Pitching U.S. to Others a Tough Sell

WASHINGTON -- She assumed office shortly after Sept. 11, a former advertising executive whose new post at the State Department took on a sense of urgency after that day’s deadly attacks.

As undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, Charlotte Beers’ mission was broad: to help quell the hatred toward Americans that became all too evident after the terrorists struck. As one scholar put it, the problem of “why they hate us” was translated into “how we reposition the brand.” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell asked why he would recruit a Madison Avenue-type who early in her career handled advertising for Uncle Ben’s rice, replied, “Didn’t you buy Uncle Ben’s rice? And that’s exactly what I want ... somebody who can get out there and mix it up in the kind of world we’re living in.”

Beers is the only executive to have served as head of two of the advertising industry’s top 10 agencies: J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather. But she is a novice at the internecine turf wars over policy and personnel that define Washington and a newcomer to the hostility that often greets U.S. policy abroad. About 15 months into her government service, she is on the defensive from inside and out.

A series of heart-tugging television ads she developed to showcase America’s religious tolerance has been rejected by some Arab countries. The ads, which feature Muslim Americans talking about the acceptance they feel in the United States, have run in Malaysia, Indonesia and on some regional outlets such as Middle East Broadcasting Co. But Egypt Television, which last month aired a controversial series based on the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, declined the U.S. buy, saying it does not accept paid advertisements from foreign countries.

The latest poll numbers show a continuing slide in Arab public opinion about the United States. In the last two years, according to a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, favorable ratings are down 22% in Turkey over the last two years, and down 13% in Pakistan. In Egypt, those with a favorable opinion of the United States stand at 6%.

And most telling of all, many question Beers’ very strategy of pitching American values to an audience that hates American policy, particularly its stalwart defense of Israel in the conflict with Palestinians.

“Public diplomacy is intimately linked to our foreign policy,” said David Morey, a Washington consultant who co-chairs the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Public Diplomacy. Quoting veteran broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, who also served as director of the U.S. Information Agency, Morey added that those selling American policy abroad need to be involved in making American policy at home. “They have to be in on the takeoffs as well as the crash-landings,” he said.

Robert Satloff, policy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, put it more directly. The campaign to win the hearts and minds of Arabs overseas has faltered, he said, because it “put a premium on a well-intentioned but highly counterproductive effort to be liked, at the expense of public advocacy.”

To Beers’ defenders, the criticism ignores the full menu of initiatives she has launched, including a first-ever call to Washington last spring of 150 embassy employees who specialize in public diplomacy.

“Satloff acts as if the only thing we do is talk about warm and fuzzy stuff,” said Christopher Ross, an Arabic-speaking former ambassador who, in addition to being a regular defender of U.S. policy on the Al Jazeera Arabic news network, is Beers’ top advisor. “Most of our effort goes into policy explanation.”

But even those sympathetic to the effort question whether a message of shared values will convince Muslims in Arab countries that their widely held presumptions are untrue: that the United States is contemplating war in Iraq in an effort to capture its oil, or that Washington backs Israel because Jewish officials are influencing U.S. policy.

The U.S. government spends about $1 billion annually for public diplomacy, including international broadcasting, compared with about $379 billion for defense.

“Certain perceptions of the United States, particularly in some media markets, are just not amenable to even the most brilliant public relations campaign,” said Richard N. Perle, who chairs the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, a panel of outside advisors. “This whole thing was initiated out of a sense that we are misperceived. It doesn’t hurt to try, and at the level we’re investing, it’s not even very expensive. But it’s an impossible task.”

For her part, Beers is mindful of the criticism from the experts. She calls it “the elephant in the room,” the problem that no amount of advertising glitz or public relations savvy can erase: Arab dislike for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

She counters that by saying that “it really helps the extremists when we say nothing.” Waiting until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, she added, may be “tempting,” but “it’s even more dangerous.”

Beers also makes no apology for the effort to showcase American values, particularly as they are shared by Arabs in Muslim countries -- an emphasis on families, on the importance of religion, on a better quality of life.

“Any dialogue, any small door opened, any misperception corrected, is worth doing,” she said last week at a much-anticipated appearance at the National Press Club. “We really have to get beyond the rather stratified conversation we have with elites in government ... and get to the people who’ve been told every day their definition of who we are.”

To that end, her office is developing a new magazine targeting Arab teenagers, one that reflects a positive view of the United States. She was in New York recently, talking with “Sesame Street’s” nonprofit arm, Sesame Workshop, about a television show that would teach English and computer skills to youngsters in Egypt. Her office is working with the Smithsonian Institution to develop a virtual “American Room” to allow audiences at embassies or schools to experience the U.S. And she has attracted 15 notable authors to write essays on what it means to them to be an American.

Powell is “thrilled” by her campaign to advertise the shared values between Americans and Arabs, said spokesman Richard Boucher, adding, “The secretary felt very strongly that it was a good message.”

To complicate matters, Beers is competing for funds and focus with other agencies and more high-profile projects. The International Broadcasting Bureau has pioneered some new outreach efforts. Voice of America has replaced its Arabic service, for instance, with an FM station called Radio Sawa (Radio Together), a program aimed at attracting a young Arab audience not with news but with American music. In Iran, broadcasters have just launched Radio Farda (Radio Tomorrow), a Persian-language AM, digital and shortwave station designed to give the young Iranians now demonstrating for democracy in the streets of Tehran more news, information and public affairs, as well as entertainment.

At the White House, Tucker Eskew was brought in to direct an Office of Global Communications, a sort of rapid response team for explaining U.S. policy. And the Pentagon, with a generous new budget for defense spending, keeps trying to apply military resources to the information game. In February, Pentagon officials floated the idea for an Office of Strategic Influence, which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld quickly dismantled when critics protested the idea of spreading disinformation in foreign countries. Then last week came news that the Pentagon was considering a covert propaganda plan to, among other features, pay journalists in foreign countries to write favorable articles, fund moderate Islamic schools and hire advance people to organize pro-American rallies.

When she speaks of the Defense Department, Beers’ voice turns a bit tense. She notes that there is careful coordination to ensure that everything “going out over our various channels is the truth.”

She is also careful these days not to portray her efforts as akin to selling Uncle Ben’s rice, even though she still uses the lingo of advertising. “Just because I come from Madison Avenue doesn’t mean I think I’m selling,” she said. “There is no assumption that we have a ready buyer out there. [We are trying] to create a dialogue, which is really a different starting point than a pitch.”

Skeptics remain doubtful. “Al Jazeera is like a long-running O.J. Simpson trial,” said Francis Fukuyama, political economist at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “Unless we get those pictures of Palestinian victims off the evening news, nothing she’s doing is going to make a difference.”