OSU prof gets award for book

The Tulsa World
June 21, 2007

An OSU associate professor who co-authored a book about a State Department anti-terrorism ad campaign has won the 2007 Headliner Award from the Association for Women in Communications.

Jami Fullerton, who teaches advertising at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, will receive the award in October in Orlando, Fla.

Fullerton learned of her selection a few weeks ago when the national organization's president called her with the news.

"I was thrilled to be in that company and honored that my colleagues here in Tulsa nominated me," she said.

Fullerton is co-author of "Advertising's War on Terrorism: The Story of the U.S. State Department's Shared Values Initiative." Alice Kendrick, the other co-author, is a professor of advertising at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Inspiration for researching and writing the book developed after 9/11, when the two advertising professors -- like many people in the country -- considered ways of becoming involved in defending the nation against terrorism.

After the attacks, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell brought in Charlotte Beers, a well-known Madison Avenue advertising executive, to serve as the U.S. undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs. Her appointment captured the attention of the advertising professors.

Beers helped the State Department create an ad campaign, dubbed the Shared Values Initiative, aimed to improve America's image in the Muslim world.

The campaign featured five commercials that ran in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, including Kuwait, Indonesia and Malaysia, Fullerton said.

Many of the targeted countries refused to run the ads, saying they were propaganda.

The commercials profile real Muslim Americans and follow them as they live and work in the United States. The spots show them practicing their faith and speaking positively about the tolerance ex hibited by most Americans.

The ads "are very truthful" Fullerton said. "You wouldn't think of them as propaganda. They look like public service announcements for the country. In that regard, there wasn't anything covert or deceptive about them at all."

By the time the two professors had an opportunity to interview Beers, the advertising campaign was ending -- it had lasted less than two months. The general belief in Washington, D.C., was that the campaign didn't work, Fullerton said.

Although many politicians and pundits said it was a failure, the professors couldn't find any data to support that. So, in the summer of 2003, just as the ad campaign was ending, Fullerton and Kendrick traveled to London to begin tests among international students.

They used a classic communication experiment to mea sure students' attitudes toward the United States -- getting their views both before and after viewing the commercials.

They collected data from more than 500 international students from 39 countries. The surveys were conducted from July 2003 to September 2005 in London, Singapore and Cairo.

Their tests found that the commercials improved attitudes toward the U.S., said Fullerton.

She said that doing the research emphasized the power of mass communication.

"There is hope that if we can learn to communicate with our global neighbors, perhaps we won't have to go to war with them," Fullerton said.

More about the book and the Shared Values Initiative is available at www.svibook.com.