Alaska Brand Audit Brand Inventory
History
Alaska has been a unique brand for many years. Originally known as Russian America because it was owned by Russia, the origin of the name Alaska is a misconception from the first Russian explorers to venture into Alaskan waters (the original Aleut word "alaxsxaq" literally meaning "object toward which the action of the sea is directed"[Alaska]). When the United States bought Alaska, even though the price was only two cents an acre, it was known for many years as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox”, after William Seward, the Secretary of State who was primarily responsible for pushing the purchase from Russia through Congress.
In the early days Alaska’s brand image was mostly negative. It was known as the “Frozen North”, the “land of ice and snow”, the “land without summer”. Many of these images are from the stories and poetry of Robert Service, Jack London and their contemporaries. A good example of this writing is the poem “Cremation of Sam McGee”— see appendix II, (Service). All these extreme brand images dominated perceptions of Alaska prior to the discovery of gold in the Klondike in the late 1800s. After gold was discovered these negative perceptions were softened somewhat, though they remained rather negative—in large part due to the difficulty of living in the far north.
Our Brand Survey
We did a brand audit of Alaska to see how well Alaska has worked past these harsh criticisms. To accomplish this we surveyed local Alaskans, people from the “Lower 48”, and a few international people. Most of these surveys were done online using Survey Monkey (Survey Monkey). This has given us a comprehensive view of how people feel about Alaska—both within the state, from the lower 48, and internationally.
We want to evoke responses that reflect people’s own thoughts, so we designed our question to keep out