In Ecuador, the trade preferences have generated more than 350,000 badly needed rural jobs--many in the flower-export sector--and kept the door shut on the drug economy.

In 2007, Congressional support for ATPDEA, which requires periodic renewal, nearly faltered due to a highly effective negative campaign by Occidental Petroleum. Occidental, engaged in a nasty legal dispute with Ecuadorean indigenous communities over alleged environmental damages, sought to convince members of Congress that the country was not a worthy trade partner. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration's geopolitical grudge match with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was drawing any progressive Latin American government, including Ecuador, into its orbit.

Three months before the Act's June 30 expiration date, Fenton was brought in to wage a high-level, high-intensity communications campaign that combined targeted media relations and advertising to counter the spin from Occidental and reposition Ecuador as a positive partner for U.S. trade.

Highlights from our media strategy:

Target the right media outlets. In addition to arranging interviews for spokespeople ranging from Ecuador's foreign minister to American investors in national outlets such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street, we also focused on niche media widely read by Washington, DC decision makers such as Inside U.S. Trade and CongressDaily.

Choose the best messengers. Matching the right messages to credible messengers created an echo chamber that amplified our argument. For example, in the conservative Miami Herald, we placed an op-ed on the importance of the Act to the international business community by the director of the Ecuadorean-American Chamber of Commerce.

Advertise to the most influential audience. We designed a print ad that clearly defined the stark choice before the U.S. Congress: Help Ecuador keep the floral jobs ATPDEA has created or leave rural communities with nowhere to turn but the drug trade. We ran the ad twice in three key Congressional publications during the two weeks preceding the ATPDEA vote.

On June 27, 2007, Congress overwhelmingly approved an eight-month extension to ATPDEA, by unanimous consent in the Senate and a margin of 365 to 59 in the House. Fenton employed the same successful strategy for a second extension of the program through 2009.