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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Advertising maven Charlotte Beers is trying to sell the U.S. to the Muslim world, but nobody's buying it.
Dec 19, 2002 | On Wednesday, advertising goddess-turned-State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy Charlotte Beers appeared at Washington's National Press Club to explain how she was selling America to the Muslim world.
The former head of Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson, Beers was sworn in at the State Department on October 2, 2001, just three weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, and charged with polishing the U.S. image abroad. Her message more than a year later: Things are going just fine. Of course, her appearance came the same week as new reports that the Defense Department was planning a so-called "psy-ops" campaign -- a psychological operation relying on propaganda and manipulation -- to sell America's story in allied and neutral countries. That seemed to suggest some lingering worries about the American image, even among friends. But on Tuesday, President Bush disavowed such plans, so officially at least, Beers' mission is the only game in town.
According to Beers, America's information offensive is off to a grand start, putting out messages that are "believable and always true and accurate," she says. One of her first salvos was a series of mini-documentaries about happy American Muslims, designed to show Muslims abroad that the war on terror isn't a clash of civilizations. The films were part of a broader U.S. propaganda campaign that includes Radio Sawa, a station broadcasting Arab and American pop interspersed with pro-U.S. news bulletins, junkets to show America to Arab journalists, and government-published books like, "Iraq: From Fear to Freedom."
Much of the material is aimed at showing Muslims that Americans are just like them -- hence the commercials in which American Muslims rhapsodize about the support and opportunity they've been given in the United States. The ads show Muslim paramedics, scientists, teachers and bakers talking about the freedom and tolerance they enjoy in America. One woman tells the audience that in her neighborhood, all the non-Muslims share her strong family values.
Beers pointed to a survey showing how people in various countries ranked things like faith, family and learning. In the United States, faith was ranked 5, while in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia it was No. 1. A note off to the side of the chart indicated that the godless French ranked faith 42. "We're much closer to our Arab friends than to some European countries," she said. "But there's a gap between perception [and reality] -- that's a communication bridge we need to build."
That was the thrust of her talk -- that anti-Americanism would dissipate once people realized what America is really like. To that end, she said, one of her department's next projects is an "America room" that will use "virtual reality technology" to recreate American streets and other quaint scenes. The room could be put in shopping malls or "on a bus and rolled around," to show those who can't manage a visit what life in the U.S. is all about.
Midway through her talk, four protestors took to the stage chanting, "You're selling war, but we're not buying!" They were quickly escorted from the room. As they left Beers said, "I should point out to those young women that in Iraq they wouldn't have stood a chance of walking out freely."
