Published: September 19, 2008 10:11 am         

Professor: Marketing America may work

Dr. Jami Fullerton isn’t ready to give up on one of Colin Powell’s ideas.

Fullerton, the first endowed professor in journalism at Oklahoma State University — the Peggy Layman Welch Chair — gave her first lecture with that title by inaugurating “The Coca-Cola Hypothesis.”

The idea is that America can use advertising and popular culture to improve its reputation around the world. Coca-Cola is a metaphor for American popular culture, Fullerton said, because it is ubiquitous globally and stands for happiness, good times, nostalgia, Americana and smiles.

Powell was Secretary of State during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He hired retired advertising director Charlotte Beers to produce pro-U.S. commercials to be aired around the world.

The work, known as the Shared Values Initiative, was supposed to improve America’s image in Muslim-majority countries by showing American Muslims enjoying their country.

It was roundly criticized domestically.

“I just find the notion that you can sell Uncle Sam like Uncle Ben’s highly problematic,” said William J. Drake of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at the time.

Marketing Week Magazine wrote, “...Shared Values has failed to nudge the swingometer.”

But Fullerton’s research thus far has shown the ads are effective. She showed them to college students in Australia, Cairo, Hong Kong, London and Singapore.

“Overall, in every sample, there was significant positive movement in their attitude toward the U.S. government after viewing the commercials,” she said. “Now I have to say, there wasn’t a huge jump. There was a statistically significant jump.

“It’s important to realize they went from really hating us to just kinda hating us. It wasn’t like they loved us after this, but there was movement in positive direction.”

She added there wasn’t always an improvement in attitude toward American people, whom the students liked more than the government anyway, but they did have a more positive perception of the way Muslims are treated in the United States. Additionally, Muslim students were more likely to be impacted by the ad.

But U.S. ads don’t always serve their intended purpose.

She played a commercial promoting tourism in America for 180 Australian students and their surveys showed lower ratings of interest in U.S. tourism, likeliness of visiting the country and view of America as an attractive destination. The only score to go up was their attitude toward the U.S. government.

Though the results have been consistent thus far, Fullerton said, more testing of the Coca-Cola Hypothesis is needed with larger samples in different countries.

“If it holds up, I believe that the U.S. government should consider leveraging the power of U.S. marketing, advertising and media genius to improve our global image,” she said. “By doing so, potentially, if our image improves, that could potentially contribute to our national security.”

     

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