Update on How the World Views America

MS. NISBET: Good morning, I'd like to welcome back Keith Reinhard, President of Business for Diplomatic Action and Chairman of DDB Worldwide Communications. We also have with us Simon Anholt, Author of the Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index. And Mitch Eggers, COO of GMI.

They're here today to give us the latest updates on National Brands and how they affect global opinion. And again, I'd like to welcome back Keith and welcome both you, Simon and Mitch. We’ll have opening remarks by Mr. Reinhard, pass it on and then we'll open it up for questions.

Please state your name and affiliation before asking your questions.

MR. REINHARD: Very good. Thank you, Kim, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for giving us your time and attention this morning. I'll be quite brief because I want Simon to be able to talk in some detail about his newest study. You have an overview in your press kit.

Just to give you a brief progress report on business for diplomatic action, some of you attended our previous briefing and some of you did not. We are making progress in our listening. As you know, we believe that listening is the first and very most important part of any communication or brand-transforming process. And we've been doing our own listening in business roundtables in Australia and Western Europe and also in the United States.

A series of one-on-one interviews by John Zogby who's on our advisory board and that will be released in a month's time -- forty-two U.S. business leaders giving their impression on anti-American sentiment and how it may affect U.S. business now and in the future. And all I can tell you at this point in time, because it's still being analyzed, is that on a five-point scale of importance, U.S. business leaders are giving it a 3.5, so they're saying this is serious.

And they're also saying generally that business does have a role to play in transforming the image of the United States around the world. But we're also listening to all of the other syndicated researchers, those surveys that you have had access to and you'll find also on our website, if you need further detail.

And out of all this listening, has come -- emerged our current four-point strategy for going forward. The first strategy is to sensitize American to the problem. There is a great lack of knowledge and lack of interest on the part of many people in the United States. A BBC poll at the end of last year showed that 70 percent of the U.S. population believes that the U.S. has a positive image throughout the world. So we need to sensitize Americans to the problem and we're doing that through briefings, through roundtables with businesses and even through further distribution of our World Citizens Guide, which has been included in your packet, primarily designed for young people traveling abroad.

The second point in our strategy is to change or transform those attitudes and behaviors that need to be changed. Again, this is the whole point of the World Citizens Guide to say, you're not in Kansas anymore and it will be better if you don't compare everything to the way it is back in the United States. And World Citizens briefings to businesses and now we even have a prototype World Citizenship Guide for Kids at a very early level to try and get turnkey curricula into the primary schools to sensitize American children to the world outside of the United States.

But beyond that, changing our own attitude toward visitors, for example. We have -- we're working with the travel industry which is suffering. International arrivals are down 30 percent from 2000 levels and there may be many reasons for this, although the currency exchange would have you believe that they should be flooding through our stores and our shores. One of the specific recommendations we're making is that the hospitality industry in the United States be engaged by the government to train immigration officers in how to be a little more personable, a little more welcoming.

The third point in our -- the third strategy is to build upon positive perceptions that exist. In our listening, we do find many qualities and attributes of the United States to be still held in positive regard and this is one of the reasons we're so interested in Simon and what his survey will tell us. We can build on those positives.

And the fourth point is to create and construct new bridges of understanding and cooperation and respect through business-to-business initiatives. As an example, you may have read a press release from a few months ago, where we said, "U.S. business ought to consider joining together to out-recruit bin Laden." And our premise was based on the fact that so many young Arab and Muslim youth who might be inclined toward western ways do not really have ready access to the United States or to western ideas.

U.S. business understands recruiting. And U.S. business could join together to provide alternatives to the mullah's brand for many of these young Arab and Muslim youth and that has had a lot of immediate support from embassies in the Middle East or from the Middle East and we are now working with elements or reaching out to elements of the private sector in the Middle East states to see if we can join together to provide alternatives to what they are now being offered by the other brand.

In my testimony, if you saw it, this was part of the Q&A of my testimony in Congress last year, when the Chairman asked if there was anything I disagreed with in the 9/11 report, I said, yes, there was one paragraph and that was where the Commissioner said: "All bin Laden offers these young people is death and violence." And we said that is clearly not true. He offers them a form of hope, of dignity, membership in an elite club and we need to offer alternatives.

What Simon is -- why Simon is so interesting to us, he's part of our listening, of course, and we want to tune in to Simon Anholt and his report. I've been a fan of Simon's for a long time. He wrote a wonderful little book called "Brand America," and the last chapter really very carefully prescribes what the United States as a brand must do. And that's what really Business for Diplomatic Action is trying to do. We're especially interested in his idea of using the word brand for this problem. There is an aversion, as you know, in Washington and other places to the use of the word "brand" because brand is seen as spin and hype and superficial. And yet, in conversations, Simon and I have had, there is still no better way to describe what needs to happen here than to say we need to think of it as a brand because brands exist, as you know, in the minds of people and so, there is a perception of America as a brand already.

In our experience over many years of working with brands, brands can usually be defined, strong brands, by the right combination of three elements. The first of which is a strong point of view as to why we exist, what's important. Out of that flows a promise which is often implied or sometimes explicit. And those two -- the point of view and the promise -- cloaked or garbed in an attractive brand personality. Based on all the research we see now, the world -- many people in the world perceive America's point of view as our way is the best way. And the implied promise coming out of that is we will impose it on you. And this is wrapped in a personality which is seen as self-centered and not, in any way, a partner. That could be changed and we could change it in the same way that we would change a brand that needed some reputation restoration.

So with that, turn it over to my friend and colleague, Mr. Anholt.

MR. ANHOLT: I'm here as a pollster, but I should explain that I'm not really a pollster. My job, my day job is as a government advisor. And I advise the British Government and have done for several years, as well as perhaps more interesting, a large number of poor and developing countries on their brand strategies. Keith mentions that the word "brand" is a tricky word. And it is, indeed, a tricky word. But the reason that we continue to use it is because it is the best possible metaphor and explanation for how people see countries.

Everybody today knows that the views of populations of general populations are of critical importance to countries, whether they're trying to get more tourists or more investment or more respect or more interest. Whatever it is they're trying to do, the views of large populations are tremendously important.

Brand strategy, as practiced by the better corporations in the private sector, contains a set of tools and approaches and methodologies which governments would do very well to take a look at and see if they can adopt in some way. And so what I spend my life doing is advising the governments of countries -- as I say, mainly poor ones -- on how they can use some of the tools and methodologies as practiced by the better corporations to understand and to manage their reputations with publics because in the world in which we live it's of critical importance. And it is, I would say, the primary responsibility of any government in the 21st century to be the guardians of their national brand because almost nothing is more important.

Now, how do you analyze a country as a brand? Well, we've discovered that this is pretty much self-defense. People around the world, and that includes all of us, look at countries in very much the same way as we look at products and its brands. In our minds, we throw together a whole lot of attributes, positive and negative, about countries and we think about them in terms of a simple narrative. We all do that, no matter how intelligent or clever we are. We don't do it about our own country, of course, because we have a much more complex view of our own country. And perhaps our near neighbors, the story is a little more complex. But just about every other country in the world, there are so many of them and the world we live in is so complex that the only way that we can navigate through that complexity is by having fixed in our minds a simple little narrative about what kind of country that is and that's a brand. So branding or brand management for countries is pure self-defense.

If we, as a country, don't do our best to make sure that that narrative is as true and as fair and as positive as possible, we'll end up with one that we don't like or, indeed, we may end up with one that somebody else gives us -- some enemy. The United States is particularly good at giving other people brands that perhaps, they don't want. "Axis of evil" is one this bring to mind. That's a brand that's probably going to -- it probably has a half-life of about 10,000 years.

So bearing in mind that it's a question of simple narratives, the simple narrative about a country is normally composed of about six main components and we use a hexagon, which you'll find reproduced in the report there to help to break this narrative down into its components and they are: Tourism, the way the country advertises to tourists. It's particularly important because if people do visit a country as tourists and they have a good experience, our figures are starting to prove, together with the work that we're doing with GMI, that that effects people's perception of the whole of the rest of the country. If you've been to a country, you've visited it, and you've had a good time, you start to see the government's political decisions in a better light, you start to favor that country's products. You start to think more highly of the people from that country. And by the same token, if you've had a bad tourist experience, you're much less likely to approve of the government's policy decisions, buy its products and all the rest of it.

The exports are increasingly a powerful vector of national identity. Countries like Germany and Japan, particularly, are well-known around the world today very largely because of the reputation of their branded products. What we believe today about a country like Japan is very largely created by our experience with Sony and Toshiba and Toyota, so they are a primary vector of national identity today. And if we're looking at ways of managing or, indeed, even changing the reputation of the country, then those corporate, those commercial ambassadors are a very good place to start. And for a particular reason, which we'll come onto later, they're also the path of least resistance when we're talking about changing people's views.

The governance, of course, is critically important. Governments have an almost unique power to change the story about a country, depending on what their decisions are. The problem with governments is that it's very hard for people like us to control them. I would have loved to have rung up Tony Blair and said to him, "Listen, Tony, helping the Americans to invade Iraq is not going to be very good for brand Britain," and perhaps I even did try.

But even though the Public Diplomacy Strategy Board on which I sit in the UK is charged with managing the reputation of Britain, we don't extend that far. So generally speaking, governance is something which the nation has to battle against in order to create a good reputation, rather than working with. I wish it were different.

There's a point here which is clumsily called "investment in immigration." That's basically the business-to-business communications that the country does, how it advertises for foreign direct investment and also to what extent it's an attractive destination for people to go and live and work for longer periods. The U.S., of course, scores pretty highly here and that hasn't changed very much in recent years.

Culture and heritage is tremendously important because it's the part that gives depth and richness and character to a country. And if you score -- the culture is measured in the Anholt-GMI Index on two levels: The popular culture where America is still extremely strong; and on cultural heritage, which is a mix of people's perceptions of the natural patrimony, the cultural patrimony of the country and also the high culture -- the opera, the museums and all the rest of it, where the United States' score is catastrophically falling. It is 25th out of 25. The world sees America as being a culture-free zone. And this, to me, is the most worrying point of the whole survey. We knew that America was going to score poorly on governance because we know that current American foreign policy is very unpopular. What we weren't expecting is America to come bottom of the list on culture.

We'll come back to that. And then finally, last but certainly not least, the people themselves. Very often, one forms one's opinion, one's brand about a country on the basis of the people one comes across, either the famous people through the media or the people as represented through the popular culture. If you visit the country, the people you meet or if people are traveling from that country the way you meet them in your homeland: The stars, the politicians, the media figures and all the rest of them. And here, America is not performing as well as it should.

So all of those six areas together, two important things to say. First of all, they are connected in people's minds, as I said before. If you have a good positive perception of one part, through personal experience, it tends to make you more likely to approve of the other parts. And the other point to bear in mind is that if you want to change the nation's brand, some of these are easier to tackle than others. And the two, which are the paths of least resistance, tend to be culture and commerce or in this particular diagram, exports and there are very good reasons for that. Culture, because its popularly believed not to have a hidden agenda. Remember, one of the things that I described at length in my book "Brand America" was how American cultural diplomacy helped to win the Cold War. Unfortunately, the belief that the Administration is that once the Cold War was over, America no longer had to keep trying on cultural diplomacy and I think we're seeing the effects of that today.

In my own country, the UK, if you measure the temperature around the offices of the British Council, our cultural representatives abroad in a country like Iraq, you'll find the temperature is quite warm. If you measure the temperature around the British Embassy, you'll find it's rather cold. It's simply easier to make friends through culture. And it's a trick that the U.S. is missing, that they're not investing more in cultural diplomacy.

And business, which is the reason why BDA exists and why I wholeheartedly support what they're doing because those very experienced, very competent and according to our survey, highly admired American businessmen and businesswomen are the diplomatic corps on the ground in a hundred countries. And there -- it's easier for them to make friends than it is for policy mongers because this is soft power. They're asking people to buy their product. It's entirely voluntary. Nobody has to buy Coca-Cola if they don't want to. So already the basis for conversation is on a much friendlier footing.

And that's basically the way in which the model works. And the results, what I've referred to here and there that, as I say, some are bad and we expected them to be bad -- the policy. America -- Brand America may well get over the negative rankings in foreign policy. It has done in the past. America's unpopular foreign policy is not a new phenomenon. It's something that America has practiced on a number of occasions in the past. The question in all of our minds today is whether the unpopularity of American foreign policy is an iterative or whether it's a cumulative effect. In other words, are we looking at episodic unpopularity -- Vietnam, Korea, Iraq -- or are we looking at cumulative -- Vietnam, plus Korea, plus Iraq -- in which case America is in very deep trouble, indeed.

The governance, as I say, there may not be a great deal that one can do about that. But I was asked earlier on today what would be your advise to Karen Hughes. And my advice to Karen Hughes is three words. It's the three words: "If you like." Those are the words which America in its history has never uttered and does not utter today. And if America wants to improve its reputation in the world today, it has to make a policy, a deliberate policy in every field in every point of the hexagon to follow up every comment it makes with those three magic words: "If you like." And at that point, I will* pass on to our colleague.

Mitch.

MR. EGGERS: Hi. My name is Mitch Eggers. I'm with GMI. And I have a very few and short remarks. We play a supporting role. We are a company that enables and helps the listening. We have taken the internet and built large panels around the world of consumers and we've granted access to those consumers to BDA because we like the agenda, the research and the ideas behind that initiative and we've made our platform, software and our panelists available to Simon for him to test and measure a lot of his ideas about the branding of nations. And we continue to support those efforts because we believe, as the globe becomes more interconnected and as the internet stitches together the information flows and as companies and governments pursue different strategies, we need better tools. And so we're an enabler for those types of initiatives.

We also believe that Keith is correct, you can change it. We're at a position in history where most of Central and Eastern Europe have embraced the marketplace. China has embraced the marketplace in open information systems to a very large degree. And the ability to use the media to think about your brand, to think about the messaging abroad and to measure its effect and the opinions of large body politics is crucial to the future of the marketplace economies, the importance of consumers in those economies and how our governments interact. So we're an enabler and a supporter and we're thrilled to be part of the initiatives.

MR. REINHARD: Before questions, may I just add a couple of points to what Simon and Mitch have said which I think are especially important to American audiences and the American journalists here. Simon's research shows, as he pointed out, to tourism there is a body of evidence that says, in spite of sometimes our perceived arrogance, those who visit the United States have a better impression of the United States than those who have never been here. And so we're working very hard to increase the number of international arrivals to the United States. We are still down 30 percent from 2000 levels.

In 2000 the United States had a 7.4 share of international arrivals. Now, we have a 6 percent share. One percent increase in international arrivals means an increase of 7.6 million additional arrivals, $12.3 billion of additional spending in the United States; 150,000; new jobs, 3.3 billion in additional payroll and 2.1 billion in tax revenues. So it is very much in our interest in improving the image of the United States to get more people to come here. And connected to that is the need for a much friendlier visa policy and obviously we're hoping that the federal government understands the need to make it much easier to come to the United States and then a more welcoming presence once people arrive.

I had something I wanted to add to something Mitch said and I've just had a brain freeze here, so --

MR. EGGERS: Media.

MR. REINHARD: Media, yes. Thank you. Those of you who write for your television stations and your newspapers and magazines, have such an effect on how we are perceived as a society. A study in Germany of 21 media over a two-year period showed only two of 21 had positive things to say about the United States. And during the same period, almost all reporting on China was positive. Clearly, we need to find -- and we think maybe we can do this within the business community -- more fascinating stories that you can get your editors interested in about what U.S. business is doing, perhaps shared problems with businesspeople in your own markets because the evidence from media analysis and content analysis shows such a high correlation between popular opinion in your country and the way U.S. is reported. So if we can help provide you with stories which will fascinate you and fascinate your editors about perhaps -- in Germany, for example, I know that some executives we've talked to in Germany are concerned about diversity. They're concerned about accountability and we have many U.S. executives who could meet one-on-one and have these kinds of bridge building and, I hope, newsworthy conferences.

MS. NISBET: We can open this up to questions now. Again, this is being transcribed. Right, John? We're going to transcribe this, correct? So if you could please state your name and affiliation before asking your question.

QUESTION: I'm sorry. I just want to ask you if you can repeat those figures.

MS. NISBET: "Mercedes?

QUESTION: Mercedes Gallego, El Correo Vocento a(Inaudible) figures you gave about the consequence of the one percent different?

MR. EGGERS: A one-percent increase in share of travel, in share of international arrivals.

QUESTION: Are those figures about the consequence --

MR. REINHARD: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- in jobs and --

MR. REINHARD: 7.6 million additional arrivals; $12.3 billion of additional spending; 150.4 thousand additional jobs, 3.3 billion in additional payroll and 2.1 billion in additional tax revenues.

Stuart.

QUESTION: Stuart Elliott from The New York Times. How do you either -- a question for both of you, I guess. How do you sort of get at this whole this with which Keith touched on, this whole issue of brand -- using the term "brand" inevitably for bringing up the idea that this is all about spin and hype. You know, the State Department tried already once with, I guess, maybe one or two people in the job to try to change perceptions of America, particularly in the Mideast and both those efforts were doomed pretty much because, you know, people attach that label "Madison Avenue" to it and they don't mean it in a nice way. It's sort of an epithet used to sort of conjure up the hucksters and the tricksters and the snake oil salesmen. So I'm curious as to using the term "brand" and how do you feel that the involvement of advertising professionals can make this situation better, as opposed to to works?

MR. REINHARD: I'll follow and confirm.

MR. ANHOLT: (Laughter.)We have this debate, a great deal, Stuart, of course. The fact is that the word "brand" has a very bad brand and it needs to be rebranded. The fact of the matter is that anybody who understands how good corporations work and how they use their brands to inform their strategy will realize that this has got very little to do with spin and gloss. It's also got very little to do with advertising. And I think part of the problem of a great many failed nation brand initiatives is that people seem to imagine they can change the brand by buying media and putting messages in the media. This is patently absurd. If you're a country with a poor or a negative brand and you spend $100 million buying space in the world's media to tell people that they're wrong about you, this will only confirm their prejudices. They'll think you're a bad country and a stupid country for wasting all that money, because consumers know how advertising works. All over the world, they understand that you've bought that space so you can shoot your mouth off about yourself.

How do countries form their reputations? Well, by the things the country does and the way it does them, first and foremost by the things it makes and the way it makes them, by the company it keeps, by the things other countries say about it, by the way people think the country looks. And last and least, by the things that the country says about itself.

'Previous unsuccessful attempts to manage brand America were characterized by a lot of talk and a lot of communication. This is best ignored by the target audience and, at worst, it confirms their prejudices.

Every country at some level gets the reputation it deserves and a reputation can only be earned. It can't be constructed through communications. So if we can get people -- and we hope to be able to do that -- to understand that that's what brand strategy is. It's understanding how to communicate the reality of the product in such a way that people understand it for what it is and how it affects them, then we think we'll get over that. But you can't spend your way out of a bad reputation. You need to fix the product.

MR. REINHARD: Let me -- I do confirm what Simon said. When we were -- our choice, Stuart, is to come up with a new name, a new label for what we're doing or educate people to what the brand strategy and brand construction process is really all about.

A brand -- and we've chosen the latter -- Karen Hughes has said that she wants to enlist the creativity of the private sector. And if and when that happens, that's a chance to say, okay, if a brand were in trouble, if a commercial brand were in trouble, what would we do?

The first thing we would do is listen very carefully to every stakeholder, not just to what they say, but what's behind what they say, what they mean. And then we would take all of those perceptions and divide them neatly into two parts first -- all the positive perceptions. Those are the ones we want to build on. All the negative perceptions, which we then divide in half. Which of those negative perceptions are true, in which case, we have to change the product. Which of those negative perceptions are not true, in which case we have to clear up the communication.

The fundamental premise is, to paraphrase Simon, a brand is not what you say. A brand is who you are, what you do, how you do it and why you do it. And those questions have to be answered in terms of redefining America at home and abroad.

Now, we're also very happy on the point of the perceptions, which are -- the negative perceptions, which are not true. There is a role for public relations and there is a role for those of you around this table.

The recent focus groups in Egypt, people were asked how much aid do you suppose the United States has given to Egypt over the last 10 years? And people said, I don't know, maybe a few million -- $7 billion. Okay. That's a perception that can be cleared up with communications, public relations and working with the media. But essentially, Stuart, we're going to have to explain to people that a brand is not "hypes" been, not what you say, it is who you are, who you decide to be, what you decide to do, how and why.

Do you think we can succeed Stuart?

QUESTION: Good luck. (Laughter).

QUESTION: I'm sorry, there are a few personal* questions, which is our reputation. Mercedes Gallago* from (inaudible), Spain.

I wonder if you are working with the government would come here to, in particular, as you mentioned so much. And what are your expectations on how things change? Because, I guess, at this moment, one of the main things is affecting the United States reputation on the world is its foreign policy, which is -- sounds very hard to change at this time. And others are also some -- other measures are difficult to think you're going to get a response, like the friendly visas for (inaudible), that they're focused in the world of terrorism.

MR. REINHARD: Well, first of all, we see the appointment of Karen Hughes as a very positive step because we know that her -- first of all, she's very smart. We know that she is highly regarded by the President. This moves public diplomacy up to a very, very prominent place on the national agenda and that has to be good.

We also are very encouraged by her public statements in the last few days that she is going to travel. She is going to listen. She is going to enlist the creativity of the private sector and also that she has said that this is not going to happen over night. This is a long term -- Americans are not very patient as a whole. And this is going to take a long time. This does not just happen overnight. As we have said, this has been building over the last, at least two decades, and it's going to take a while, working with all sectors in many different ways to reverse this trend.

So we have not met with her. She is aware of us. She said positive things about us. We have worked with -- at other levels of the State Department, and we are ready to work in whatever way we can with the government. We're very encouraged by all of what has happened in the last few days.

But our focus, Business for Diplomatic Action, is on mobilizing the business community because we believe the reach and resourcefulness of American multinationals is a tremendous power for public diplomacy if we can get it mobilized.

QUESTION: But how are you going to change those things? You said you -- sometimes it's a matter of clearing things up and sometimes it's a matter of changing the policy. How can* business change the policy?

MR. REINHARD: Well, let's say, for example, if American businessmen thought that the current visa policy was hurting, as the tourism industry is saying, we need a friendlier visa policy. Okay. If the government is influenced by business people, we could get a friendlier visa policy because U.S. business says we need one. Or let's say that U.S. business decided that certain aspects of anti-American sentiment were hurting their business and we needed to rethink certain ways we behave around the world, I think Washington would listen to the business community.

So while it is not our intent to -- certainly business cannot dictate foreign policy, I mean I'm not saying that. But we can influence public policy, such as the visa thing. Business for Diplomatic Action was one of many enlisted to create a one-year postponement of a very restrictive biometric requirement, which was supposed to go into effect October 26, 2004, and we got a one-year postponement on that requirement and we're working hard to get another postponement. So we think we can influence public policy in that way.

MR. EGGERS: There's one other aspect I'll weigh in there on -- give you my perspective in understanding the opinions of large populations. You can look at history and ask the populations in Western Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe how they face about brand America -- Simon Anholt's conceptualization of that -- with regard to the removal of the wall and the transition marketplace economies. There's an effort made by the United States, heavily invested in, that had a lot to do with cultural branding and a message during the Cold War.

It may be that those techniques are far more receptive and more far more effective than an invasion. In other words, there are historical influences and changes that the United States Government has pursued, some of which are far better received than others by the indigenous populations and local groups that were affected. It's important to understand what they like about them, what they don't like about them and what works. It's about listening.

QUESTION: Mauro Suttora. I'm from Italy. I understand that the final results will be available on Monday online.

MR. REINHARD: Do you have the final results?

MR. ANHOLT: No, no, not in this one. On Monday, yes.

QUESTION: On Monday, online. But there are -- countries, the consumers were asked come from only 10 countries.

MR. ANHOLT: Yes.

QUESTION: Can we know something more about this? How many rich countries, poor countries?

MR. ANHOLT: I'll let Mitch answer this specifically. In general terms, the reason why we selected those 10 countries was because they represented spending power. One of the -- remember --

QUESTION: (Inaudible).

MR. ANHOLT: Spending power -- they represented spending power.

QUESTION: Yeah, but what countries are they?

MR. ANHOLT: They're basically OECD countries. Have you got the list there?

MR. EGGERS: Yes. The list of countries are Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, India, South Korea, China, Denmark and the United States.

MR. ANHOLT: Now we do actually poll more countries. We poll 18. Those are the ones that we use for the rankings because they represent the best cross-section of reasonably high spending and influential public opinion. As the survey goes on -- we're doing this quarterly and this is the second one -- we're going to be including more and more countries in our poll. But those seem to be the ones that give the best overall ranking of where brands lie.

Most of the countries in the survey, they want to know what the economic cultural and social impact of their brand values is, and by polling these countries we find we got the most representative sample.

The countries that we've selected to look at, the 25, are based on wanting to have the key, the most prominent countries there that we could give a result to and that's expanded since the first one. We had 11 the first time and now we've got 25. But also, increasingly, my desire is to get more and more developing countries in there so we can start mapping how their brand images are improving -- we hope -- which is why we started including countries like Mexico, Russia, Turkey and so forth. Egypt, Czech Republic.

QUESTION: Forgive me, I'm not understanding very well. Do you poll 18 countries about countries about the image they have on this --

MR. ANHOLT: Yes, about their perception of 25 countries. So the panel is drawn from 18 countries, but the results here are only calculated on the basis of those 10, which Mitch listed.

QUESTION: And the list of the --

MR. ANHOLT: The 25. Well, I can certainly give you that now, but you'll have it in the survey. Would you like me to give you those now?

QUESTION: That would be nice. Please.

MR. ANHOLT: Am I allowed to give the order in which they come?

MR. EGGERS: No, I think that's embargoed until August 1 when it goes on the website.

MR. ANHOLT: Right. Okay. Well, I'll give them in no particular order then.

MR. EGGERS: (Inaudible) can write two different stories. (Laughter.)

MR. ANHOLT: The 25 countries in the list are: The United Kingdom; Sweden, which came top in the first nation brand index -- Sweden was ranked the most powerful brand; Italy; Switzerland; Japan; Egypt; South Korea; the Czech Republic; Russia; Australia; France; Canada; Germany; the USA; New Zealand; the Netherlands; Spain; Brazil; Ireland; India; Egypt; Poland; South Africa; China and Turkey. Those are the 25.

QUESTION: In no particular order.

MR. ANHOLT: In absolutely no order whatsoever, that's randomized.

QUESTION: Excuse me. I (inaudible) of Italy. I understand the model and everything, but how reliable do you think these rankings really are? In other words, it seems to me that there's got to be a component, that's just an emotional component why the U.S. comes in 25th in terms of cultural and heritage overall. I don't think that most people really think that that's the case. So how do you deal with the fact that --

MR. ANHOLT: Just a minute, the whole point about this survey is that we want to find out the emotional stuff. There are a dozen, a hundred surveys out there which look at the facts, which look at inward investment, that look at tourism and all the rest of it. There's a superfluidity of data about that stuff.

But if you remember what the American banker, JP Morgan, once said in about 1937. He said, "A man always buys things for two reasons." He said a man, because in 1937 they hadn't invented women. (Laughter.) "A man always buys things for two reasons: A good reason and the real reason."

Now there are lots of surveys out there looking at the good reasons why somebody might want to invest in one of these countries are go on holiday there and buy some products. I'm interested in the real reasons. I want to find out what's in people's hearts because that's a very reliable indicator of how they're going to follow-up with behavior. So it's precisely that, it's the difference between our ranking and the categorical -- the reality rankings that's so interesting.

For example, France is the world's number one tourist destination in terms of visitors. Spain is the second. The U.S. is the third. Where they feature in tourism in the Nation Brand's Index is totally different, so it suggests a number of things. It suggests that the aspirational value of some countries is much greater than the reality of the people going there. Now that's a clear message to those countries that the potential for far greater number of tourists is there -- the goodwill towards that country, the interest in it, the aspirational value.

But people are behaving in a different way. The chances are that if all other conditions are equal, that's the way they would also spend.

The Nation Brand's Index is not an end in itself. A country doesn't hope -- feel that it's achieved its aim if it comes top of the list. What this shows is the areas where it's going to be easiest for them to expand their influence and to progress because the goodwill, the positive perception is already there waiting for it. And it shows the areas where it's going to be hardest for them to change anything because people don't believe it. That's the purpose of it.

QUESTION: Thank you.

QUESTION: Hi. Kevin Alison with the Financial Times. You mentioned the cultural heritage is one of the places -- the U.S. coming in dead last. And then you also mentioned some things that you could -- I think you mentioned things you'd propose to do about it, such as trying to talk to Americans who are traveling overseas. It just seems that if you're trying to call this brand America, if you're a company with a brand, you have a lot of control over the product that the outside world gets to see. Whereas, if you're a country like the United States trying to improve your brand image, I mean how do you propose to actually -- what do you propose to do to get down to the kind of ground level where you've got actual people going overseas who are helping people to form impressions.

I mean, it seems like it's an awful difficult task, much difficult than any company would have in controlling its products.

MR. ANHOLT: I'm going to let Keith, because he's burning to answer that one and he had some very good answers on that in the corporate sphere. If I may allow myself to go first because I wanted to just make a general response to that.

You are absolutely right; it is extremely difficult. And the fact is that in my experience of working with governments around the world, it seldom is possible for a country to actually change its brand. These are deep underlying prejudices that we're talking about here.

As I say, nation brands are like starlight. Any astronomer will tell you that the stars you think you see in the sky died millions of years ago. It's only the light that has reached you now. Today, the modern image of Scotland was single-handedly created by Sir Walter Scott two hundred years ago, that's how slowly these images move. So it's simply unrealistic to imagine that one can reverse a decline in a nation's image overnight, to do it thoroughly and to do it properly, so that you can look back and you can say we fixed that, it's going to be 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

Now that doesn't mean you can't do things straightaway and achieve some wind straightaway, and that's very much were BDA comes in. But the very first step has got to be to understand it, to understand exactly how people see this country or any other country. And that itself is very difficult because it's about abandoning your own cultural filters.

One of the things that the Nation Brand's Index shows incontrovertibly about America is that the criteria which Americans use to judge success are entirely different from the criteria that people in other cultures use. If you go by American criteria, America is top of every list. Clearly, the world does not share these perceptions because the criteria are different. You have to see yourself as others see you.

America's primary problem in all of this is it has a fixation of universality. It believes that the baseball World Series can be called the World Series, even though there are no foreign teams on it. There's a cigar shop down the road here, which is called the World's Greatest Cigar Shop because it's the best in New York, so it must be the best in America, so it must be the best in the world.

Now, we joke about this, but the fact of the matter is, America's primary problem is that it has this fixation of universality. Only when it has abandoned that will it start to be able to begin the process of fixing that problem, which is why I used those words "if you like" to understand that American has no God-given right to dictate terms on other thing to anybody. It has to be here, with all that massive power, at the service of other people if they want it.

Now that, you're absolutely right in suggesting, is a very long process. It's generational change. It's educational change. And BDA, quite rightly, are going down to primary school level to talk about fixing this. And in the strategies that I create for some of the countries I work for, it almost always starts with education. Because to make a population more welcoming or whatever, you are talking about a generation's worth of change. We can do some things in the short term but the process is a very long one.

MR. REINHARD: That was very good.

MR. ANHOLT: Thank you. (Laughter).

MR. REINHARD: I was reminded, seeing things through others' eyes and the fact that we rank number one when we're looking through U.S. eyes. One business executive in a roundtable in Millburn* -- we were talking about the American work ethic. And he said, you know, "You people are so proud of your vacation deficit. The fact that you take no vacations and you're working all through the weekend. And we see that as gross inefficiency." Looking at that aspect through America and non-American eyes.

I'll ask one of my interns. Do you remember that comic on Comedy Central, who looks like Mike Tyson. What was his name?

INTERN: Patrice O'Neal.

MR. REINHARD: Patrice O'Neal, and he did a bit the other night -- he said, "We're so arrogant, when we're in foreign countries, we say -- where are all these foreigners doing here." (Laughter.) And he went into the World Series. And we say, okay, Jack wins a championship -- he's a world champion -- of California.

MR. ANHOLT: There's an example. (Laughter.) From the survey, one of the -- the adjective most frequently selected by the people on our panel, on GMI's panel, to describe American people is "ambitious." And when I told some of my American colleagues about this, they said, oh, great, finally a good result. And I said, well, hold on -- "ambitious" isn't necessarily a good word in quite of the other cultures we come --

And one of the things that I've been doing with the nation branding is to use tools from anthropology to try to help people to understand little details like that -- what does "ambition" mean in America and what does it mean Guatemala? What does "democracy" mean in English and what does it mean when translated into Arabic?

MR. REINHARD: The job is so complex, as you point out. Early on, I asked Ambassador Tom Pickering for some advice. He's now with Boeing, as you know, but he was the Ambassador to Russia and to the United Nations. And when I told him what we were out to do he sighed and said, "My first advice is don't try to boil the ocean." You have to find a project, a test market and start to get some muscularity and build some models that then can precipitate other actions.

And so we know what the causes of this anti-American trend are and, yes, U.S. foreign policy still ranks number one at the moment. But close under that, according to our listening, is the arrogance or the perceived arrogance and the self-centeredness of the American people. We can change that. Two million Americans are employed by U.S. companies outside the United States. Sixty million outbound trips are made by Americans every year. Two hundred thousand young people study abroad every year. We can begin to make them aware of this problem and then sensitize them and actually change their behavior. Over time this will have an effect.

Now, if you just take one of our strategic paths, which is to change those behaviors which need to be changed, and we'll call that World Citizenship, starting with the very lowest levels if we can, creating awareness of cultures outside of the United States. In a National Geographic survey in 2002, four out of five Americans between 18 and 34 could not find Israel on a map. A third could not pinpoint the Pacific Ocean. So this is a job for education in the United States. We should reinstate geography and social studies, as opposed to deprioritizing them, which has been done.

Okay, then one step up is working with the business schools to say not only are we going to train you in business skills, but we're going to train you in diplomatic skills. So that when you get your job in the big multinational, you're also trained as a diplomat. And can you imagine -- now this is radical and I don't expect to sell this to anybody -- but can you imagine if in U.S. multinational companies, in order to get promoted above a certain level, you had to demonstrate fluency in a language other than English? This could happen. And that is changing behavior.

And then, going on to brief current U.S. international executives with world citizenship guidelines and possibly even providing -- some of the State Department has shown some interest in this -- possibly even providing models for Foreign Service Officers. Okay, that's one path. That's one thing we can do.

Another thing that . . .

MR. ANHOLT: Can I interrupt? I will personally design an anthropology course for five-year-olds.

MR. REINHARD: You're on.

MR. ANHOLT: I think that's essential.

MR. REINHARD: Is there going to be a charge for this because we are nonprofits? (Laughter.)

Okay, another path following Pickering's advice not to boil the ocean but to try some projects. The idea of out-recruiting bin Laden. The day after we announced that the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States contacted us and said you have correctly understood the allure that bin Laden has for these young people. And if there's anyway we can start to build bridges through business, to provide alternatives, and now we are reaching out to the private sector in the Gulf States to see if we can do that. That's another path.

And still another path, of all the Western European countries, Germany is in some ways the most anti-American and still the most willing to start building bridges with the American business community. And there are many organizations -- the German journalists will know their exact names -- I can't remember them all, but there's the Conrad Addenhour* Group. There is the Marshall* Plan Group and there's another group, a contemporary German American something.

But anyway, working with these people to bring German business leaders together with American business leaders, to not just have Americans show how it is to be done, but to discuss common problems, such as diversity, such as accountability. And also have the American business executives listen carefully, maybe there are some good ideas they could learn. So that's another bridge building process.

One German executive said -- when I said give me an example about our arrogance and imposing our way on you -- he said, "K-Mart," you know. "Our people do not enjoy getting up in the morning and getting out in their company street and singing the K-Mart song. It's not our way." (Laughter.) And yet, that was our imposition of an American way on theirs. So it's one thing at a time, many people working with many other like-minded organizations to bring a new result.

I don't have an easel here but I'm going to hold this up because this is a way we look at it. This is the sigmoid curve. Everybody knows what that is. And we use that to define the life cycle of a product, the life cycle of a career, a love affair -- you could be used to decide the life cycle of a life. You start, we wobble a little bit, then you start to really wax and then in the end you begin to wane.

The good news for brands and the good news for organizations, and I would say is the good news for America, is that there is life beyond the curve by beginning a new curve. And this is the way we described it to the Congress. The new curve is important in two ways. One, core values of the brand must be sustained even reemphasized as you start the new curve. What are the core values of America? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness -- those need to be reemphasized.

But what needs to be changed? In the commercial world, McDonald's understood that what got them here is not going to get them there. They had to have a new menu. The competitive set had changed. Media, marketplace had changed but the core values of quality, service and cleanliness had to be reinstated, reemphasized.

The United States, if you think of this as 9/11, the United States has to realize that up until then we could lead with force. After that, as Simon says, lead with service. What we said in the Congress was lead by example, inspiration, the soft power. And if we can get that message to all ambassadors, public and private sector representatives of the United States, we can change this. We can change this.

And we believe that our country has, in the past, faced many crises, none quite like this. By the way, we think we ought to declare a crisis because then we would move a little quicker, but we have the will, the resources, the creativity to get this problem handled.

That was sort of an answer, wasn’t it?

QUESTION: Yes.

QUESTION: Robert Poredosh, Slovene Press Agency. So would you agree with us that a change in foreign policy would go a long way to change the attitudes about the other things?

MR. REINHARD: Well, we -- I mean, speaking for Business for Diplomatic Action, we cannot dictate foreign policy and we cannot influence it, other than whatever we think is in the business’ best interest. But I go right to the number three -- the number two, three, and four causes of anti-American sentiment, which we can do something about. Number two, the arrogance and insensitivity of the American people. Number three, the pervasiveness of U.S. pop culture. And number four, the effects of -- or the perceived negative effects of American-led globalization.

As you know, in many countries, globalization is seen as a synonym for "Americanization" and a lot of people in our research say that they don’t feel they’ve been able to participate.

U.S. business can directly address those three and maybe, in the process, provide some models that might interest the government in terms of setting policy in the future. But this is not going to happen. Business for Diplomatic Action is not about any one administration. Simon was talking about the cutbacks in cultural diplomacy. Bill Clinton is eloquent on the subject of the role of jazz as a cultural ambassador in the Cold War and yet, his Administration did not restore the budget for cultural diplomacy.

Simon’s right; once the Wall came down, we said, "History is over. We don’t need to have a voice anymore," so we consolidated USIA into the State Department. We cut spending for that. We cut spending for cultural diplomacy, so you know, business can address these things and maybe, in the process, provide some models.

There’s another thing I would say about the government private/public sector role and we urged this in our testimony last year. Right now, the U.S. Government is not a credible messenger in the Gulf States, for example, and Radio Sawa, Al Hurra TV, Hi Magazine, published by the State Department, are not seen by people in the region as credible.

Can you imagine -- and I haven’t talked to anybody about this specifically, but let’s say theoretically that Hi Magazine is a good idea for reaching Arab-speaking youth, but because it’s coming from the U.S. State Department, it’s not credible. It’s seen as propaganda. What if the government empowered, let’s say, Pepsi, which has a very high reputation in that area, to create, publish, produce, and distribute a magazine for Arabic youth? Much more credible, much easier way to establish the dialogue.

MR. ANHOLT: There’s a definite advantage to the growing trend for governments to see brand management as one of their key tools in statecraft and international relations and that is that you get to a stage where eventually, it does begin to have an effect on their style of policy, because there’s nothing quite like understanding the value of your reputation as your primary asset to make you think twice before you invade the neighbors.

Now, corporations do that quite instinctively before they launch an aggressive takeover of another company. Any good corporation, the first thing they’ll think is, "Is this going to harm our chief asset," which is our brand.

Governments on the whole don’t, because they separate policy and reputation and they separate politics from commerce and culture and all the other things. The way that the population sees countries and the importance of public opinion and the rise in branding as a methodology for thinking about these things is increasingly creating an environment where leaders are more and more aware of the value of their reputation. Particularly for poor and developing countries, it may be the most valuable thing they have.

And so, I think in the longer term, this is actually entirely benign, but there’s another reason why I think this market-oriented model of international relations is a very positive one. Because what’s the old model? The old model is that a country can only have influence through old-fashioned methodologies. It’s either got to have political or economic or military power. Now, that system means that 90 percent of all the countries on the planet have lost before they started, because only a tiny handful have got those things.

The market-based model, which is the one in which globalization now places us, means that countries can compete on other aspects. They can compete on culture. They can compete on the abilities of their people. They can compete on intellectual capital. We do live in a knowledge economy, after all. So I think the market-based model of international relations is generally much more humane and much more hopeful and much more equal than the old-fashioned model based on military and economic power.

MR. REINHARD: And if the government is truly interested in enlisting the private sector, and they’ve been very consistent about saying they want to do that, then I think we can bring some of the techniques that have worked in our own brand management and commercial ways and maybe, eventually, that does influence foreign policy.

For example, if somebody said, "Okay, we buy your point of view, promise, personality," and if they could arrive -- if we could all arrive at a point of view that said, "Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness as you understand it, not a bad concept for everybody in the world, promise, we will help you if you like," very important, and "personality -- what, young, inspiring, helpful partner."

If everybody said, "Okay, that’s the new brand, the essence of the United States," I think that might have some influence on foreign policy. Maybe I’m naïve.

MR. EGGERS: I’ll answer it -- add to that too. In a question about foreign policy and where we stand, global test market, five million respondents out there will clearly tell you that they don’t like you as a foreign policy, but that doesn’t mean that the solution is, in some way, to arm-twist or attempt to set the agenda for U.S. foreign policy. The rise in marketplace economies and the ability to apply private sector experimentation and private sector knowledge about how to build brands and adjust allows us to pursue much more of a scientific approach in the marketplace, which is, run your experiments and find out what works.

It’s the private sector that’s far superior at evolving projects, evolving messages, reinventing themselves to take the next curve, and so it’s the global test market listening that allows you to understand and find some of those negatives, but it may be a very different evolutionary process that gets you to the next curve, so --

MR. REINHARD: Private sector still, and business, still has some credibility.

MR. EGGERS: Right.

MR. REINHARD: Even though -- now, this was a survey taken late last year and it was five Western European countries ranking different aspects of our country, positive and negative.

American people were still seen as mostly positive, followed by American films -- this was in five Western European countries -- followed by the U.S. way of business, still positive. That was very encouraging to us at Business for Diplomatic Action.

Now, when you got to U.S. multinationals, it went negative slightly, but U.S. way of business, to Mitch’s point, we are still seen as problem-solvers, as pretty good strategists, and we think that that empowers or I should say enables Business for Diplomatic to pursue its mission of building bridges, business to business, and having an effect on the larger society.

MR. ANHOLT: The other thing that the private sector is extremely good at and which is so important in policy is creativity, ingenuity, and innovation. Now, this is really at the heart of it. Somebody told me the other day that the definition of "stupidity" is continually repeating the same action in the belief that it will produce a different result. And what so many countries, including America, persist in doing is representing, over and over again to the world, what they believe to be their most glorious assets or attributes or achievements, in the mistaken belief that suddenly, people will see the light and see the country differently. That is no way to go about it.

The only way to change people’s minds about a country is by doing new stuff, wonderful new stuff, even if it’s little things, drops in the ocean, like having the hospitality industry train the immigration officers. Well, it’s a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made of drops and only by repeating constant innovation, exciting innovation, which reinforces the story about the country, will people’s narrative about the country actually change.

I made a recommendation to the Government of Botswana the other day when I was there on the United Nations mission. They asked me what they could do to make people understand that Botswana is a stable, democratic government and has been for 40 years. I said, "Why doesn’t Botswana send an election-monitoring mission to the United States next time there’s a presidential election?" And everybody chortled at that and I said, "Well, think about it. Actually, you all think that’s a joke, but what does give America the right to send election-monitoring missions everywhere around the world?" And I suggested they might follow up by dropping sacks of rice on the poorer parts of the Bronx -- (laughter) -- but we decided -- they decided there would be a bit of a problem with that overflying the --

Now, that’s a joke, but the point behind it is a serious one; that is, a country, if it wants to change people’s minds, it has to do new things, exciting things, innovating things that attract people’s attention, but which prove the fundamental reality about the country, what kind of a country it really is and what it’s capable of.

The gentleman in the black shirt?

QUESTION: Andrian Kreye from the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany. How can that culture be most effectively used in the branding way? I mean, what -- did you have any results what the most effective ways were?

MR. ANHOLT: The survey can’t tell us things like that yet. We are going to be getting more and more qualitative with the survey as time goes on, finding out exactly what people’s perception of the personality of these countries is. At the moment, it’s simply measuring the brand power. I’m sure we all have ideas about this. My primary rule for how to use culture in order to present the country better is not to try to control it, because the moment you try to control it, it stops being real culture and it becomes propaganda.

All countries that have been successful in international relations, particularly cultural relations, have been the ones that have simply just created the environment where the culture is vigorous and thriving and at the highest quality and have let it all hang out and that’s what works, generally speaking.

Particularly, cultural communication is more effective than any paid-for media advertising. Australia is a country that performs very well in the nation brands index. One of the reasons for that is surely because of the movies, like "Crocodile Dundee," set in the country, the Australian naturalists appearing on the television wrestling crocodiles, Bill Bryson’s wonderful book about Australia.

These are things which a government can’t really control and as portrayals of the country, they’ve got good and they’ve got bad in them, but that’s why people believe them, because it’s clearly -- there’s no political agenda behind it. And ordinary people are not stupid; they form a net impression of the thing. They see there’s bad stuff, they see there’s good stuff, but the overall impression is, "I like this country." So America has to relax and allow the stuff out. The other rule about culture is not to try to swamp the world with popular culture.

MR. REINHARD: On the subject of popular culture, this is something we at Business for Diplomatic Action wants to know more about, because clearly, Karen Hughes is right in her statement yesterday that the American entertainment industry, our movies and music, have a tremendous impact on the world, sometimes good, sometimes bad. There is ambivalence in the research we see. People like it and they’re appalled by its lewdness at times and then in the Muslim states, the sexual content and the violence are used by the mullahs to say, "See, we’re fighting a godless society."

Yet, in the Harris* study of Western European countries, movies and television programs were seen as number two in terms of positive, so we need to know more about this, but we suspect that one thing is true, what -- to the point Simon made, that it is the pervasiveness. People are simply -- they seem, in many cultures, to be tiring of it. I believe I’m correct. You’ll correct me, but I believe the top five German bands are now German in -- no?

QUESTION: Yeah, it’s like -- I think pervasive all over the world, but mostly, people first favor local artists over --

MR. REINHARD: Yeah, but this was not always true in Germany. I mean, the --

QUESTION: That’s recent. That’s -- basically started when Germany first had a competitive music channel that was like a competitor to MTV --

MR. REINHARD: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- that brought up the whole – basically, local – local --

MR. REINHARD: So we need -- we’re saying we need to know more about this pop culture aspect, but one of the things we can advise, because American multinationals spend millions and billions of dollars in advertising, is that those messages be sensitive to other cultures, as opposed to just trying to promote the American cultures. And when they are promoting -- when they’re envisioning American cultures, that they envision those things, which are most attractive, such as diversity.

QUESTION: That would be already the control, you just --

MR. REINHARD: It’s not control; it’s suggestion. It’s saying Pepsi was right to use Beckham in their advertising in London. Apple was right to use John Lennon and Gandhi, along with American icons in their "Think" campaign. HSBC, which is not a U.S. corporation, but they really have figured this out, "The World’s Local Bank," and the sensitivity to different meanings in different cultures. So even if we could have seminars with U.S. companies on being more sensitive in their advertising, it starts to show an awareness.

MR. ANHOLT: It’s about cultural exchange rather than cultural export. I think that’s the point.

MR. REINHARD: Yeah.

MR. ANHOLT: See, the problem that America faces, and this is something that I outlined in my book, "Brand America,", is that America has changed since the Second World War from being a distant, exotic, prestige brand to being a very familiar mass-market brand. It’s gone from being something you’d buy at Harrods or -- help me in New York --

MR. ANHOLT: Macy’s.

MR. REINHARD: We don’t have Harrods.

MR. ANHOLT: To being something you find on every shelf in K-Mart everywhere.

MR. REINHARD: Yeah.

MR. ANHOLT: So every corporation -- it’s a little bit like Keith’s curve there -- every corporation that finds it in this position is a victim of its own success, because the product has become so pervasive and so highly adoptive and so popular, it finds itself at a turning point. It has to adjust its behavior to become a mass-market brand and the methods of engagement are entirely different from a mass-market brand from what they are for a prestige or aspirational brand. America hasn’t even noticed this yet. It hasn’t noticed that it’s become a mass-market brand and it hasn’t changed its behavior.

MR. EGGERS: And you’ll find interesting rankings on culture on the (inaudible) when it comes out, because there’s some interesting countries there, when you look at Australia or France or Egypt and the United States. I mean, there’s a whole enormous amount of work to be done there by the private sector and helping to understand what the cultural comparative advantages are now and the images in minds of people around the world and how can you reach out to those people and build on those messages.

MR. REINHARD: There’s also an interesting irony which we’ve sort of touched on here and that is that in addition to America becoming, perhaps, a little more isolated, other countries have grown in their capabilities, grown in their technologies, grown in the quality of their education product.

And so as someone said, in globalizing the world, we forgot to globalize ourself. So there are many more alternatives. For example, young students now combine our visa problems with the anti-American feelings in some countries. A German journalist told me two days ago -- what was it, *Reed and Adrianne*, 50 percent -- 50 percent drop in German students coming to America.

Well, why is that? Some of the reasons we’ve been discussing and also, alternatives have arisen around the world, which are pretty good.

QUESTION: Hi. Kevin Alison Financial Times again. I just was wondering if you could -- if any of you could speak a little bit about perception of corporate -- U.S. corporate brands abroad and what the survey has said about those. And then Keith, anecdotally from your discussions among business leaders, whether you’ve been hearing anything about whether concerns among business -- that their brands and their own profits might suffer as a result of rising anti-Americanism, whether there’s been any change since you’ve last, sort of, visited this topic.

MR. ANHOLT: Keith?

MR. REINHARD: As I say, we’ll have the Zogby* interviews ready. I think we said September 7^th, I believe, or September, right after the U.S. holiday, which is Labor Day.

MR. ANHOLT: (Inaudible) that the top to 50 --

MR. REINHARD: Yeah, I think I mentioned that John Zogby* talked to 42 business leaders. What they are willing to say, I think the analysis will show, is that it is a problem. It can affect business in ways of adding cost to security, in ways of making the recruiting process more difficult. But -- and there are some who say that business joining together could make a real difference. Mike Eskew of UPS is willing to be quoted on that.

But nobody is going to say, "Our sales are hurting because of this anti-American sentiment." The only business entity that’s willing to say that at the moment is the U.S. travel and tourism industry, which, as an association, as opposed to a commercial brand, is saying, "We’re hurting and we think this is part of the problem." But I don’t think we can expect, given the demands of Wall Street, for any U.S. CEO to say, "Our brand is really suffering because of anti-American sentiment."

I suspect what the research will show is that they’re saying, "There are things we can do to prevent that from ever happening." There are things -- call it public or call it a preventive diplomacy that will preclude any real damage to our sales in the future. I suspect that’s one of the things we’ll find.

QUESTION: Silvia Jelenz, Handelszeitung, Switzerland. You mentioned that the U.S. brand problem has built up all over two decades* and I was wondering, when was the BDA founded and how has the focus shifted over time in your work?

MR. REINHARD: What was the second question? How --

QUESTION: How has your focus shifted in the work or in the rebranding of the U.S.?

MR. REINHARD: Good question. The organization, officially, is very new. We were officially organized in January 1 of last year. The idea was -- first occurred to us in October of 2001, but it took us a while to get a Board assembled and all the things that need to be done, so that we officially organized January 1, 2004.

I think the shift in focus in those 18 or 19 months has been now from an original focus of listening and sounding the alarm to American audiences, is now to continuing to listen, but now to say, "Okay, we still need to sensitize American public, but there are positives we can build on. There are opportunities for building bridges. There are opportunities for cooperation with private sector and other markets, so that we can begin to, as we said early on, "accentuate the positive," to quote an American songwriter that’s way too old for any of you to remember.

But that’s the shift, from -- as I said in our four-part strategy, we still have to sensitize and we still have to change some of our behaviors, but now, the last two points in our strategy build on the positives and create new bridges. That’s a shift in focus.

MS. NISBET: I think we have time for possibly one more question and then they have to get off to their next appointment, so if anyone hasn’t had a chance to ask a question yet, I would go ahead and pose it now or we can get back to, it looks like, Mercedes.

QUESTION: Thank you. Mercedes Gallego from El Correo Vocento, Spain. I understand that the final results are embargoed until Monday, but perhaps you could give us something to pitch our editors in preparation for Monday. I was wondering about, I mean, you mentioned that the United States is the last on the list, but that’s really --

MR. ANHOLT: (Inaudible.)

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: -- old news at this point.

MR. ANHOLT: The United States is only last on the list in cultural heritage. It’s not last --

QUESTION: Cultural heritage.

MR. ANHOLT: Not as a brand.

QUESTION: Not as a perception.

MR. ANHOLT: Not overall.

QUESTION: Overall.

MR. ANHOLT: Brand America is not last on the list by any means.

QUESTION: Okay.

MR. ANHOLT: But one component of it is.

QUESTION: And I was interested in a figure that wasn’t yours. I think you mentioned it was from a BBC poll that 70 percent of Americans think they are perceived in a positive way in the world. I wonder, what is the real result when you look at the world? How do -- what is the percentage of the world that think -- look at America in a positive way?

MR. EGGERS: On the perception of Americans rating themselves through their eyes, as compared to foreigners rating Americans through different eyes, I don’t know the results of the BBC survey on that point. But the answer --

QUESTION: In your poll.

MR. EGGERS: Yeah, but the answer comes if you look at the rank orders of the Nation Brands Index, because that is others’ ranking on key -- six key dimensions, America as well as the other 25. And so it doesn’t fare nearly as well. It’s a far more formative set of numbers.

MR. ANHOLT: There’s something interesting to say about every country on the index here and I would urge all of you to contact us again after Monday when the results have come out, because I write a 10-page report on the overall results here when it’s out. I could happily write 20-pages on each of the countries in the survey, because it’s so absolutely fascinating where they occur. Without giving away anything, I can say that there are one or two countries, which you would expect -- I personally would expect to perform very well and they don’t.

France, for example, I always assumed was a rather well loved brand. It’s certainly a well-visited country and people esteem it very highly, but it performs surprisingly poorly overall as a brand.

Italy, as I always suspected, having been married for far longer than I care to remember to an Italian, is one of the most successful brands on the planet and this is despite the fact that the Italian Government, as far as I can tell, do absolutely nothing to manage it. (Laughter.)

The reason, I think the reason why Italy does so well as a brand, apart from it being a wonderful country, of course, is because the Italians are so good at being Italian. (Laughter). And they make such wonderful ambassadors for their country. And this is a technique which many other countries would love to follow if they could.

Australia, another country that does extremely well in the rankings, also has that particular ability.

There are very depressing results for Russia and Turkey, two brands for which slightly different reasons performed very poorly. Russia because almost everybody had something negative to say about Russia; Turkey because nobody could think of anything good to say about Turkey. And those two things are rather different. In the case of Turkey, it's more or less complete ignorance combined with some prejudice. In the case of Russia, it's stark prejudice and quite a lot of it.

I did say earlier on that countries get the reputation they deserve at some level or another. The key point, of course, about most developing countries being -- their reputation lags behind the reality of their progress by decades or even centuries and that's (inaudible).

But there's a wealth of fascinating material there and I hope we'll be able to talk about it again.

QUESTION: Talk about the United States? Something you can tell us in advance?

MR. REINHARD: I wanted to follow-up just with the FT gentleman about the -- a couple of other surveys.

One of which was GMI, Mitch's survey. This was, this year, 18 percent of the general population in G-8 countries claim a negative change in their willingness to purchase American products. And the top five on your list were Marlboro -- when those 18 percent asked which brands were most negatively impacted -- Marlboro was at the top. Three American airlines -- Northwest -- I can't remember the other two -- United and America were two, three and four. And guess who is number five? Barbie. (Laughter).

And in another survey, this by Addleman* during the same timeframe, 37 percent of British influentials claimed the cultural identity of the United States makes them less likely to purchase an American product.

So we're sharing details of all of these different findings with the U.S. business executives and we think they'll come up with an appropriate response.

MR. EGGERS: The other telling thing about the products that Keith was just -- Microsoft is considered to be a quintessentially American product, but nobody says they're going to stop buying it.

MR. REINHARD: Yeah, they were way down --

MR. ANHOLT: Because they can't. (Laughter).

MR. EGGERS: Right. They recognize it. So there is a discriminating sense that it isn't just a protest vote, it's a thought about what can I really avoid and what can't I. And even though Microsoft ranked way out on the quintessentially American products, it ranked way down on the bottom about things you planned to avoid because it's just not practical.

MR. ANHOLT: I can give you the top 11 if you would kindly respect that this is embargoed until Monday.

Number one, the world's most powerful nation brand is Australia. Number two is Canada. Number three is Switzerland. Number four is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (Laughter). Number five is Sweden. Number is six is Italy. Number seven is Germany. Number eight is the Netherlands -- Holland. Number nine is France. Number ten, New Zealand. And languishing at eleventh place is the United States of America.

Now --

MR. EGGERS: And that's down from fourth from the first Nation Brands Index.

MR. ANHOLT: Right. Now let me explain the changes in the positions here. These brand values do not change in a matter of weeks. They don't really respond and they shouldn't respond to world events or anything like that because, as I was saying before, these are deeply held prejudices about countries. They move like supertankers, very, very slowly.

What has caused the change in the line-up is simply the fact that we've got more countries in the list this time. So any of you who were aware of the ranking in the first Nation Brands Index, there were only 11 countries then. And it just so happens that a great number of the new countries we included happened to outrank the U.S. in people's estimation.

MR. REINHARD: So you can't make a direct comparison.

MR. ANHOLT: No. So that's why the United States appears to have dropped down the list. It just turns out that so many of those new countries, which didn't feature in the last NBI, like (inaudible), Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, New Zealand -- are actually preferred by our panel.

QUESTION: And we consider a new benchmark then, in which to measure future --

MR. ANHOLT: Yes. Absolutely.

QUESTION: And how often are will you --

MR. ANHOLT: Quarterly. Every three months. Now, from now on, we are going to be including some new markets. On the whole, I don't expect them to upset the top of the ranking very much because I don't think that there are any countries we've left out so far, which are going to disturb that ranking.

A part from the other Nordic countries, we haven't yet measured Norway. We haven't measured Denmark. We haven't measure Finland. We also haven't measured Scotland as separate from the United Kingdom and I suspect it will rank quite high. And we also -- there are a couple of other countries that we haven't measured that may -- so there is a possibility that in -- it'll take another two or three for the actual ranking of the top to settle down. There'll be -- continue to be a great deal of movement at the bottom end as the list gets longer.

China and Russia are near the -- sorry, Turkey and Russia are near the bottom of the list at the moment. We're going to be including more and more developing countries, countries with less well known and less powerful brands, and that may well change a good deal. They may stay at the bottom or they may find themselves gradually rising up the lower echelons.

But once we've got a stable list together of whatever it's going to be, 40 or 50, then I don't imagine we're going to see very much movement. The interest then is going to come from when we start charting how people actually see these individual countries, how they would characterize them, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how do they describe them.

MR. REINHARD: It was interesting to me to hear this ranking because if you study the recent Pew report, you know that when people in their database were asked if you could advise a young person what country he or she should go to for the best life, best opportunity -- Australia was number one; Canada was number two -- and only the people in India suggested the United States.

MR. EGGERS: I think we were sixth in that.

MR. ANHOLT: Another point worth making is that generally speaking, the countries that scored well in the Nations Brand Index are the ones that find it easier to stay out of trouble. They are not countries, generally speaking, which are mainstreamed players in world affairs. The only exception to is the United Kingdom. The UK is the only country that ranks in the top five that is a trillion dollar economy, a permanent member of the Security Council, and a nuclear power.

And this is really quite an achievement. It's easier to understand how a country like Australia or Canada can score well, because it doesn't often get an opportunity to upset people. And you could very well argue that part of the reason why America doesn't score so well is because, well, it's self-appointed role as global policeman is bound to make it a few enemies from time to time. And the UK appears to disprove that. I didn't say we deserve it, but somehow or another, we managed to stay in the top five even though we're a fairly prominent player. And there may be some lessons to be learned from that, both for ourselves and for others.

MS. NISBET: I just want to thank you and once these quarterly reports are released (inaudible).

QUESTION: What time and where can we see these results?

MR. ANHOLT: It'll be on the various websites on Monday.

MR. EGGERS: It's on the bottom of their press kits that --

MR. ANHOLT: It's on the bottom of the press kit.