Monday, January 21, 2002 An Open Letter to Charlotte Beers from Yuri Radzievsky Call me naive, but we as a nation believe that information -- massaged, spun, branded, amplified and put to music -- can solve everything. As a free society, we thrive on news. We are endlessly curious, want to know everything and want to share it with everyone we know. Information is the currency of an open society. The more we know, the more we think we can fix things: the economy, society, anything. Can we advertise or PR our way to more harmonious relationships with cultures that disagree with ours? Can helping the Arab world know us better really improve ties between us? To-know-us-is-to-love-us is a strategy of delusion. The Arab world at large already knows us, thanks to CNN and other American programming beamed for years to Muslim audiences. What kind of emotions among traditional societies are stirred by these views of the West? Envy and fear, most probably, neither of which contributes to rapprochement between us. If anything, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for both men and women, on earth, this very minute is a destabilizing view to leaders of more fundamentalist cultures. To the advertising world, the question "what do we have to do" is simply the wrong question. A better question is "what would give Islamic leaders the incentive to reach out to us." We who preach a customer-centric view of the world have lost sight in this debate of what it takes to empower the customer. I would argue it's not about imagery, messaging or branding. Instead, we need to reverse roles and let the customer lead us. How to make this happen? Convene in Riyadh, or some other Arab capital, a summit of Muslim advisors, selected by their governments. The mandate: counsel us on what kind of support -- rather than intervention -- they would like to see America offer. Think less about how well our society works, and focus on things like water pumps to irrigate fields, more widely available vaccines, better infant nutrition and bootstrap business grants. Then, and only then, can we begin to think about how we should talk about America's largesse. America tends, as I said, to reduce many of its challenges to a problem in communication. Find the right slogan or icon, the thinking goes, and we can turn the situation around. Muhammad Ali, perhaps the era's most recognized personality, and certainly one of the most revered, has been suggested as a potential spokesman for America's cause in the Arab world. An iconic figure if ever there was one -- and a Muslim to boot -- many of my colleagues see him as the ideal brand symbol to put America's message across. I disagree. Not about the man, but the premise. We are back to seeing through an American lens. A critical fact of Islamic life is its parochialism. It is a culture -- and many within would call it a strength -- slow to adopt anything remotely outside its value system. America the beautiful to us is America the meddler to them. The notion we will succeed in selling the Arab world on a better world, our world, actually misses the point. The most beloved spokesman cannot overcome that resistance, nor can the most eloquent pitch. No matter how subtle, clever or creative we are, the implication will undeniably be the same: that our system is better than theirs. I believe in the power of communication. I was born in the Soviet Union, where the media, as in many Muslim parts of the world, was state-controlled. Our generation grew up questioning everything that purported, on TV or in print, to be factual. I remember commercials for a Western-made chocolate, branded as just the thing to have in your pocket when feeling hungry. To many truly hungry Russians, who couldn't afford bread, no less sweets, the message sounded terribly cynical. I grew to hate the brand for showing us what we couldn't have. Let's not have America make the same mistake. Sincerely, Yuri Radzievsky CEO, GlobalWorks Group Click here to see people's responses to the article. GlobalWorks Group, New York, is a multicultural marketing agency whose clients include J.P. Morgan Chase, Hughes and Lucent. Yuri Radzievsky has helped create brand messages in over 80 languages, in more than 100 countries, since he fled the Soviet Union nearly three decades ago. He can be reached at (212) 414-1300 or via e-mail at y.radzievsky@globalworks.com. Published: January 21, 2002 Used with permission of Brandweek, copyright VNU Business Media.