Restoring America’s Reputation in the World: a Business Problem
ICCO President Lou Capozzi addressed a plenary session of the World Public Relations Conference and Festival in London this June, outlining the issues created by the dramatic decline in America’s relationship with the rest of the world. His presentation was based upon research from an American not-for-profit organisation called Business For Diplomatic Action (BDA), where he serves on the board, and documented the decline of U.S. reputation. He also went on to outline the implications for business and for communications professionals in particular.
While there is no doubt that one of the root causes of America’s problems is its unpopular foreign policy, apparently that’s not the whole story. Capozzi noted in his speech that tough American immigration and visa policies, the global cooling toward American culture, and the widespread belief that American people are ‘arrogant, ignorant about the world, loud and rude’ are all contributing factors. As one German woman put it in a recent study: “How can Americans think they lead the world when they don’t know anything about it?”
Capozzi pointed out that this should be a cause for great concern among all businesses, not just American ones. Quoting statistics from The Economist magazine, he showed that even European giants like Airbus and BMW are directly affected by the issue.
Finally, he made the case that businesses themselves are uniquely qualified to help solve the problem thanks to the skills and abilities of multinational companies, their people and their brands.
He concluded by outlining some of the ways communications people can help turn the situation around and urged the group to begin by: pledging to avoid communications that exacerbate the problem, embracing the problem as their own, advising management on constructive courses of action and offering counsel to their American counterparts where appropriate.
The World Public Relations Conference and Festival was sponsored by the Chartered Institute for Public Relations (CIPR) and The Global Alliance. More than 450 public relations professionals from across the globe were in attendance.
