From Selling to Listening: The Changing Metaphors of Public Diplomacy

Peter Oehlkers

A paper prepared for the annual meeting of the

International Academy for Business Disciplines in San Diego, CA.

April 7, 2006


Abstract.

Metaphors are not simply tools for description; they are figures that can inform, often unconsciously, our understanding of things. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). This paper looks at the metaphors underlying discourse about contemporary U.S. public diplomacy, examining the shift from a “sales” model associated with former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, Charlotte Beers, to a “relationship” model associated with her successor, Karen Hughes. This paper examines both metaphors critically, with special attention to the oft-lauded relationship model. It offers alternative metaphors and relates the metaphors of public diplomacy to the metaphors of public relations generally.


In the fall of 2005, Karen Hughes, the U.S. under secretary of state for public diplomacy, embarked on a series of “listening” tours to countries in the Islamic world. Many commentators regarded the mission as an improvement over previous public diplomacy efforts by the Bush administration. While her predecessor, Charlotte Beers[1], was seen as using an “advertising[2]” approach to public diplomacy, Hughes seemed to embrace an approach based on relationships and interpersonal communication. This shift from “one-way” to “two-way” communication mirrors, and was perhaps influenced by, shifts in the scholarly discussion of public diplomacy, public relations practice, and branding, where “relationship” models are now strongly advocated as more ethical and even effective than “information” or “persuasion” models (Dutta-Bergman, 2005; Wang, 2005; Grunig, 2000)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the shift in metaphors, both empirically--as it played out in public discourse about public diplomacy in the post- 9/11 era and critically—finding the “blindspots” the new relationship metaphor encourages. This project is given general license by the foundational work of Lakoff & Johnson (1980), who argue that metaphors are not simply ways of describing things but fundamentally inform, unconsciously, our understanding of things. The empirical work, which is still at an exploratory stage, is based on readings of large samples[3] of news coverage of the Charlotte Beers and the Karen Hughes public diplomacy projects.

The “sales” metaphor

While Charlotte Beers was appointed to her position as under secretary of state before the events of September 11, 2001, it was those events that ultimately informed her approach to public diplomacy. Given the absence of the old cold war era apparatus of public diplomacy and the need to quickly and forcefully address the question, as Newsweek (Zakaria, 2001) put it, “Why do they hate us?” it made sense to proceed with an approach to communication that emphasized the powerful American persuasive communication machinery, if only to demonstrate that the U.S. was doing something about the problem. She leveraged her extensive background in advertising, which included being president of Ogilvy & Mather and chair of J. Walter Thompson, and this was quickly picked up in news coverage and used to frame her approach to dealing with the international crisis.

An early example may be found in a widely distributed story by Mark Tasker of the Miami Herald. Headlined, “U.S. also planning a P.R. war: State Department launching campaign to sell American position to Muslim world,” the story begins:

Frustrated by a feeling that Osama bin Laden has been more successful than America in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world, the State Department is responding with a uniquely American solution: A Madison Avenue-style campaign to sell its point of view. (Tasker, 2001).

The story frames the campaign as part of the war effort and explicitly uses references to “selling” to explain what the State Department is doing. Like past war-time public diplomacy situations, this is part of an urgent ideological battle over “hearts and minds.”

The notion that U.S. public diplomacy would be run like an advertising campaign, however, was immediately controversial and criticized on a number of grounds. Experts in the field of advertising criticized it as ineffective, as in this story from the Boston Herald:

“I don’t believe there is anything America can tell this audience in our own words that will overcome negative messages back home,” said Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen Advertising in Wenham. “Promoting freedom, human rights, democracy and support for Muslim culture may have relevance to those inclined to embrace the virtues of the West, but not to the many millions who feel dispossessed or victimized by American policy” (Mashberg, 2001, p. 1)

And experts in wartime strategy criticized its softness:

“The point isn’t to sell the Arab world on a war against the terrorists, but to demoralize those elements who would oppose it,” said Tom Nichols, professor of strategy at the Naval War College in Newport. “Putting friends and enemies alike on notice there is no alternative to this war is the most effective message we can send.” (Mashberg, 2001, p. 1).

Given these kinds of criticisms, Beers’s publicly attempted to disassociated her approach from advertising per se, but often ended sending mixed messages, as in this extended excerpt from a Washington Post story:

Beers stands in her office at the State Department, holding up a copy of an advertisement headlined, “Can a Woman Stop Terrorism?”

It’s part of her first ad campaign for the feds and it’s designed to promote the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, which pays people who provide information on terrorists. Beers and Powell are about to preview the ad campaign at a news conference, but first, dressed in black pants, a braown turtleneck sweater and a long string of beads, she’s showing it to a handful of reporters in a sort of pre-preview preview.

“We’re talking about the way this campaign will work,” she says. “At the moment, we have it in print and radio in English. We intend to translate it into Spanish and Arabic.” A few minutes later, she says, “the power of a campaign is both reach and frequency.”

But wait. Can we call this ad campaign an ad campaign? When a reporter asks, “Will there be other campaigns?” Beers gets snippy about the word.

“There will be other work,” she says. “I wish you’d stop using campaign, which really suggests that we’re going to start running Coca-Cola ads.” (Carlson, 2001, C01).

Beers is aware of the rhetorical danger of being perceived as doing advertising, but nevertheless can be seen here having difficulty avoiding using its vocabulary.

In fact, Beers’s tenure at the State Department did include the rebuilding of many traditional tools of public diplomacy that had been abandoned after the end of the Cold War, including increased scholarly exchange programs and new Arab-language media outlets, including magazines, radio, and TV. Nevertheless, it was the advertising-like aspects of her program that received the most attention. For example, her office produced a set of televised public service announcements, titled “Shared Values,” that showed Muslim Americans happily living in the U.S. These were designed to run on Arab-language television stations during Ramadan. They were immediately criticized as ineffectual propaganda and eventually became the core element supporting the story that Beers’s program had been a disaster, as in this Boston Globe story:

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell brought on Charlotte Beers, an advertising executive, to market American values abroad by distributing television testimonials of Muslims who were happy living in the United States. But Beers’s $15 million appeal to the Arab world ended disastrously, with critics calling it propaganda divorced from its intended audiences. Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon refused to run the ads. (Stockman, 2005, A6)

These kinds of tactical mistakes, as well as the image, supported by pollsters, that attitudes in the Islamic world toward the U.S. were in free-fall, hastened the end of Beers’s State Department career. And the idea that public diplomacy could be modeled on advertising and sales was thoroughly discredited.

The “interpersonal” metaphor.

Although Karen Hughes was connected with Beers’s program, when she took over in the fall of 2005, she made it clear that she was operating with a different paradigm in mind. Indeed, the Karen Hughes era appears to signify less a change in tactics than an overall re-conceptualization of communication. Instead of strategically created and directed messages, her rhetoric emphasizes words like “conversation,” dialogue, and “listening.” And instead of short-term advertising results, she emphasizes the need for a long-term view. Here is a sample of such rhetoric in a recent interview in the Seattle Times:

Q. Could you explain what you do as under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs?

A . I'm in charge of America's conversation with the world….

Q. What are your thoughts on a recent White House report that said public-diplomacy programs could not demonstrate results, and there is no broad public-diplomacy strategy?

A. Edward R. Murrow said no cash register rings when a mind is changed. It's sometimes hard to measure the short-term effectiveness of a program. That's why I was hired, to put [a strategy] in place.(Fryer, 2006, A5).

As a means of actualizing the rhetoric, she embarked on a series of “listening” tours to Muslim countries. While the tours themselves have received mixed reviews in the press, the concept of “listening” has been widely endorsed. Here’s a sample of coverage in the San Antonio Express-News, headlined “Hughes gets an earful on her diplomatic tour.”

Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes has returned from her first diplomatic mission to the Middle East, part of the Bush administration's continued effort to win over hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

Back in Washington, the Bush confidant is still nursing her singed ears.

At each stop on her five-day trip to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Hughes encountered distrust, skepticism and blistering criticism of U.S. policy. And at each stop, Hughes listened.

That's what this trip was about -- listening, as opposed to selling the United States and its policies in some publicity campaign conjured up by Madison Avenue. That meant Hughes heard some unpleasant things about the United States. (San Antonio Express-News, 2005, p. 6B)

Note the implicit comparison to Charlotte Beers and the advertising approach.

While the “listening” tours were attempts to symbolize a U.S. more open to the thoughts and feelings of others, some news accounts, particularly outside the U.S. also emphasized a more concrete, practical utility:

Her answers might have not placated most of them, but her friendly demeanour appeared to have broken down some walls among the 100 or so students who watched in the auditorium as their fellow students grilled the visitor on stage.

Some saw it as a signal that America is finally willing to listen to Muslims.

Ms Risqi, who was one of the students selected to participate in the dialogue, told The Straits Times: 'I don't think what she said changed how we feel about America, but at least she can bring home our views of the country. (Asmarani, 2005)

That is, given her close contact with the president, her listening was not a mere symbolic show, but a direct channel to public policy.

Further emphasizing the interpersonal character of her vision of public diplomacy, Hughes has also encouraged the use of citizen ambassadors, who can bring a less official, more emotional, aspect to international communication, as in this account from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal:

Quickly adapting to his ambassadorial role, O'Brien decided to give an impromptu speech. "I am from Wisconsin," he recalls saying to the group. "Many of you have never heard of Wisconsin; we have more cows than people. And before I came here, I had never met any of you. But now I am ready to embrace you."

At that point, O'Brien said, the host of the party strode across the room and wrapped him up in a bear hug.

O'Brien said this encounter was just one of the many examples of small conversations that he had on the trip that can add up to make a big difference in how America is perceived abroad. (Reilly, 2005)

Thus it is not only Hughes (who regularly frames herself as an average American homemaker) who represents the personal side of the U.S. but “actual” average Americans.

The Hughes approach, however, has not completely avoided the charge that it might be a cynical use of the interpersonal for propagandistic purposes, as in this account in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"One of the things that came through (was) that America is perceived as talking at people rather than listening to them," she said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch in her suite of offices at the State Department, where she now serves as undersecretary for public affairs and public diplomacy.

"And so I felt it was important early in my tenure here for me to travel and reach out and listen to people -- both for me to be able to hear and learn and understand better, but also to show a willingness for America to listen."

Critics say that's precisely what she hasn't done.

They say Hughes is still in spin mode, deploying the media skills that served President George W. Bush so well in her years as his communications director but that are more problematic when it comes to friction over the U.S. war on terrorism and its role in the Middle East.