American business has the power to save the country's image abroad, Keith Reinhard said Wednesday.
Reinhard, the president of Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), gave the year's second speech in the Charles Francis Adams Lecture Series at the Fletcher School.
He spoke on "The New World of Public Diplomacy: Business Taking the Lead" to a room full of mostly graduate students in the ASEAN Auditorium.
One out of four people in Asia, a BDA poll found, avoid buying American products. The same poll found Australians think U.S. foreign policy is just as big a threat to the world as Islamic fundamentalism.
Reinhard's lecture included a Power Point presentation with video clips and images. In one image, the falling Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad was replaced with Ronald McDonald to illustrate the common association of U.S. corporations with the country's foreign policy.
BDA formed soon after Sept. 11, 2001 to combat anti-American sentiment, which the group believes is bad for international business.
Reinhard - the chairman of DDB Worldwide, an advertising agency - attributed the drop in international public opinion of the US to three things: foreign policy, the effects of globalization, and the pervasiveness of American pop culture.
BDA tries to minimize the negative impacts of the second two causes by helping business work together on public relations campaigns. Reinhard said business is better situated to affect people's lives than government.
"Policy isn't up for grabs every four years," he said of the business world.
Unlike a government - which operates under checks and balances - a cohesive board of directors of a company can implement changes without jumping through bureaucratic hoops, Reinhard said.
Domestic businesses have an interest in better public diplomacy as well, he said. According to the BDA, the U.S. has a 6 percent share of world tourism- down from 7.4 percent since Sept. 11, 2001. An increase of 1 percent represents $12.3 billion spent in the U.S.
Reinhard described more troubling data for American business. In an international poll that asked which countries had the most financial opportunity, the U.S. lost to Australia, Canada, Great Britain and Germany.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, 30 percent fewer people have been coming to the U.S., despite the low value of the U.S. dollar on the international market.
To combat this trend, Reinhard said, "We need to speed up the visa process."
Reinhard's presentation included a clip from the "Daily Show." Correspondent Rob Corddry had a segment that described the reluctance of foreign companies to hold business meetings in the U.S. out of the fear of their employees would be harassed by airport security.
The size of the U.S. workforce abroad - 8 million people - shows the potential diplomatic power of American business.
Reinhard called for companies to actively recruit Arabs as interns for American companies and provide English language training. American multinational corporations, he said, must "out-recruit bin Laden."
One of Reinhard's videos was the result of BDA polling foreign workers and their opinions of the U.S. The foreign workers' reactions were overwhelmingly negative. One out of four Americans aggressively defended the U.S. when shown the foreign criticism. Only one in ten agreed with the criticism.
In an effort to make Americans more cosmopolitan, BDA produces the World Citizens Guide for college students, which advises students who study abroad not to "compare everything you experience to the States."
Reinhard praised companies like Apple and HSBC - companies whose advertising, he said, emphasizes international solidarity.
The speech was sponsored by the Edward R. Murrow Center for the Study and Advancement of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School. The year's first Charles Francis Adams lecturer was veteran reporter Daniel Schorr.
