PR doesn’t work for countries either
Anyone living in Britain will remember Tony Blair’s tawdry efforts in 1997 to ‘rebrand’ the UK as “Cool Britannia.” What we actually got was Oasis visiting Number 10 and a giant dome-shaped folly in Docklands. Actions speak louder than words. You can’t spin a non-event.
Now, Fred Kaplan reports on a US State Department official who has written about the reasons for his resignation. Kaplan has a good summary (sorry for quoting at length):
Ever since Sept. 11, the State Department, he noted, has embarked on “an unprecedented effort” to explain U.S. foreign policy to both American and foreign audiences. His office arranged more than 6,500 interviews, half with international media. On any given day, senior officials were doing four or five interviews. And yet, poll after poll revealed rising animosity toward America.
But the problem wasn’t our words; as he put it, “What we don’t have here is a failure to communicate.” Rather, it was our actions, “which speak the loudest of all.”
Rejecting the Kyoto treaty, dissing the International Criminal Court, revoking the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo*—”these actions,” Floyd wrote, “have sent an unequivocal message: The U.S. does not want to be a collaborative partner. This is the policy we have been ’selling’ through our actions.” As a result, our words are ignored or dismissed as “meaningless U.S. propaganda.”
* My mother describes this behaviour as “Do what I say, not what I do.”
I visit the USA regularly and it is often the source of embarrassment to hear Tony Blair praised or to be thanked for our support in Iraq (and surprising how often people say these things to me). I’m not anti-American. I love the country and have visited it over fifty times. It’s a cliche but no less true because of it - my best friends are American. But I think Kaplan and Price Floyd have put their finger on exactly why I feel embarrassed. There’s a huge dissonance between American values, American actions and what America says about both. From a PR perspective, this is a recipe for disaster.
Technorati Tags: PR, Slate, Fred Kaplan
richard pelletier wrote:
Spot on Matthew. As an American, I have to say that these past six years have been very, very difficult. However anyone wants to spin it, these past years have not reflected well on us, nor have they reflected the values that many of us citizens of the world and the US hold dear.
It’s a fascinating thing to look at all this from a PR perspective. Republicans are generally held in high regard for their marketing prowess in election campaigns. But no amount of marketing or PR can scrub this thing clean.
We used to call Ronald Reagan The Great Communicator. And he’s the guy that named the MX Missie the “Peacekeeper.”
Posted on 01-Jun-07 at 3:58 pm | Permalink
Bruce Pilgrim wrote:
Let’s be clear. For a brief period after 9/11, America had the world’s sympathy. President George W. Bush and his administration squandered that good will with an unprovoked war in Iraq and a raft of other ill-advised moves that have sullied the reputation and image of the United States, perhaps irreparably.
As an American, I am profoundly embarrassed, and more than a little pissed off by Bush’s actions. I voted against him twice and I repudiate virtually everything the man has ever done. We can only hope that we can elect someone better next time (it would be difficult to find someone worse) and begin to repair our relationships with countries around the world.
All the PR and all the spin doctors on earth may not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, however.
Posted on 04-Jun-07 at 1:07 pm | Permalink