online debate, with critics interpreting them through the lens of MAGA aesthetics and broader cultural tensions.

Sydney Sweeney featuring in the American Eagle’s Good Jeans campaign.

Can America’s capacity for reinvention still remain its defining advantage? Or has the idea of America itself become significantly harder to package for a global audience?

Brand America feels less coherent than it once did because of political polarization and a deeper shift in how culture itself is produced and consumed. “Consumers, especially younger demographics, are moving hyper-local, becoming increasingly loyal to local brands and preferring to celebrate local heroes,” says Katie Devlin, fashion trends editor at Stylus. “Sartorial tastes are fractured as a byproduct of other cultural factors.”

“It’s difficult to deeply understand who the key audiences are and where to focus, because the country has so many important voices and sub-brands to consider,” continues Dory Ellis Garfinkle, chief marketing officer at global brand consultancy Siegel+Gale. These days, the contemporary American consumer is more likely to identify with a specific lifestyle archetype — the West Village girlie, the Alo-wearing California wellness devotee, the Miami party girl like Alix Earle, or the Southern sorority rush girl — than with a singular vision of American identity as it relates to young female consumers.

Andjelic adds that the implications extend beyond fashion into the architecture of national identity itself. “For a national identity, you need an overarching narrative — something everyone shares. That becomes much harder without everyone watching the same television, reading the same magazines, or consuming the same cultural moments. We used to have those tentpoles — Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Pepsi ads, summer blockbusters. Now, the only remaining shared reference points are the Olympics and the Super Bowl, and even those are weakening.”

Pink, Britney and Beyonce at the premiere of their famous Pepsi commercial, 2004.

It’s not that monoculture has disappeared entirely; rather, the biggest cultural figures no longer command the same broad consensus they once did, because many of them are vocal about their political stance. “I don’t think we’ll ever have ‘America’s sweetheart’ in the same way again,” says Biz Sherbert, founder of the “American Style” newsletter and collaborator on Vogue’s recent nationwide survey on who best represents American style. Today’s stars are often embraced by one audience while alienating another, reflecting the country’s increasingly polarized cultural landscape.

Taylor Swift, for example, is one of the world’s biggest celebrities, but her image is still divisive, and she doesn’t function as a universally accepted symbol of American culture in the same way Britney Spears once did. Bad Bunny, too, is a global star who performed at the most recent Super Bowl halftime show, one of America’s great mass culture events. Yet, his outspoken criticism of ICE and Puerto Rican background (despite it being a US territory) prompted backlash from conservative Americans. Against the backdrop of such division, it’s increasingly difficult for any celebrity to stand in for a singular idea of what America represents. It also means for brands that there are fewer universally accepted cultural ambassadors and far less margin for error when selecting them, as was the case with Sweeney.

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show performance.

Sherbert argues, though, that figures such as Addison Rae still tap into a distinctly American narrative of freedom and expression. “Going from being a small-town girl in Louisiana to becoming a pop star, despite people not believing in you [because of her TikTok origins] — she represents that original American Dream,” she says.

Addison Rae’s 2026 Coachella performance.

For decades, the American Dream promised opportunity and upward mobility. In recent years, however, that narrative has been complicated by the increasing visibility of extreme wealth concentration and a lack of opportunities for young people.

“The reason America was so impressive for so long is because it represented concentrated human achievement,” continues Andjelic. “First to put a human on the moon. First to create the internet. First, first, first.” American success stories often transcended national identity altogether, she explains, with Hollywood and pop music becoming global forces for telling stories that felt universally human.

The risk today, Andjelic argues, is that America’s elite, including the president, are pushing darker narratives of global domination. “We’re going to take Greenland. We’re going to expel immigrants. Those are human stories too, but they’re villain stories,” she says. The contrast with earlier cultural eras is damning.

Still, the performance of some of America’s strongest brands suggests the story is far from over. If the past few years have demonstrated anything, it’s that Americanism remains a powerful cultural asset when grounded in heritage rather than headlines.

The clearest example is Ralph Lauren, whose full-year revenue has climbed to $8.11 billion, a 12% year-on-year increase, in a moment when parts of the European luxury sector have slowed. Andjelic argues that Ralph Lauren’s enduring appeal lies in the way the brand has come to embody multiple strands of the American identity, from East Coast prep and old-money aspiration to a more rugged vision of the frontier, denim, and the cowboy. “He is the only American designer to hold both of those under one umbrella,” she says. “The brands that are doing well are the ones with deep roots and actual heritage.”

Jay Choyce Tibbitts, a fashion commentator and strategist, points out that the brand has seen major growth, particularly in markets like Europe and China, where it grew 18% and 31%, respectively, in Q4. “Consumers are buying into the idea of America. Non-American brands do this, too. Burberry flattens and packages a romanticized version of Britishness and Celine sells a distinctly French sense of cool-girl style,” she explains. “American consumers buy into these exaggerated cultural identities in the same way international consumers buy into brands like Ralph Lauren.”

Ralph Lauren’s SS27 menswear collection.

“Some are certainly more allergic than others, but brands like Polo, American Eagle, and American Airlines are not phasing out their iconography. This is because it is even riskier to alienate their heritage equity, which is worth preserving for some segment of their customers,” agrees Garfinkle. “The trick is to preserve identity and purpose while discovering, evolving, and transforming to reach new audiences successfully.”

But there are still moments where a more optimistic vision of American identity breaks through. The New York Knicks’s championship win this year became a celebration of the city’s diversity as much as its sporting success, thanks to the viral chant: “My mayor Muslim // my bagel’s Jewish // my Christian Dior // Knicks in four,” as a nod to the recent election of Zohran Mamdani as the city’s major. These moments suggest that, in some corners of the country, American identity is being reinterpreted for a new generation — one that sees pluralism not as a contradiction, but as a defining strength.