Communication Tools

When a foreign country or foreign company has a problem in the U.S., it traditionally loses crucial time in the early stages of the crisis because it is unfamiliar with the rules driving the American media.

More fundamentally, for many foreign companies, international communications is all about adjusting to the alien demands of an alien culture. For multinational corporations, international communications is being able to take tough business measures in the U.S., especially staff reductions, without arousing the xenophobic ire of the American public.

For Chinese companies eyeing Wall Street, international communications can mean communicating with a financial media that demands a show of corporate transparency. What the media hears, investors and regulators will hear as well.

For Japanese companies, international communications can mean learning how to publicly address litigation in the U.S. when litigation itself is so alien to their values.

Even for companies or countries with little interest in the U.S. market, the inexorable march of Western media has forced changes almost everywhere. In international communications, the rules governing New Delhi and Bucharest are increasingly the same as in New York or Washington, DC.

International communications is all about values. It’s about finding language that will play to the values of the American media and rebound to the benefit of the non-American investor.