Dream with me

Public Diplomacy and Music

I've had a pretty productive morning, overall. I've taken notes, written out a plan for my project title alteration and I even know what I am going to say in this meeting Friday! Check me out.

So currently I am downloading until I get bored then I am off to the Reference section again. I have no excuse not to go because I've brought all of my notes and everything!

Check out the organisational Skillz! HA!

Anyway, after leaving the library last night I retired to Halls to listen to my fab new music. I saw Nadine very briefly (on her way to getting stoned, I gather. Big surprise there) and gave her back the �5 I owed her from Monday.

Hmm...With any luck Dad will put that money into my Barclays account in time for my going out to lunch with Lorna tomorrow...

You know what the thing I love about this Jpop (JRock, Kpop, C-rock ect) is? It doesn't sound like anything you get in the Western market. It is thoroughly unique.

Granted, if you just listen to it in the background of doing something else, it sounds like any other ballad, but when you listen to the structure, the melody and - of course - the lyrics, it's unlike anything you can buy in a British HMV.

(Unless it's a really big HMV, in which case you probably could buy some of this stuff...)

I've just had a look though. A Gackt album will cost �20 because they have to be imported from America or Japan. Curses...

Why must I live in a culturally barren country like England? Curse you music Exec. type people!

Anyway, I've been doing lots of reading on Public Diplomacy and have come to a conclusion. The American government is totally incapable of effective marketing.

Company's like Cola, Pepsi, Nike and McDonalds have successfully manoeuvred around the rampant Anti-Americanism that characterises modern Europe and are going from strength to strength. Even the French who are notoriously isolationist (if it's not French, apparently, it's no good) are buying BigMc's and watching cheesy Rom Coms in their droves.

So why does a country spending aprox. $1 billion on Public Diplomacy (essentially the act of marketing a country and it's ideals) utterly fail to make any inroads whatsoever?

Bush's domestic approval rating is in the low 30's and I think if they polled internationally it would be even lower. Of course, this President doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks. Only $5 million is spent each year on international opinion polling by the American government. This, (according to Gibbs - Realities of War) does not even cover the research costs of an average US Senate campaign.

As a result the US government has missed a critical point about the citizens of foreign powers. We are not like you and we do not like being told what to think.

My project investigates the impact of Public Diplomacy for the most part but I am also comparing the two predominant strategies - Briefing the Press and Being the Press.

Take China or the EU, for example. If they are in a trade dispute or are engaged in talks with Iran they 'spin'. They brief the press; they give exclusives to friendly journalists and - more recently - Bloggers and try to get their message across in a media blitz.

The American model however, is very different. The American model, instead of utilising existing media and 'spin' tactics, simply create new media designed to be nothing but Pro-American. Take for example, Radio Sawa, which broadcasts in much of the Middle East from Washington and Dubai. It's mission statement includes the lines;

"Radio Sawa is committed to...respect for the intelligence and culture of it's audience, and a style that is upbeat, modern and forward-looking."

I love the nicely ambiguous phrasing of "Forward-looking".

The future is Bright. The future is American! (Loud, stupid, rude and armed baby!)

Another example is the fatally flawed "Shared Values" add campaign created under Charlotte Beers during her ill-fated tenure at the State Department. The campaign was designed to show slick television ads of "Happy Muslim-Americans" (Arguably a modern oxy-moron, like American Military Intelligence) on TV's in Islamic countries.

The project flopped though because countries such as Egypt refused to let the State Department buy air time on their state-run networks.

I can't imagine why these adverts could offend countries who have recently found themselves on the Bush Hit List and who are standing right in the firing line between Bush and Iran. Can't imagine why they would have a problem with playing host to advertising that basically says "We're blowing your neighbours to shit and you may very well be next but don't worry, because these smug American bastards who have likely never even set foot in your country in their lives are going to wave to you from this screen and extol the virtues of Liberty (illegally wire-tapping citizens), Democracy (a corrupt corporate system) and a Whopper meal for only 65,081.27 IRR (Iran Rials)."

Yeah! That is bound to win them over, isn't it?

All together this disastrous attempt at swaying public opinion cost $15 million. How many schools could that have rebuilt? How many kids could it have put through collage? How many free health clinics, youth outreach programmes or cultural exchanges could that $15 million have funded?

American Public Diplomacy efforts are doomed to failure as long as this attitude of 'Our way or the Highway continues to dominate thinking.

I have a theory (well, not so much a theory as a ramble) that America is making up for it's lack of an Imperial past. I mean, it was part of an Empire but it never had one all it's own. It was deprived as a child.

Wow, I didn't mean to give you guys an essay there but hey, if I have to read all this crap I may as well make you suffer through it too. Misery loves company, and all that.

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