As the war against Osama bin Laden and the fleeing Taliban military heads into its latest phase, so, too, the American propaganda campaign escalates on two separate fronts, the domestic and the foreign. In America, the focus is on selling the war on terrorism to citizens here, especially should it drag out well into next year or even longer. To that end, the Bush administration has put out feelers from Madison Avenue to Hollywood, soliciting ideas to fuel and fan a patriotic, pro-American message.
Overseas, the goal is much the same, though complicated by prevalent anti-American sentiment and bin Laden’s cunning as a media manipulator. Within the White House, communications director Karen Hughes has set up a war news network linking Washington, London and Islamabad, promulgating not only our version of how the conflict is going but a “message of the day.” From the advertising world, former executive Charlotte Beers has been tapped not only to communicate America’s values to the prickly populations of the Middle East and elsewhere, but also to counter the daily denouncements from bin Laden and the Taliban. A dominant theme: America is not the evil empire its enemies make it out to be.
As the jockeying for hearts and minds continues, the Tribune has sought out experts from the worlds of advertising, public relations and academia and solicited their thoughts on strategy, damage control and image-building, as well as their insights into what we are up against in the propaganda war. Here’s what they had to share:
Jim Schmidt
Chief creative officer at Euro RSCG McConnaughy Tatham.
“There are two things, and some of this is simplistic in ad terms. If it [the war effort] takes a downturn of some sort, the realities start to weigh in. But first, Bush has got to stress the end benefit of it, that, hey this is going to create a more peaceful world for us and for our children. If left to move forward, these guys might get nuclear weapons.
“Second, I would also extend it past ad people. It’s good versus evil in a way, and it has to be extended into a larger context, with religious leaders and others involved, as opposed to just messages from politicians and military people. We need well-respected poets, authors, artists, and we need them to get messages of humanity across. There’s a certain cynicism that’s directed at military leaders and politicians, but people can believe in a greater common good, especially if it comes from an archbishop or a poet laureate. We need to get into the human soul and spirit.
“Overseas, they’re putting Colin Powell on a lot of their TV outlets out there; why would you believe the general of an invading country? These people have been battered forever and right now it’s such an emotional state for them. We have to show them that, `Hey, we want to be with you, too, and there is light at the end of the tunnel’ — especially if it is someone from India or France talking and not one of our generals. In the Middle East, we have to show them how Muslims live here and that we’re not prejudiced against their religion. We’ve got to let them see that this is not a barbaric state with one religion — if anything, they are. Kids also lost parents in the World Trade Center, and we’ve got to get that across.”
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Maureen Shirreff
Chicago-based, North American creative director for the Dove brand at Ogilvy & Mather.
The Middle Eastern market is tough, said Shirreff, because it’s difficult to talk to everyday consumers there. So our stress should be on reaching those whom communications theorists call “key opinion makers” in the Islamic community, people whom their fellows look to for leadership and guidance. “Glean from [these opinion-makers] what it is about our message that is not getting through,” Shirreff said. “Also, draw on dialogues with Muslim experts who would be willing to consult with media people here or creative people here on what it is that needs to be done.”
As for getting the message across in this country, Shirreff cites President Bush’s speech on Nov. 8: “That ended on a really wonderful note in that he quoted the last words of Todd Beamer on Flight 93: `OK, let’s roll.’
“I thought, you know what, we need a rallying cry right now and that seems to be one that has a lot of resonance with people, the military and health professionals and postal workers, yes, but normal Americans as well. You’ve got to rally behind what we call a tag line in the business and I think that one has an awful lot of resonance.”
Shirreff suggests tactics that include providing a more accurate portrayal of Osama bin Laden. “We see many, many videos of bin Laden — he looks very peaceful and gentle. And whenever you see him, he is speaking in his native tongue. Americans are seeing this kind of nice guy. We hear what he has done, but because he comes across in such a gentle way, I think that one of the tactics I would use is truly make him into the monster he is.
“Another tactic, I think, would be to continue as President Bush has done in giving these, I think, remarkable speeches. Now, I know there are a lot of folks who say, `Well, gee, all he’s doing is giving us a briefing.’ That’s exactly what we need, though, from him. Very much like Winston Churchill did in World War II. Very much what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did — those guys became the patriarchs for their nations. They used the media — radio, mostly — probably on a weekly basis, to reassure these American families whose boys were over there about what it was we are fighting for. I think that Bush has done a very remarkable job in terms of kind of being the patriarch. We need a patriarch here.”
“The final tactic, I would say [is that] I think Americans are deeply frightened by this whole thing. I think that they don’t [believe] that it’s ended in this country and we’re going through the motions but we’re frightened. What I think would be a legitimate tactic to continue to sell this idea is to talk about how we need to protect our children. That Mama Bear, Papa Bear mentality. Because I’ll tell you something, I can be scared out of my brain but if somebody were to touch one of my children. . . . I would think that might be a tactic, to remind people that we need to do this not just for ourselves but we have to guarantee this life for our children and protect our children.”
Simon Reeve
Author of “The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism.”
“The reality is that this type of terror cannot be defeated militarily and although this might seem unpalatable after the atrocities of Sept. 11, attention has got to be paid to the root causes which are encouraging young men to give their lives to bin Laden’s organization. Either people realize that now and start looking at the causes, or we wait another 50 years until there have been other terrorist attacks, and only then start looking at the causes.
“I still do not think the U.S. administration realizes how dangerous Al Qaeda really is. It’s a bit like the Terminator: It has little emotion, it can’t be reasoned with, and simply will not stop. The U.S. needs to split the fanatics such as bin Laden from their ground-level supporters, who only support the attacks because they are angry about the suffering of the Palestinians, Iraqi civilians and Western support for corrupt regimes in the Middle East.
“In terms of communicating with the Afghan people I think the U.S. administration is already trying very hard. But most people there can only read a few words, so explaining the complexities of the Sept. 11 attack is not easy. The picture leaflets which have been dropped on Afghanistan will obviously help but it’s a big country and clearly it will be difficult to reach out and educate everybody.
“To retain support abroad, the U.S. will also need to produce results, but the rest of the world is much more sensitive to concerns about innocent civilian casualties. We are already seeing anti-war demonstrations in U.S.-friendly countries, and I expect those to spread. If the U.S. is serious about this `war on terrorism’ it will need to get involved in some nasty little local conflicts to stamp out terror groups in countries such as the Philippines and Algeria, and that won’t be a pretty sight and will cause foreign support for the U.S. to plummet.”
Clarke L. Caywood
Professor of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University, who has worked as a marketing consultant to firms such as IBM, and who managed the 1986-87 campaign of Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Scott McCallum.
Caywood suggested a two-pronged strategy to fight the public relations war.
A positive approach highlighting the impact the United States has had and will have on building a global economy of benefit to all nations, including promises of “a global Marshall Plan.”
An attack campaign, rooted in the negative advertising techniques of American political campaigns, to turn Osama bin Laden and his allies into objects of ridicule.
Said Caywood, “We and our allies should promise we will help build a more balanced economy around the world. In developing nations, we’re in a position to help build plants and hire laborers.” American use of cheaper labor in other nations has led to criticism, Caywood acknowledges, but the emphasis now should be on how the U.S. intends to modify its bottom-line approach and emphasize humanity.
For the U.S., its businesses and citizens, this would require “less greed and more equity” in relations with other countries, he said, and “an acceptance of more risk and less profit.” It would also, he said, demand “a huge additional investment” in bolstering foreign economies the way the Marshall Plan provided billions of dollars to rebuild Europe after World War II.
The message to the rest of the world, Caywood said, would be: “If you create a climate of non-acceptance of violence, everybody will benefit.”
Americans would have to be sold on bankrolling such an effort, but Caywood said, “It would be a logical measure to take to the American public: Would you like to have a world with less danger in it?”
The goal of the second campaign, Caywood said, would be to “deposition” bin Laden and his allies — “to mock and humiliate them, using the best of negative political advertising techniques. Think of it like a very, very dirty Senate race here in the U.S. I would use every possible approach — radio, print, posters, even writing it with white boulders on the side of a hill.”
The specifics of how to damage bin Laden’s name would have to be worked out, Caywood said. But he suggested one avenue would be to portray him as “the rich boy with a radical streak.”
Paul Goble
Spokesman for Radio Free Europe.
“These countries, far more than our own, are radio-oriented. Most adults listen to radio rather than TV and outside the main city of Kabul, most of the adult population — close to 80 percent — has access to an AM, FM or short-wave radio. And a large number of these people hear messages that are inimical to the United States.
“At present, Voice of America broadcasts to Afghanistan and the fact is that international radio can play a key role in countering specific accusations. One rumor that circulated was that 4,000 Jews failed to show up for work at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. That’s an outrageous lie, and it’s worth saying that.
“Second, Muslims by nature are not disposed to being anti-American. But they’re not disposed to being pro-American, either. Could radio broadcasting play a key part in international public diplomacy? Absolutely. I believe deeply radio is an effective way to reach people in these cultures and we need to do that yesterday.”
Ron Popeil
TV pitchman for products such as “Mr. Microphone” and author of the book “The Salesman of the Century.”
“It’s not easy. When I market something, I am marketing something that I invent, and it takes me two years to invent a product from scratch. Then, I have the tools to market a positive product. But in this matter, the `product’ is negative — it’s war — and it’s a situation, not a product.
“The president is doing a terrific job; he’s on TV every single day trying to get the accurate message out. But the American consumer en masse believes what the media tells them. And the media are confusing, because one day they say one thing and another day they say something else. Aside from that, the government has this image of not always telling the truth. We don’t know whom to believe anymore, the media or the government.
“In the foreign marketplace, the South China Sun had headlines the other day that said `Anthrax Crossing America.’ That’s not the truth, but many people believe it. What if the media came after me in a negative fashion? How do you think my products would sell? They, in fact, could shut me down.
“The only thing the U.S. can do is to get the information out to the Afghans. But the messages we’re dropping from airplanes often end up in nobody’s hands. And in the media, a lot of what the people hear is negative, and that’s easier to remember than what’s positive. I don’t think they can [develop] a successful marketing technique that would overcome what they’re up against.”
Rick Jasculca
Chairman and CEO of Jasculca/Terman and Associates.
“I spent the better part of eight years doing advance work abroad for both President and Mrs. Clinton, so I bring not only a public affairs perspective, but also I am somebody who traveled to foreign lands representing the country. I think there is a view overseas that we tend to be very self-righteous and preachy about our values. Nobody is suggesting we shouldn’t feel proud of our heritage, proud of democracy and proud of who we are — it’s just in the way that it gets translated to others.
“If I were fashioning a campaign, I would try to focus on our melting pot, people who have come over here from other lands — people who have adapted well to our land and our culture. [They] might be the best folks to go and be part of a campaign to talk about America and how it works and why it works. And not to suggest that our system should work abroad, but why our system works for us.
“You have the Taliban and bin Laden suggesting that Muslims can’t practice their faith in our country. Well, that’s not true. I think Muslims of our country talking to Muslims abroad about their faith and how they practice it in the United States would be a good thing. You could have Africans talking to Africans, and people from the Middle East talking to the Middle East.
“If you view this in a campaign context, and you did targeting, that would be the way you approach targeting. If you’re marketing a youth product to youth, [you don’t] use Lawrence Welk to do that. You’re using Britney Spears and people who represent the young generation to do that. That’s the same approach that you need here. You have to have people to establish a relationship where you can establish a relationship culturally.
Mark Bowden
Author of “Black Hawk Down,” about the U.S. military’s 1993 misadventure in Somalia.
“I don’t think that the way the U.S. government and military are keeping the press so far away from anything having to do with this military operation serves their interests at all. Obviously, it’s important to protect secrecy of operations. But when you don’t have an independent, credible source of information — if all the information you get is coming from the military or the Taliban — nobody knows what to believe. Everything is just propaganda.
“And so I think that it’s in the best interest of the U.S., even though sometimes it’s painful for them, to allow more access to our officials, to our military people, and to our soldiers so that people have some trust that the information they are getting has not been doctored or filtered.
“An example of that was when we conducted the raid on Kandahar around Oct. 20. If you were in Pakistan, the story you read was the Taliban’s version of what happened, that 25 Americans were killed, that helicopters were shot down — the whole version of events that the Taliban gave out. Then they ran as a sidebar the American military version of events, which was that no Americans were killed and that one helicopter crashed by accident in Pakistan.
“Now, I think a fair-minded person would not know what to believe. And when that situation exists, when fair-minded people don’t know what to believe, then rumors grow, misinformation spreads. And to the extent that we have truth on our side, it seems to me that it’s in our best interest to enable credible independent information to be made public. The way to do that is to allow our journalists access to what’s going on.”
Kathleen Hessert
A crisis media speech specialist with Communication Concepts in Charlotte, N.C.
“First and foremost, we’re not going to be able to make ourselves into saints. But we need to neutralize the devilish image Osama bin Laden has presented of us. Just as this is a non-traditional war, the complexity of sending the message outside the U.S. is totally new. We have to look at every message and send it in such a way that we bombard them — that they move from hearing it to understanding it to believing it. I don’t think we’ve gotten past that first layer.
“There’s so much emotion swirling around the world stage that if we speak simply with facts, they’ll turn a deaf ear. We have to connect with them emotionally to get them to understand us intellectually. American radio over there would make a world of difference. It takes repetition for a message to sink in, especially when you’re trying to move a people, let alone their hearts, minds and beliefs.”
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Tish King
Spokeswoman for Voice of America.
“We’ve tried to increase our broadcast hours and we’re trying to get $5 million in supplemental funding. With Voice of America, people get U.S. leaders and newsmakers in their own voices and words versus being shaped by the local media. So when President Bush spoke to the joint session of Congress in September and to the nation in October, we did broadcasts and translations in the local languages. And in Afghanistan, radio is terribly important because TV is prohibited.
“Our surveys show that 80 percent of adult males listen to Voice of America on a weekly basis. We haven’t been able to survey women. In Afghanistan, the only trusted sources of news are VOA and the BBC. Right now, we broadcast two hours and 15 minutes a day in Afghanistan and we’re hoping to expand that to three hours. In the Middle East, we broadcast nine hours in Arabic and we hope to double that to 18. And we’re trying to enhance our signals to get onto FM as well as short-wave and AM in principal capital cities such as Amman.”
Laura Drake
Adjunct professor in Middle East politics at American University.
“Here in America, the message is getting out. The problem in the Middle East is not with the message, it’s the credibility of the messenger. What I hear about increasing our information services — and I hear this from the Middle Eastern journalists — the response is that these are superficial efforts and they absolutely will not work. The problem runs deeper, and it’s a problem of U.S. policy. The overwhelming majority of people in that part of the world perceive U.S. policies as unfair and unjust. That’s why you see so many anti-American demonstrations.
“People in the Middle East really admire the American lifestyle. They admire the prosperity and the technology and intellectual strength. Generally, they find the American people to be kind. It’s not about the American way of life; it’s about foreign policy. Basically, it’s distrust of the United States government. The most current issues fueling it are the Iraqi sanctions, which have killed over a million people, and what people consider the unjust attitude toward the Palestinians. When people in the Middle East turn on Al-Jazeera and see Palestinians getting killed with American weapons, that creates tremendous anger in the younger generation.
“If the U.S. had come into this war in Afghanistan without this background, they would have been supported unconditionally. It’s not a lost cause, but the Americans need to take a step back and think about how they’ve treated people in that region, and start to make amends. If they were to do that, they would start to get a lot of sympathy.”
Barry Krause
Chicago-based chairman and CEO of Publicists in Mid-America, a marketing and public relations firm.
“It’s not about, `How do we craft pretty commercials to get that message out there?’ Step One is opening a pipeline for communication,” Krause said — which involves finding the right medium, the right channel of communication.
“Then it’s really a question of the differences between the facts and the perceptions. You know the old expression, `Don’t confuse me with the facts.’ I feel what I feel. . . . We have to find a way to turn the facts about us into feelings. . . . If America has been painted as a capitalist society whose values are out of sync with the world — that we’re selfish, [that we’re] the world’s cop, and so on — and if all of those situations have painted a picture in these people’s minds, then they have formed feelings about us. We have to deal with the feelings.”
Krause cites Hal Riney’s “It’s morning again in America” re-election campaign for Ronald Reagan in 1984. “Unlike traditional political advertising, it just didn’t lay the facts out. . . . It made people feel it. It made people say, `You’re right I am a lot better off today than I was four short years ago.’
“How do you make people feel something? A lot of times, the thing you’re gonna want to do is try to get to the opinion-makers. Don’t worry about going to the masses because that will be rejected. But try to reach some of the opinion leaders.”
Or someone your audience can identify with, Krause said, someone who represents the benefits. Krause wrote the strategy for Subway’s almost-two-year-old “Jarad” campaign involving a young man who lost a lot of weight eating Subway’s low-fat sandwiches. “We made human contact because people could relate to this,” he said. “We found a way to get people to say, `This is real life.’ . . . Here’s a person whose issue is even bigger than ours. A person who had real credibility.”
Howard Zinn
Author of “A People’s History of the United States.”
“There’s no way, while it is bombing, that the American government can convince the Afghan people that its war is not directed against them. Bombing inevitably means civilian casualties — the word “accident” does not apply and the victims know it. Bombing terrorizes the population, drives hundreds of thousands from their homes. So the only way to convince them the aim is to get the terrorists is to stop the bombing and pursue every possible alternative means to try to locate the perpetrators. Very hard job. Bombing is easy, so we do it.
“Selling a long military campaign to the American people is already not easy — the contradictory statements coming daily from the administration begin to be ludicrous (“We’ve got them on the run . . . it may take many years . . .”) Indeed as the campaign goes on, the American people will stop buying it.
“The problem is not one of communication but of action. There are some actions that cannot be given a good face. We have lived too much with public relations in our national politics, thinking if we put the right spin on a sordid policy we can make it look good. Not so with war. If we want to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people we ought to engage in a massive campaign to deliver food and medicine to them and make them feel safe in their homes. If the Taliban is to be overthrown it will have to come from within the country. The U.S. record in putting governments in power is a sordid one.
“In short, we have to have something decent to communicate. Food, medicine, no more bombing will send a message more powerful than any sophisticated campaign of propaganda.
William A. Cohen
Marketing professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and a retired U.S. Air Force major general.
During the Gulf War, Cohen was part of a military task force working to “battle the disinformation put out by the other side,” he said. But it was an uphill fight because the people in many Middle Eastern nations were predisposed to think the worst of the U.S.
The effort was greatly helped by what seemed at first to be a small news story, the rescue of several fox pups by British soldiers. “The reason it did so well was it gave a better impression of what the allied forces were about,” Cohen said. “It humanized us. The other side tends to demonize us.”
In the public relations battlefield, attention to such seemingly insignificant details can be the difference between success and failure, he said.
For example, Cohen noted that, at the end of World War II, American forces were finding it all but impossible to persuade Japanese soldiers to give up. Instead, they’d keep fighting and, if cornered, would commit suicide. Then, the wording on the leaflets dropped to the Japanese troops was changed. Instead of reading, “I surrender” to show to U.S. soldiers, the leaflets now read, “I cease resistance.”
“That little change made a tremendous difference,” Cohen said. “To them, it was OK to cease resistance and not surrender. It was face-saving.”
Also important, Cohen said, is telling the truth. “You have to admit it if you screw up. You don’t try to dance around or lie about anything,” he said.
That’s what Johnson & Johnson did, Cohen noted, when seven people in the Chicago area died after someone put cyanide in bottles of Tylenol. “They admitted it,” Cohen said, and moved quickly to pull the product off store shelves and institute tamper-resistant packaging — at a cost of $250 million. “They actually managed to save their brand by being upfront and straight,” he said.
Cohen, though, isn’t very sanguine about the idea of pushing the U.S. message in television commercials on Arab-world television stations. “It’s not about selling hamburger,” he said. “I think that would be perceived as propaganda, and that’s what you don’t want. You can’t make this like soap. It just doesn’t play. There’s too much resistance on the other side. They just tune it out.”
Jerry Wind
Marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Hopes that Madison Avenue advertising techniques can win the public relations war are unfounded, said Wind, an expert in international marketing.
Running television commercials on Arab television stations “will have only a very small, minute impact,” he said. “Getting the religious leaders and other leaders of the area to start advocating our position would be hundreds of times more effective, a thousand times more effecting, than advertising.”
And, to some extent, Muslim leaders have a vested interest in opposing bin Laden. “The hijackers, in a sense, are hijacking Islam,” Wind said.
What’s necessary, he said, is a coordinated, systematic marketing strategy aimed at each of the different constituencies involved — the residents of Afghanistan, the other Middle East nations and Americans themselves. “In each of these areas, we have to identify the audience we want to influence,” he said. “Is it the government? The legislators? The business leaders? Citizens at large? The media?”
And essential to that approach is knowledge. “No one would expect to influence people without understanding who people are and what motivates them.”
Part of that, Wind said, is to recognize one harsh reality: “A lot of people around the world don’t like us. A lot of people have been resentful of the fact that we’ve been trying to bully the world for a long time.”
And they don’t trust the U.S. — which means advertising is even less likely to make a dent.
“There is no magic-bullet solution,” Wind said. “It would be very risky to think we’ll go in with an advertising blitz, and this will be the answer.”
James J. Zogby
President of the Washington, D.C.-based Arab American Institute.
President George W. Bush’s emphasis that the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam has worked well within the U.S., especially in terms of protecting Arab-Americans from harassment, Zogby said.
“They did a great job domestically in de-fusing some of the hate crimes,” he said. But, in the Middle East, the effort to sell the war and strengthen support have fallen far short due to U.S. ignorance of the region and ham-handed policies, according to Zogby.
Zogby was speaking from Saudi Arabia, where he was meeting with representatives of the Arab Thought Forum, an independent Palestinian institution, who were seeking to learn how to communicate their message better to the U.S.
“We want to sell a product without having done an assessment of the need,” Zogby said. The initial step, he said, must be to listen and understand before trying to shape Middle East public opinion. “We’re not focused on what they’re saying they need from us. We’re telling them what we think they need to hear. “If you’re running a political campaign, the first thing you do is poll. Then you do the commercials. The first thing [the U.S. government should do] is understand what our objective is and what their need is, and how we can draw together our objectives to meet their needs so we can sell them what we want to sell them.”
The administration has clouded its message about the war, he said. Originally, it was war against the terrorists who attacked the U.S., but now it’s also a war against the Taliban. “This is biting off more than we may have needed to chew,” Zogby said. “We were rooting out terrorism. Now we’re helping to change a government.”
Recent administration criticisms of Yasser Arafat for failing to do enough to police the militant Hamas don’t play well with Arab governments, Zogby said. “What can the Palestinians do [about Al Qaeda]? They’re the ones people are seeing as the victims.”
And, because the U.S. has played hardball with Arab governments over the past decade, “people don’t look at us as an honest broker,” Zogby said.
Norman Muse
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Retired chairman and chief creative officer for Leo Burnett who worked on the United Airlines and Marlboro accounts during his 25 years there.
“I think the danger is that discussing it as a Madison Avenue thing — with all the cliches surrounding that idea — is that it belittles and demeans it. Think of it as communication experts putting a cohesive effort together rather than a bumbling bureaucratic expression that frightens and dispirits the country.”
Muse suggests, among other means, Voice of America.
“Beam information all over the world where terrorism exists to change people’s opinions of America. There is a very practical aspect of it as well. Words and messages and missives can be more effective than missiles and they are lot less expensive. . . . We can use our expertise to get our message across.”
Muse takes issue with the slogan being tossed around. “`America’s New War’ is a terrible choice of words. It suggests one more in a continuing series of conflicts. What about `America’s War on Terror’? he asks. Or `The World’s War on Terrorism,’ which says if you’re not at war with terrorism you’re not a member of the world community?”
Another factor that is important, he said, is for the U.S. government to “agree to a single-minded message and precise tone of voice. . . . Instead of a cowboy braggadocio,” he said, there should be “humility, confidence and honesty in our presentation in a tone of voice that would appeal to our audience as opposed to the swaggering tone that American politicians so often use.”