War Needs Good Public Relations

At the Rendon Group, a public-relations firm with offices in Boston andWashington, pleasant news arrived the other day with a $397,000 contract to helpthe Pentagon look good while bombing Afghanistan. The four-month deal includesan option to renew through most of 2002.

This is a job for savvy PR pros who know how to sound humanistic. "Atthe Rendon Group, we believe in people," says the company's missionstatement, which expresses "our admiration and respect for culturaldiversity" and proclaims a commitment to "helping people win in theglobal marketplace."

A media officer at the Pentagon explained why Rendon got the contract."We needed a firm that could provide strategic counsel immediately,"Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan said. "We were interested in someone that weknew could come in quickly and help us orient to the challenge of communicatingto a wide range of groups around the world."

As a PR outfit, Rendon has moved in some powerful economic circles, withclients including official trade agencies of the United States, Bulgaria, Russiaand Uzbekistan. In Washington, the firm helped organize a series of conferenceson "post-privatization management in the global telecommunications,electric power, oil and gas, banking and finance, and transportationsectors." Some of the clientele has been more liberal or touchy-feely:Handgun Control Inc. and the American Massage Therapy Association.

Rendon proudly notes that it provided "community and media relationscounsel to the Monsanto Chemical Company in its effort to clean up severalcontaminated sites." Overseas, Rendon helped the Kuwait PetroleumCorporation to cope with labor strife and bad press when closing a refinery inNaples, Italy.

Some clients have been more shadowy. Rendon worked for the government ofKuwait in the early 1990s. And the firm made a lot of money by contracting withthe CIA to do media work for the Iraqi National Congress, an organizationseeking the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Now, the Rendon Group is facing what is perhaps its most challenging projectyet -- spinning for a war in Afghanistan. With its sights set on media contentin 79 countries, Rendon will use standard tools of the PR trade, such as focusgroups, websites and rigorous analysis of news coverage.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that "we need to do a better jobto make sure that people are not confused as to what this is about." It'stypical of warmakers to claim that the biggest problems lie with others' faultyperceptions rather than their own deadly orders. But no amount of PR wizardrycan change the cold facts: when a bomb hits a home for the elderly or a hospitalor a residential neighborhood, or when a bombing campaign sets in motion acataclysm of mass starvation.

If some people are "confused" about this war, it may be becausethey remember the rationale for it: Killing thousands of civilians isunconscionable.

Though you wouldn't know much about it from watching TV news or skimming thefront pages, large numbers of Afghans -- many of them children and elderly --are facing the likelihood of starvation because the bombing has forced recurrenthalts to the movement of food-aid trucks from Pakistan into Afghanistan. Concernis growing among humanitarian aid workers that about 100,000 people are now inimminent peril. By winter, the number could be in the millions.

Meanwhile, on television, we see footage of air-dropped meals that amount tono more than 1 percent of what's needed to prevent people from starving. That'scalled good PR.

At this point, the playbook for the Pentagon's media game is a familiar one.Consider the words of Eugene Secunda, a professor of marketing and former seniorvice president of the J. Walter Thompson firm. "Operation Desert Stormallowed only one view of the battle: the one authorized by the military,"he observed in 1991. "Like travelers led from their buses by tour guides,the TV crews were given an opportunity to videotape the 'panoramic vista' beforethem, and then were whisked to the next officially authorized destination."

Writing a decade ago, Secunda foreshadowed the kind of coverage we're nowseeing. "In the aftermath of the war with Iraq, strategic planners,preparing for future wars, are unquestionably examining the lessons gleaned fromthis triumphant experience. One of the most important lessons learned is thenecessity of mobilizing strong public support, through the projection of apowerful and tightly controlled PR program, with particular effort directedtoward the realization of positive news coverage."

By arrangement with Znet