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February 23, 2005
U.S. Brands Threatened by Rising Anti-Americanism?
A couple of days ago I ran across mention of an article, "US Businesses Overseas Threatened by Rising Anti-Americanism" (also posted here under a different title), saying people around the world are increasingly avoiding brands perceived as "American" as a way of expressing discontent with the United States -- voting with their euros, pesos, and yen, as it were. Citing a recent poll by Seattle-based market research firm Global Market Insite, the article notes that sales for Marlboro and McDonalds were down in some countries, for example, and some German restaurants had stopped accepting American Express credit cards in a kind of reverse-Freedom-Fries phenomenon (see also this Reuters article from 2003). The story was also reported on by MSNBC, Time magazine, the Financial Times, and other media fixtures.
A look at the poll data itself, however, reveals that its results may be a little more complex. While it's true that 20 percent of Europeans and Canadians said they would boycott American products to protest U.S. foreign policy, the numbers don't seem too dire, on balance, for U.S. brands (although I haven't found data from previous years for comparison's sake). A significant majority of respondents, for example, said they "trust American companies." Similarly, solid majorities are also fond of American films and TV programs, "how Americans do business," and even "American multinational companies" (in this last category Americans themselves score lower than many countries: Mexicans, Japanese, Brazilians, Polish, Russians, Malaysians, Chinese, and Indians are all bigger fans of multinationals).
(More inside.)
U.S. corporations also get high marks for tsunami disaster relief efforts. (Although it should be noted that many of these questions are pretty leading. Example: Coca-Cola has provided bottled drinking water, basic foodstuffs, among other things to tsunami victims. Has this improved your image of the Coca-Cola brand? Is it really a surprise that the response was positive in three-quarters of the countries surveyed?)
Perhaps most interesting of all is this chart, which plots corporate brands according to how "American" they are perceived to be, and how likely respondents who said they would boycott American products were to avoid certain brands. Marlboro cigarettes seems to be the worst-off, perceived as "extremely American" by about 65 percent, with 60 percent promising to avoid purchasing the brand. Kodak, Visa, Kleenex, and Gillette fare the best, scoring in the low teens in both categories.
For an analysis of the chart, see this Daniel Gross column on Slate:
In the end, however, some of the rankings defy rational inquiry. How is that Jack Daniels, with its u-r-American name, is considered less American than German-sounding Budweiser? And some of the other results make me think that the people polled are just dumb. Chrysler, which polls in the danger zone as very American and unlikable, is owned by a European company!
Global Market Insite's news page has links to discussion of the poll in other news outlets.
Other, non-business questions in the survey are also interesting: The United States gets fair overall ratings; the American people score pretty high; American values, fair; and U.S. foreign policy and President Bush, predictably abysmal.
See also this previous discussion of U.S. brands flying the flag cautiously abroad.
Posted February 23, 2005 04:30 PM
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