Mobium International Survey Finds American Business Marketers in Denial About Plummeting...

Mobium International Survey Finds American Business Marketers in Denial About
Plummeting Perception of Their Brands Overseas

CHICAGO, July 13 /PRNewswire/ -- A first of its kind, three-year-long
assessment of national and international perceptions of American
business-to-business brands found that U.S. foreign policy has had a
significant detrimental effect on American business brands the results of
which many American marketers seemingly deny. Nine out of ten U.S. businesses
foresee a continuation of business as usual overseas, while 20 percent of
overseas buyers said they plan to drop American brands altogether. The survey
was conducted by Mobium, an integrated business branding firm, between October
2005 and October 2008.

A majority of both U.S. and non-U.S. respondents believe American business
brands have been affected by U.S. foreign policy-70 percent within the U.S.
and 74 percent outside. And almost everyone agrees that foreign policy has
affected U.S. brands adversely-87 percent within the U.S. and an astounding 93
percent abroad.

Personal relationships appear to be the stabilizing factor to maintaining the
international relationships that remain intact. Half of both U.S. marketers
and foreign buyers believe their personal relationships have changed. But two
thirds believe they have changed for the better. This may be a way of saying
that the foreign policy of the United States between 2005 and 2008 was trumped
in some cases by direct, personal, business relationships.

"What's disturbing is the gap in perception that U.S. and non-U.S. respondents
have of the future of brand relationships," says Gordon Hochhalter, Managing
Partner at Mobium.

98 percent of U.S. respondents feel the companies they do business with abroad
want to continue their relationships and 96 percent believe their companies
will continue to do business abroad with their current customers and partners.
Unfortunately 19 percent of overseas respondents said their companies planned
to replace the relationships they have with American business brands with ones
not based in the U.S. And almost a third of those (32 percent) said U.S.
foreign policy is directly responsible for that change.

Mobium received responses from 1,867 people; of that, 1,378 were identified as
U.S. business marketers and 489 identified themselves as business buyers of
U.S. brands who work overseas. 85 percent of U.S. survey respondents conduct
business abroad, 30 percent in Europe, 22 percent in Asia, 20 percent in the
United Kingdom, 10 percent in Australia, 4 percent in Africa and another 4
percent in the Middle East. 10 percent conduct business in all of those
regions. While 30 percent of respondents sell products and services overseas,
21 percent provide marketing services to foreign companies, 19 percent have
offices abroad, and 15 percent outsource services to other countries. Another
10 percent have products manufactured abroad and 7 percent obtain products
from overseas.

A complete report and analysis is available at www.mobium.com

About Mobium
Mobium is a full-service integrated business branding and communications firm
specializing in business-to-business integrated communications, branding,
relationship marketing, database marketing, interactive marketing, and
information architecture. The company was named agency of the year in 2003 by
the Business Marketing Association and has been recognized as one of the top
three business-to-business agencies its size for five consecutive years and
the Top Agency of 2006 by Crain Communications' BtoB Magazine. In 2008, the
Business Marketing Association named Mobium the Creative Team of The Year.
www.mobium.com

SOURCE Mobium

Steve Lundin of BIGfrontier, +1-312-602-2434, slundin@bigfrontier.com, for
Mobium Creative Group