The Fight Against Hunger:
Report from the Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger
Friday, October 17, 2003
Speaker: Richard Beahrs
Communicating the Message to the Public
RICHARD BEAHRS
UN Hunger Task Force Member
President and COO, Court TV
Thank you very much, and I really am honored to be here. One of the most meaningful aspects of my life over the last ten years has been a chance to work with a number of people in this room. And for those of you I’ve met informally for the first time here, I can sense that you all share a tremendous commitment to solving some of the world’s most intractable problems.
I must say, although I work in the private sector as a media executive, quite honestly, I feel much more stress when I’m working on these issues than I do in the problems of my day job. The reason is, it’s not hard to sense how important this work is, and the consequences of failure are just untenable. So, accordingly, in my job as a media executive, maybe a few more people watch the show – quite honestly, so what? Here the stakes are very, very high.
There’s lots of reason for concern on all of the issues we’re talking about. Many of these problems do seem intractable. We talk about promises not kept, we talk about important issues not understood by the general public. At the same time, I think there are reasons for optimism.
Probably the most significant is the fact that the Green Revolution did happen. I know there is controversy over different aspects of it, but I don’t like to contemplate the world today if it had not occurred. And I think the important thing to recognize is, that gives us a template of how extremely difficult problems can be addressed if there’s a unified effort and a focused plan. I think in any kind of..., when you’re looking at a template and it works, a paradigm that works, I think it’s important to study it and understand why, what occurred there.
In the case of the Green Revolution, first of all you had to have good science. You had to have very, very smart people grinding the detail. But my first mentor, in a lot of the issues we’re talking about, was Bob Chandler, the founding Director General of the Rice Institute in the Philippines. And Bob Chandler used to emphasize to me – the Green Revolution would never have occurred if Norm Borlaug hadn’t known how to sell. Obviously, he was a distinguished scientist working with other distinguished scientists, but he had to know how to sell.
I think a very important thing there as well is the issue of timing. It isn’t just a question of just being a bull in a China shop and going out and telling your story. I’ve been very privileged in the last couple of years to have some opportunities to hear Dr. Borlaug speak, and he focuses a great deal on the issue of timing. He and Dr. Swaminathan and others he was working with for a long time had a sense of what some of the answers were, but he realized that he had to address these issues with a degree of nuance if the message was going to be directed effectively.
First of all, I think there are a few lessons we should focus on:
One, you have to simplify your message. You have to tell your message differently to different audiences. And the reason is very simple – just the clutter we endure every day in our daily lives. We are bombarded with messaging. A couple of examples of how people have addressed that.
Bill Clinton, in his first successful presidential campaign, just focused on the simple concept – it’s, the economy is stupid – that’s it. And I’m sure you’ve heard that story. If anyone working on his campaign went off on another subject, he wouldn’t allow it – stay on message. And in that case it was the economy.
I think we’ve had a recent example, too. People talk about branding, the importance of branding. To me, a brand is a simplified message – you hear one thing and a lot of things are conjured up. The recent gubernatorial election in California, I think, serves as an example – 135 candidates. Arnold Schwarzenegger was viewed as someone that people knew – tough guy, going to change things, won’t take anything from anybody. And that was a powerful brand in that situation.
I think it’s interesting to note how important that can be in politics. I heard somewhere that the national ticket of the Republican party in every campaign since 1952, with the exception of one, has had a Nixon, a Dole or a Bush on the ticket. Think of that – three family names, every one (the exception was 1964 when they suffered their most egregious defeat). So I think, you know, perhaps they’ve extrapolated something from that as well.
Now, as you address these issues, I think it’s important to recognize, we can’t sell in the traditional way. What’s the reason? We don’t have the money – a simple fact. The four major television networks allocate one billion dollars each to selling to the American public what is on their airways every night, total of four billion dollars.
Now, I’ll give you a little test. How many of you can tell me what is on each of the four networks tonight at eight o’clock? I don’t think the score would be very high, but four billion dollars has been spent to tell you when that’s on. So that’s a tough thing to win in that marketplace.
Now, another thing which is a challenge for us is: Development work is very, very complex. I think Kevin alluded to that, talking about the number of agencies involved. And when I first became a trustee of ICRAF, as it was known at that time, I was just overwhelmed by the acronym soup of the development world. I felt like I was back in Latin class in the 9th grade, trying to understand this entirely new vocabulary. So in that regard, I think ICRAF has made a positive step. It’s now the World Agroforestry Center. It is much easier for me to talk to people I know in my daily life about what I was doing, going on these trips to Africa and Latin America, when I talk about..., because it raises the question of “What is agroforestry?”
Okay. The important thing is: How do you convey your message? And with all due respect to everyone on the panel, I want to illustrate a point. You don’t do it to the general public with talking heads discussing soil fertility. The importance is it’s critically important to do what we’re doing today to an audience like this one.
But I’ve never forgotten an experience I had in the 1960s when I was with Martin Luther King on two different occasions within a one-week span in the San Francisco Bay area. On one occasion he spoke to an African-American church group, and the next day he spoke to thousands of students at Berkeley at an open plaza. It was fascinating. He was a great moral leader, but he was also a salesman. He spoke completely differently to the two audiences – different nuance, different pacing, different messaging. In each case he was trying to be as effective, as compelling at telling his point as well as he could.
I think an important thing to realize is: You have to understand who you’re dealing with and tell your story in a way that compels them to listen. I think one thing I’d like to make a plea for here – it is very important to try and reach out to everybody. The message of hunger is universal. It is not something that should be polarized.
We can’t talk in terms of “us versus them.” I’m going to emphasize the point that I think that everybody cares about the issue of hunger. And we can’t have it in a way where we’re preaching, as if the people with a different perspective don’t care. I think they do care. But one of the issues in the United States is there is a broad perception that development aid is inefficient. They think it’s inefficient. I feel you have a completely different response from the American people if you acknowledge the issues of inefficiency. And I think the Millennium Compact does, which I will speak to. I think you’ve moved the ball forward a great deal in trying to reach them and understanding that you care about what they believe in.
There’s an advertising agency called Ogilvy and Mather, and their slogan, I think, makes a lot of sense – “The truth well told.” In other words, convey your message in an important way.
People follow bold action if it gives shape to ideas that they’ve already had in vague form. Now, for example, only 7% of the population wants environmental regulations curtailed, but someone has to lead in showing the way to deal with these kinds of complex issues. So how do we break through the clutter?
Number one, – just seeing we can’t go the top-down strategy with that billion-dollar anecdote from the television networks. I think it’s fascinating, looking at the Democratic primaries. I think you can see in the Howard Dean campaign how a bottoms-up strategy is revolutionizing the political process. It’s almost like gorilla tactics using the Internet and the like. I think there are a lot of lessons for us there.
A few quick points. When we’re selling our simplified message – and Bob Chandler always said when there was a dispute among scientists at IRRI, he used to just pound the table and say, “Remember – our job is to feed hungry people.” So I think that’s one of our simplified messages.
The essence of education is repetition – it is so, it is so, it is so. Tell people what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them. Stay focused. If the political leadership doesn’t think something is important, then neither does the network news. And I think that’s going to get to the question now about the importance of focusing on political will – bottoms-up strategy, guerrilla tactics, humanize the message. And if you do that, I think you can generate some real progress.
Here’s the reason why I have some real optimism here. I think the Millennium Development Compact is a great strategy. I think it’s a great concept because of the fact that it addresses both sides of the equation – people want to help, but they’re concerned about inefficiency.
At the same time now, we need to have disciplined effort. And I want to really commend the work of Bread for the World, David Beckman, their president. I think they’ve done a great job of being very, very focused on political will. They have a lot of great information out here, which I won’t go into there. But I was at a meeting yesterday where David was asked a question, and he did something which I wouldn’t have the restraint to do. He said, “I really can’t answer that. I’m focused on political will.” I mean, I thought that is the kind of thing – you have to be on target.
In that regard, I’ve been very impressed by the Monterrey Bridge Coalition: Focus – reminding people of what it is that they’re committed to.
Couple of final points. I think it’s very important not to be distracted – don’t be distracted by flavors of the month. Also, manage expectations – don’t oversell. Talking to people in this room, many of you believe there are tremendous inefficiencies. We should acknowledge that. It isn’t something we should hide from. Don’t try and defend the indefensible.
And in the end, it’s very important to start now in selling our story – final reports in a couple of years. Get our interim materials out to people. Genuinely seek out, listen to them, of what their concerns are, and view this as a process in recrafting your message. I think in the end, one of the real bottom-line things here is: We have to humanize the message and tell it in a way to people where they can listen and understand it.
For example, some of the things which have been most impactful in my family is when I’ve been on trips to the World Agroforestry Center and have been out in the field, seeing farmers like Jennifer Zulu and Charity Engula. When you see these women and you see the kind of areas. The graphics here were absolutely terrific at illustrating the story very, very effectively. It changes everything.
I remember on one trip with Pedro and we were seeing those kids – how old were they, Pedro? – carrying water down this very, very, very steep embankment. I mean, they couldn’t be more than three years old. And I was there with my teenage daughter, and this woman was working so hard, and Pedro turned to the woman and said, “Mama, what can we do to help you?” And she looked up and said, “I’d like some seeds.”
I was just overwhelmed by it. “I’d like some seeds.” And I turned to my teenage daughter and said, “Did you hear what she said? She didn’t ask for CDs, you know, that cost $20 apiece. She wanted a few seeds.” And I’m proud my daughter is now teaching in the Mississippi Delta, the third grade. I mean, she got the message of the importance here. But it was so overwhelming.
And I go back to that point of stress. I mean, if we can’t find out a way to help a woman like that, I think we have a tremendous problem.
I’ll close by an admonition. There’s a very good friend of mine, Bill Rody, who’s the president of MTV internationally, and he and I used to run marathons together. And we were talking about the importance of this very important point from Kevin Cleaver on the fact of – Don’t think short term, and it takes time, it takes time. And Bill and I were running a marathon together, and we got up to the 22-mile mark. And please excuse my language, in advance, on this little anecdote. But it was like development work. We were at the 22-mile mark, and we were in Harlem, and we were so tired, and we were going to make it to the end – could we do it?
Then all of a sudden we heard this steel drum playing and we got a little bit energized, and this guy looked at Rody and I staggering along, and he looked at us and said, “You guys wanted to do this crap – now do it.” I will leave you with that. I think that’s the charge to us.