How to Win Friends & Customers Abroad

TRADE FAIRS

ONE OF the best ways for the U.S. to spread the gospel of free enterprise--and for businessmen to sell its products--is to stage exhibits at foreign trade fairs. In the three years since the Government started to underwrite official exhibits at these shows, the U.S. has rung up priceless good will by unveiling the wares that symbolize its way of life to 40 million fair visitors in 27 countries. The 3,000 U.S. companies that contributed their goods also signed up millions of dollars in sales. Over the last fortnight, at Poland's Poznan Fair, the first U.S. trade exhibit behind the Iron Curtain pulled in 900,000 Poles, far more than the Russian display (TIME, June 24). Spurred by this dramatic propaganda success, President Eisenhower last week requested $2,200,000 for the U.S. to enter next summer's international fair at Gorky Park, Moscow, the first such U.S. display in Russia.

The President's request is expected to ride through Congress with little opposition. Said House Appropriations Committee Member John J. Rooney: "The Russian people would inevitably compare our products with those available to them, and we would certainly win such a comparison."

The Moscow exhibit will be the most significant step yet by U.S. trade-fair planners. But it was long in coming. From 1950 to December 1954, the Soviet bloc sent its lavish government exhibits to 133 trade fairs, the U.S. to none. Finally alarmed by the Red propaganda gains, President Eisenhower in 1954 drew $2,500,000 from his emergency fund to bankroll Department of Commerce participation at the fairs. But the U.S. is still hobbled by a shoestring budget. This year's appropriation for trade fairs is $3,600,000, less than some Communist countries invest in one big fair. Last year little Czechoslovakia took part in 77 fairs in the free world, East Germany in 65, the U.S.S.R. in 45. This year the U.S. will enter only 16.

Pinched for cash, the world's richest nation has often come off second best. At last year's fair in Bogota, Colombia, the U.S. spent less than $500,000 (v. $1,500,000 for the joint Czech-East German pavilion), had to resort to an unimpressive display of photographs to picture the abundant U.S. in action. But fair planners in the Department of Commerce have learned to stretch their dollars by leaning heavily on private business to contribute products, exhibits and top executives to the trade missions at the fairs. They have also learned that commonplace U.S. gadgets are often the most effective crowd pleasers. At Zagreb, Yugoslav children were entranced by a machine that transformed powdered milk into ice cream. Says Portland, Ore. Businessman M. J. Edwards, a member of the mission to Zagreb: "You could not buy such good will with 50 times the amount of our investment in that fair."

To span the gulf between the U.S. and much of the world, fair planners gear their displays to the needs and moods of the host country. This spring at the Casablanca fair, the U.S. emphasized American methods for improving farm output, one of Morocco's toughest problems. At the fair in Tokyo, capital of a country acutely sensitive to the promise of nuclear energy, the U.S. concentrated on showing how reactors can be used in industry.

This brand of Yankee savvy and showmanship has outshone the Communists at most recent trade shows; the U.S.S.R. has actually withdrawn from at least five major fairs rather than face U.S. competition.

Some businessmen question whether it is good showmanship to display such things as a gadget-packed, full-scale U.S. house or a supermarket to impoverished people who can barely understand what they are, let alone buy them. But most businessmen believe that people over the world want to see the best and latest U.S. products, even though it is often a problem to make clear that the wonders are enjoyed by the average American.

A far bigger problem is cash. To take advantage of the tremendous opportunities that the fairs present, the Commerce Department needs $5,000,000, only one-tenth the amount that the Soviet bloc spends every year on trade fairs in the free world alone, and a small cost for the enormous good will that the U.S. can win at the fairs.

In addition, businessmen need to give a bigger push to the trade fairs by sending more of their company displays and brainpower. The Department of Commerce hopes to get enough business support so that private companies alone will represent the U.S. at fairs in Western Europe and the Americas. Then the Government can concentrate its tightly budgeted official displays in the most vital cold war arenas--the emergent countries of Asia, Africa and the Communist world. Says Commerce Department Trade Fair Boss Harrison T. McClung: "Private industry itself is the instrument that can most effectively tell the story of free enterprise."

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