Will American Brands Be a Casualty of War

Will American Brands Be a Casualty of War
by Sean Silverthorne, Editor, HBS Working Knowledge

Does your U.S. brand play well overseas? If so, heed the words of Harvard Business School professor John Quelch: A swelling anti-American tide could wash away the international popularity of U.S. brands.

In a recent op-ed piece for the Sunday London Times, Harvard Business School professor John Quelch warned that popular U.S. brands could be in for a rough ride overseas should anti-American sentiment grow over President Bush's handling of Iraq. In this e-mail interview, Quelch continues on that theme.

Silverthorne: In general, what effect will the war and the perceived unilateral tactics of the president have on the reception of American brands overseas?

Quelch: During the 1990s, American brands such as Coca-Cola, Marlboro, and McDonald's rode the wave of globalization. From Red Square to the upper Amazon, they brought people a taste of America, along with the promise of freedom and prosperity. The end of the Cold War signaled victory for Brand America. As closed economies opened up to foreign trade and investment, Brand America stood ready to sign up the best local business partners, to recruit the best distributors, and to capture market share from weaker, local competitors.

Selling the American dream has paid off handsomely. Eight of the ten most valuable brands in the world, according to the Interbrand consultancy, are American, and each derives more than half its sales from outside the United States.

"The cost to the American economy could be far greater than the cost of war. "
—John Quelch

But now a deepening opposition to American foreign policy is threatening the long-term strength of these brands. And the cost to the American economy could be far greater than the cost of war.

We have reached the tipping point where Pax Americana now threatens Brand America. For some, the problem is the Bush administration's pattern of unilateral decision making. For others, especially in Europe, Bush's manner has stirred up latent anti-Americanism.

MSNBC - A Marketing Revolution

MSNBC - A Marketing Revolution

By Robert J. Samuelson
Newsweek

Do elections now reflect what the voters really want—or does victory ultimately belong to the party with the most clever sales campaign?By Robert J. Samuelson

Aug. 9 issue - We all descended on Boston last week—Democratic delegates, party consultants, political junkies and journalists—for what often seemed more a sales convention than a political convention. If you doubt the analogy, consider this: in the 2000 election, Americans were showered with 245,743 TV spots for George W. Bush and Al Gore, says the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project. Spending on TV spots this year will likely be double the 2000 level or higher.

Politics has adopted all the tools of modern merchandising—advertising, polling, telemarketing and demographic targeting. Conventions, which once selected a party's candidate, are now part of the marketing plan. Deliberately drained of controversy, they aim to sharpen the campaign's message and to reward fund-raisers and the party faithful. By one count, the Democratic convention had more than 200 parties, receptions, seminars and golf tournaments. "This is a way to fire up your troops," Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says.

Of course, the marketing revolution poses profound questions about politics and democracy. One paradox is that as politics became marketing, people treated it that way. Arguably, cynicism increased. Voters became more dismissive of political rhetoric and ignored TV spots. Candidates and parties have to advertise more for the same effect. There's a constant quest to find new ways to reach voters. "I can send out 700,000 e-mails an hour," says the DNC's McAuliffe. The DNC has a database of 175 million names and has disgorged 75 million pieces of direct mail this year—compared with 10 million for the entire 1990s.

The larger question involves democracy. By itself, the money needed to run modern campaigns isn't corrupting. The sheer number of even big contributors dilutes the influence of individual contributors. The real issue is whether politics is more subject to manipulation. Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, says that people's party identities, their views on issues and the economy still determine far more than 90 percent of voting decisions. Advertising operates on the fringes, the last few percentage points. Every close election inevitably poses this question: did the result reflect what voters wanted—or the cleverest marketing campaign?

Science, Politics Collide in Election Year

Science, Politics Collide in Election Year
Sat Aug 14,11:33 PM ET Add Science - AP to My Yahoo!
By MATT CRENSON, AP National Writer

With more than 4,000 scientists, including 48 Nobel Prize winners, having signed a statement opposing the Bush administration's use of scientific advice, this election year is seeing a new development in the uneasy relationship between science and politics.

In the past, individual scientists and science organizations have occasionally piped up to oppose specific federal policies such as Ronald Reagan (news - web sites)'s Star Wars missile defense plan. But this is the first time that a broad spectrum of the scientific community has expressed opposition to a president's overall science policy.

Last November, President Bush (news - web sites) gave physicist Richard Garwin a medal for his "valuable scientific advice on important questions of national security." Just three months later, Garwin signed the statement condemning the administration for misusing, suppressing and distorting scientific advice.

Scientists' feud with the Bush administration, building for almost four years, has intensified this election year. The White House has sacked prominent scientists from presidential advisory committees, science advocacy groups have released lengthy catalogues of alleged scientific abuses by the administration and both sides have traded accusations at meetings and in the pages of research journals.

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Incorporating science into government has always been a sensitive proposition, given the vast differences between them.

Scientists collect evidence and conduct experiments to arrive at an objective description of reality — to describe the world as it is rather than as we might want it to be.

Government, on the other hand, is about anything but objective truth. It deals with gray areas, competing values, the allocation of limited resources. It is conducted by debate and negotiation. Far from striving for ultimate truths, it seeks compromises that a majority can live with.

Faith vs. Reason

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Kerry needs to win over swing voters. But getting inside their heads may be as much a job for a therapist as a campaign consultantWEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY

Aug. 13 - John Kerry disappointed a lot of Democrats when he said that he would have voted for the resolution that gave George W. Bush the authority to invade Iraq even had Kerry known then what he knows now—that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to Al Qaeda. What then would be the grounds for war? That Saddam Hussein was a despicable human being?

Kerry tried to explain. He stood by his vote, but he would have handled the warmaking authority differently. Bush, on a five-state campaign swing, taunted Kerry for “finally clearing that up.”

It was classic Kerry, full of subtleties that get lost in translation. Kerry’s position is actually quite responsible, but he’s getting no help from the national press corps in conveying it to the voters. In October 2002, when Bush asked Congress to give him war powers, the administration was in the midst of a diplomatic negotiation with Saddam. The threat of force passed by Congress pushed Saddam into allowing the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. Denying Bush the authority would have emasculated American diplomacy.