By Katy Poth

She never gave politics a second thought. Until, of course, she received the phone call from Secretary of State Colin Powell who offered her the job of America’s chief spin-doctor. As Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy at the State Department Charlotte Beers is charged with the unprecedented task of selling an image of America to people around the world who harbor hostile thoughts against the United States.

“When Secretary of State Powell read me this job description and suggested that it might be something I want to do, it was literally the first time I ever thought of that,” Beers remembers. “The minute I heard about it, though, there was a thrill associated with it.”

Beers has long been touted as a difference maker on Madison Avenue. Professionally, her marketing background has literally turned companies around. Personally, she has helped pave the way for women in business across the country. Beers headed up Ogilvy and Mather and J. Walter Tompson, two of the world’s key players in the advertising world, and was the first woman to be named Chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Today, at age 66, she faces the biggest test of her career. Trying to enlighten those who view America as an arrogant, self-serving country is certainly not an easy job. Make no mistake, though, Beers is ready for this task. Her background, along with her dedication makes her a perfect fit for her new position. “I bring outside skills that are not born here,” she said. “Having come from the world of marketing, I know how to make one message be valued ten-fold because of the way you communicate. I also had a good background in collaboration because I had 253 offices to manage at Ogilvy. So, some of this is very familiar to me.”

Despite the similarities, Beers faces what could rightly be called one of the most challenging, immense jobs in the history of our country. In the midst of the mammoth demands her job requires that benefit us all as Americans, Ms. Beers still had time to sit down with TeenSpeak and fill us in on the brand image she is creating to sell us around the world.

Having a strong “brand” message is extremely important. How would you describe our current American brand message?

Beers: A brand is intended to build a relationship - and so for a company like IBM, which is big, at least it can be summarized. Developing a brand for something as diversified and as complex as the United States almost defeats taking apart. I suppose that the American flag might be a great summary. I know that we all feel like that after September 11th - and that’s why you see so many more flags around. Underneath the brand is the relationship between the user and the maker in pure marketing terms. The reason the brand for America is so varied is because in many countries around the world, they don’t like the brand - or they don’t like what they know about it - or they take an aspect of the brand and distort or focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. In some countries, like Islamic countries, there are large groups of people who believe that we are faithless - that we are decadent, and that we will act as a destroyer to their own pure religion. The brand America has is a whole set of values and beliefs on which we founded our country - and, believe it or not, upon which we usually have common agreement. Though you know, we reserve the right to have no agreement! I am just admitting that the brand is large and every day it is communicated by our President, Secretary Powell, and others, but in addition to that we have to have an ongoing conversation about what the brand is. So, in creating a brand for America, the first thing we decided to do was talk about religious diversity and religious tolerance. And we have taken the position that the best way to communicate something as total as the right to your religion or no religion is to describe Muslim life in the United States. That’s really the aspect of the brand that we are talking about.

How will this message get to the thousands of people who are being educated to want to kill us?

Beers: We are putting together a team of Muslim Americans who are helping us choose what subjects are helpful to talk about and how to portray them. Then we are adding to that what Hollywood and many other people who are doing with discussions like this and we are putting together one test market, like Egypt and Indonesia, and we are going to use modern marketing to take that complete message - not just one message - to these countries and see if we open a few minds.

How would you describe the meaning of the phrase, “the ugly American?”

Beers: I don’t hear that phrase on my trips. I’ve just come back from Cairo and Morocco and I hear arrogant and unilateral, and I’ll explain those because now I understand them a little better. I think anyone that is considered to be big and powerful always gets the halo of arrogance. But I think that “ugly American” means that you don’t care about me and you are not listening to me, and therefore you are indifferent to my life and what matters to me and that’s a very dangerous place to be. We’ve learned now that if people get angry enough about that they will really murder us. We want them, not so much to love us, but to understand enough about where and who we are so that they can see that we can hear them. We reserve the right to disagree, but hopefully not the right to eliminate one another. Many Americans are wounded by being called “ugly American” because we have spent literally billions of dollars trying to make other countries more successful with their own children, for education, and we have to do a better job of explaining that. That is a fundamental belief we have and it comes from the American people.

How do you think that the U.S. has responded to the propaganda of hate about us?

Beers: Well we have responded slowly. First we had to respond to the short term, which is what are we doing in Afghanistan? We put together a very rapid response system where we had a special team in Islamabad and Kabul (when we could get in there) and then we had a team located in the United Kingdom in partnership with the British and we had a White House combining team. In that way we managed to hear what was happening early enough to respond to it. So, part of the job was rapid response. Now we are in the process of building longer-term responses. We will move that shorter-term response into something longer and more strategic. An example of that would be the Muslim Life in America Project, which will start and will roll out to all of the Islamic countries. That will take quite a while.

Do we have any way to gauge if we are being successful?

Beers: We are going to try to do what we would do if we were a modern corporation. Even now as we speak, we have consumer research going on in the field and we are using a documentary as one of the messages and we will hear what people think. We may revise that it based on the response we get. Then we will go forward and measure attitudes and see if we have opened any minds. It’s really an attitude battle now and a point of view battle. And, swirling all around this will be any number of current events and policies. I’m not so sure how much we can measure, but we will put the process in the field to see.

What message did bombing Afghanistan give countries around the world, like Iran and Iraq and North Korea?

Beers: It’s very interesting - and I can’t say that I know how all those people feel - but certainly you have countries that we have named as difficult and dangerous because of their pro-terrorist activities. Those governments are concerned about that. They probably don’t appreciate being singled out. But one of the most interesting things is that Voice of America, who is a partner group, got hundreds of voice mail and emails saying “thank you for speaking out” from Iranians who feel like nobody is noticing how oppressed they are. That’s one response back we got and I was a little surprised at the depth of feeling about that.

Do you think that’s a general consensus amongst people in those countries?

Beers: I don’t know. It’s hard for us to know what people in Iraq are thinking because they don’t have Internet, we don’t have exchanges or communication, and that’s difficult because they’ve closed themselves off from us and many other people.

How do you intend to work with your counterparts in NATO as well as with other countries around the world - and how will that help the effectiveness of the American effort?

Beers: I think a lot of that kind of activity and communication happens beyond the State Department, certainly beyond the Public Diplomacy arm of the State Department. There are government-wide agencies that connect with each other. But I think that the clearer our public diplomacy goals are the more likely these other agencies can add to our thinking. For instance, if we state that one of our most important efforts is the education of children, then we can be a coordinating source for much of that work around the world. That’s what we do. For instance, there are so many people taking money and means into Afghanistan now, that one of the issues we have is how to coordinate this.

What do you feel is the most dangerous type of communication that can happen in the war we are waging against terrorism?

Beers: I think that the most dangerous thing would be silence. I was meeting with these Arab journalists who recommended that I shouldn’t do anything on Muslim life in America until the Middle East crisis was solved. And I laughed and said, “I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll proceed.” If we don’t keep a dialogue and try and initiate a better one - we are going to be in danger, once again of being completely misunderstood.

Did you ever think that you would enter politics coming from your background?

Beers: I never even gave it a remote thought. In fact, until Secretary Powell, who was then Colin Powell called me on a January day and read me this job description and suggested that it might be something I might want to do, it was literally the first time I ever thought of working for the government as a possibility. The minute I heard it, though, there was a thrill associated with it because all my life I’ve been in the private sector. I’ve been working for profits. I believe I have contributed to the well being of the people in our company. When the company was in deep trouble, we all worked on that so that it could be thriving-those are benefits. But they are not as satisfying and as immediately important as helping your country. And I feel very fortunate that I got a chance to do that.

What do you bring to government that is really special?

Beers: I bring outside skills that are not born here. Having come from the world of marketing, I know how to make one message valued to be ten fold because of the way it’s communicated. Also, I learned I had a good background in collaboration because I had 253 offices to manage at Ogilvy - so some of this was familiar to me.

What message would you want to deliver to America’s teens?

Beers: I would really want say - think about how you can activate a dialogue with your peers in the Islamic countries. How can you make this more person-to-person, teen-to-teen, young adult-to-young adult because those are going to be the hardest people to reach. If we can put young people in dialogue with the young people in Islamic countries, then the best of America will come through.