Advertising executive Keith Reinhard has a message for US companies: the US' tarnished image may soon hurt your bottom lines.
Reinhard says growing anti-American sentiments and their impact on international sales aren't subjects corporations like to discuss publicly. But he says more executives are paying attention to warnings about shifting attitudes abroad.
"Sooner or later, anti-Americanism has got to be bad for business," said Reinhard, president of Business for Diplomatic Action and chairman of the New York ad agency DDB Worldwide. "In marketing, we know that changes in behavior inevitably follow changes in attitude."
Speaking Thursday at the Virginia Conference on World Trade, Reinhard encouraged businesses to practice diplomacy overseas and to take other actions, such as recruiting more foreign interns, to help change the way people view Americans.
Many causes
Reinhard says the rising resentment has its roots in US foreign policy, globalization's effects, pervasiveness of US popular culture and the "collective personality" of Americans.
"Americans are widely viewed as arrogant, loud, ignorant of other cultures and totally self-absorbed," he said in an interview earlier this week. "We think that's an attitude and behavior that can be changed."
Reinhard's camp points to several surveys that suggest a cooling toward the US and its brands in many parts of the world.
In a recent poll of college-educated internationals ages 35 to 64, for instance, the public relations firm Edelman found that 32 percent of Europeans surveyed were less likely to buy US products because of American culture. More than 40 percent of those polled in Canada, Europe and Brazil were less likely to purchase US products because of US policies, Edelman said.
Unconvinced
Not everyone is convinced there's a pressing issue. First, it's hard to quantify anti-Americanism's financial effect when few companies are talking about it. (Tourism is one exception.) And while well-known consumer brands like Marlboro and McDonald's might see boycotts, other US companies say their lesser-known names simply aren't targets.
"We're not on every street corner, and we're not selling to the retail market," said Ed Ramsey, vice president of lumber producer Taylor-Ramsey Corp. in Lynchburg. "So we're a little less conspicuous."
Nevertheless, Taylor-Ramsey provides cultural training to employees who travel overseas, warning them to be cautious of their surroundings and in their speech.
Listen first
The company's workers try to meet face-to-face in their customers' territory. And at social gatherings, they are encouraged to act humbly, politely listening when their clients express their opinions about Americans and their government.
"You have one mouth and two ears; use them proportionately," he said.
That doesn't mean his rivals haven't bungled overseas, particularly in Asian countries where he has found customers don't appreciate some US firms' my-way-or-the-highway approach.
"A lot of our competitors say, `Well, this is the way we do it in America,'" he said. "That tends to be the end of their orders, and then [the customers] look for an alternative source of supplies.
Still, views about the US are clearly changing, several executives said. On his frequent travels, Ted Williams, export manager for farming equipment maker Amadas Industries Inc., said customers in some countries pepper him more frequently with questions about US policies.
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