Provoke EMEA:“Soft Power Comes Out Of Shared Values”

(MENAFN- PRovoke) At our PRovoke EMEA Summit in London last week, we worked with Finn Partners on a panel discussion about“The Power of Attraction: How Soft Power Strategies are Shaping Global Influence and Corporate Reputation Today.”

Moderated by PRovoke's global head of features Maja Pawinska Sims, the conversation examined the ways in which soft power can provide deeper, more long-lasting benefits that force and coercion, and how the value for soft power remains undiminished despite the US cuts in its soft power machinery.

Participants were:

• Paul Bailey, director of corporate communications, IDA Ireland
• Terri Bloore, senior partner, Finn Partners
• Anthony Triolo, vice president, Glasshouse Initiatives

The resulting conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Five key takeaways:

• A nation's soft power relies on its culture, its policies and its values.
• Ireland uses its culture, its people, its music and more to develop its soft power despite lacking the economic resources of other nations.
• Soft power is a two-way street: it benefits both the countries that are offering it and the ones that are receiving it.
• Communications professionals need to think beyond specific campaigns, and try to build an ecosystem, and coalitions that sustain shared values
• After America's cuts to USAID,“We have to think smarter, we have to be more strategic” in terms of how we leverage soft power.

Maja Pawinska Sims : Terri, I'm going to start with you, if I may. You've worked with government agencies and non-profits across the globe. Tell us a bit about what we mean by soft power and how it can beat coercion.

Terri Bloore : A nation's soft power relies on its culture, its policies and its values. The UK ranks number three in terms of its soft power rankings in all the major indices. If you look at the BBC World Service, if you look at our pop music, if you look at the Premier League, that is all soft power.

A reliable and trustworthy partner is always going to win over force and coercion. I was out in Davos early this year, and it was the same day that Donald Trump was inaugurated. We were out with our Ukrainian client, The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, and their strategy was built around the message“Win with us,” the idea that a Ukraine victory will be a victory for the West.

MPS : And how do you think that's evolving? Is it changing?

TB : I think force and coercion is seen as the main use of power today. But in the long term, short power will always win.

The UK has just created a UK Soft Power Council . I think there's more and more understanding of soft power is the way we win, as western democracies.

MPS : Paul, we often talk about self-power in the context of nations but can these same principles be used to enhance the reputation of corporations and brands?

Paul Bailey : At IDA our job is to attract our direct investment. Our clients come from the US, from the UK, and the rest from Europe, the rest of the world. And what we find is the clients, the companies that choose Ireland as their location tend to take on the values of our country.

Ireland as a nation uses its culture, it uses its image, it uses the sense of friendliness. You've all heard the term craic , in the sense of the Irish word for fun. That's what we offer, that's our soft power.

And when corporations locate in Ireland, they take on those values. Remember Ireland is the first country in the world to legitimize gay marriage. For a small nation, we put a lot out there in the world, and we find that corporations want to take on those values.

MPS : So there's an interesting overlap there between politics and national culture and the culture of organizations?

PB : Some of the big tech companies for example, or the big medtech companies or pharma companies. Recently we presented a special recognition award to Microsoft, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary, 40 years in Ireland. They started off with 100 people and now they have 4,000 people in Ireland. The Vice President of Microsoft got up at the opening ceremony and he talked about how important Ireland had been, the role it played in R&D but also its culture.

And that's kind of a win-win, that kind of soft power dynamic between nation and corporation.

MPS : Can you give us a bit more about how your agency uses that cultural appeal to actually get direct investment? How does that all start?

PB : It starts with the value proposition we offer. We just launched our new strategy and we revised our value proposition. You can see the IDA logo on the screen, it's three little dots. So the value prop is contained in those three dots. We have people-talent and quality of life-we have stability and supports, and we have environment and ecosystem.

In terms of quality of life in Ireland, I think we're ranked fifth or sixth in the best places in the world to live. And that's because not just our beautiful country, the countryside, but also the culture of people, the music. So that whole cultural piece, we do use that to attract companies.

We know we can't compete on financial incentives the way Germany or France or even the UK can do. We haven't got that financial power. But what we have is the soft power. And we really use that to our advantage.

MPS : Anthony, in your experience and the work you've done across different organisations, do you think are the key elements of the country's soft power that are most effective?

Anthony Triolo : To build on what my two fellow panelists have said, soft power is about shared values. That's something I really want to underscore in this conversation.

I'm working very closely on matters in relation to Ukraine and the issue of abducted children and a lot of what the Western alliance is trying to do is not only provide aid and assistance, but it's also shaping how the world views this conflict. And it's about a fight for democratic values and human dignity.

I saw this in the global south. Some countries in the global south have stepped up on this issue. South Africa, for example, has agreed to help mediate between Russia and Ukraine on the issue of the abducted children. When shared values are part of that, you see some of the countries stepping in to address that.

But of course, there's also bad examples of soft power, such as the Russia disinformation campaign.

MPS : I'm interested in what you're saying about disinformation. Paul talked about how long it takes to kind of get that partnership going, but the world's moving far too fast to be playing a long game at the moment. We're in crisis, there's disinformation, social media's moving at the speed of light, our attention spans are shrinking. Can we really afford to pay the long game? Or can we make soft power kind of visible and impactful in a much shorter time frame?

AT : I think the answer to that is not to go faster, but to go smarter. Soft power has o be the long arc of influence and the instant pulse of the now. That means pairing values with immediacy, giving people something they can feel and do right now.

When we launched this campaign about abducted children, we were raising awareness, but we were also appealing to people to act now, and people wanted to act now. So we launched a petition and we created ways in which people can contribute resources to help these children.

In a very noisy, fractured information space, we have to cut through, and we do that through authenticity. We don't do that through more content, we do that through more conviction. And conviction becomes action. So I think the ability to act now and quickly is really important.

MPS : We can't have this conversation without talking about what the US is doing. Given the drawdown in foreign assistance from the US, which directly impacts some of the work you're doing, how do you see the role of soft power evolving?

AT : I want to talk about the USAID example because I think that's really important. The cut in funding is really significant and when we think about soft power you have to remember it's a two-way street. It's benefiting both the countries that are offering it, but also the ones that are receiving it.

When we think about what USAID has done, it has worked very hard over the years to promote transparency, to promote principles of do no harm. And it's benefited countries like the US in many ways, because if you're promoting the rule of law and you're promoting transparency, you're helping to open up markets. So in some ways, that's really helping the economy.

But it's also instilling key principles that are really important, those shared values. And I think my concern, and I think this is important for communications professionals, is that with the cutting of USAID, will that go away? Will things become more transactional. My concern is it drifts away from the shared values and more towards the short-term gains, and I think that's something communications professionals have to be very mindful of.

We can't just think of it in terms of one-off campaigns. We need to think of it as part of an ecosystem and building narrative and infrastructures that last beyond funding curves. What communications professionals are trying to do is that they're not just launching a campaign, but they're helping to build that ecosystem but also to help build coalitions that help support these shared values and narratives.

MPS : Are you still optimistic that the role of comms and soft power will actually cut through the status quo at the moment?

AT : We have to be optimistic or else where will we be? We just have to persevere. Throughout history, there have always been roadblocks that have been thrown our way. And if we walk away or give in or retreat, we're never going to win, right? Think about all these children in Ukraine. If we didn't have hope, what would that mean for them and for their future?

We have to think smarter, we have to be more strategic in terms of how we do this. But if we band together, I think there will always be hope.

MPS : That's good to hear.

MENAFN06042025000219011063ID1109395180