PITTSBURGH - In some ways, the Obama administration already has pulled off a marketing coup in hosting its first G-20 summit of key world financial leaders.
The team scored merely by choosing a quirky city perched on the East Coast/Midwest divide to host it.
Instead of images of the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty, cameras will be serving up shots of PPG Place and PNC Park to be seen around the world.
The not-your-father's-summit site selection triggered a host of news stories, blog items, Tweets and probably a bit of MapQuesting (where is it again?) among those who typically fly over the midsection of the nation.
Pittsburghers, too, sat up in their high-tech cubicles -- don't we all work at green, tech companies or health-care businesses? -- and wondered what a G-20 is.
Both the interest and incredulity were valuable.
"Holding it in Washington, nobody would even notice," said Robert E. Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now senior adviser for the Rand Corp., who admired the decision.
With that, the Obama administration sent a message. "It's not being held in a place that's a symbol of problems; it's a place that's a sign of promise," Hunter said.
By comparison, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi invited world leaders recently to meet in a region that had been hit by a destructive earthquake.
"He wanted them to see the devastation as well as the rebuilding going on," said Don Baer, a former White House communications and strategic planning director who is now worldwide vice chairman of the public-relations and marketing firm Burson-Marsteller.
In a way, the president also is marketing to the American people by bringing the Group of Twenty into what Hunter described as the productive heartland of the nation.
He's saying he's proud to show world leaders the core of the country, and he's trying to convince them that what happens at these summits has an impact on a worker in Pittsburgh who might never visit Moscow or Jakarta.
But setting the stage is just the beginning. The modern marketer knows controlling the message isn't easy, and it can be even more challenging when one organization's marketing platform also is lots of other groups' publicity opportunity.
If the leaders of 19 key nations and the European Union are gathering to discuss global economic issues, it's a certainty that climate-change activists and peace protesters and even T-shirt vendors also will make a play for the attention of hundreds of media representatives.
Guerrilla marketers waving homemade signs can trump dreary scenes of closed doors or sterile document signings.
"The press wants to try and capture those images," noted David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school. "It's more sensational than two guys shaking hands."
The official organizers and the anti-organization organizers have one issue in common. They both need a portion of the populace to understand what the G-20 is and why it matters.
Once the basics are understood, the summit organizers must battle the idea that this is a gathering of the elite who oppress the poor.
The summit is meant to be more inclusive than G-8 meetings limited to just eight powerful countries, Hunter noted. "This is the first time at least some of the middle guys have at least had a chance to get into the country club."
That message needs to be promoted, he said, even if it won't deter the passionate opposition.
Maybe the biggest challenge for the Obama team is bringing into comprehensible and compelling terms issues that the summit participants will debate.
"They need some bumper stickers. They need some headlines. They need some visibles," summed up Hunter.
The planned visit by the top leaders to the Phipps Conservatory? A move to infuse color into the green-development discussion and even more color into the nightly news seen in Brazil and China and Turkey.
Talking about clean water? Show it. Promoting technology as a job-creation tool? Get some cool robots out at Carnegie Mellon University.
G-20 promoters should follow good brand-building practices: Figure out a message, repeat it often, create appealing images and info to reinforce it.
If summit organizers somehow manage to deliver a message that they're working together through the sour economic problems to improve the lot of the folks back home, then that will be something.
As Hunter said, "This needs to be a 'lemonade moment.' "
(E-mail Teresa F. Lindeman at tlindeman(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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