USA pavilion at Expo 2010
Encyclopedia
The USA Pavilion at the Expo 2010
in Shanghai
, China
was one of the last of the 192 participating countries to sign-up for involvement with the Expo 2010.
Reactions among US officials were even less enthusiastic. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the most senior US official to visit the pavilion, responded tersely with "It's fine," when asked to express an opinion on the structure and its programs. US Senator Richard Lugar, former chairman of the US Senate's powerful Foreign Relations Committee, and its current ranking member, noted in a February 15, 2011 letter to his Senate colleagues, that the USA pavilion "drew criticism for its hastily organized presentations and lack of a cogent message." Lugar's letter introduced a report on US public diplomacy efforts in China, of which the USA pavilion was a part. The report claims that the USA pavilion's reliance upon corporate sponsorship "led to heavy criticism for its lack of imagination and heavy corporate branding."
Reviews in the media were decidedly mixed. A Los Angeles Times
editorial comments that the mainly Chinese visitors to the pavilion enjoy watching the American Citizens in the pavilion's introductory film as they make fun of themselves as they attempt to learn simple Chinese greetings. The same editorial also notes that "the pavilion is so loaded with corporate logos that the messages are nearly lost to branding by Chevron, General Electric and others."
The official, government-controlled Chinese press reported that this approach by the United States, to focus both the pavilion's show content and message on a spirit of "community," rather than on the country's history or economy, left visitors to the pavilion with a more lasting and memorable impression of "U.S. Spirit."
However, it's to be noted that the official Chinese press consistently praised the US efforts even when others did not. Given the intense efforts of the Chinese to have the US participate in the Expo, the Chinese press' objectivity is problematic.
US media, too, found a very mixed reaction among Chinese visitors. In one Washington article run in The Washington Post
, it was suggested that the execution of this message and the pavilion, itself, were a hit among the Expo's mostly Chinese visitors. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/05/the_united_corporations_of_ame.htmlThe same paper's Ezra Klein, however, summed up the pavilion's appeal to China visitors thusly: "We're bad at languages, in hock to corporations, and able to set up gardens when children shame us into doing so." According to one National Public Radio (NPR, US), reporter: "…corporate sponsors are front and center. Some American visitors find it gauche, but the Chinese seem unperturbed by all the corporate messages." Reporter: "I talked to more than a dozen Chinese visitors. I asked them to resist their urge to be polite and give me a no-holds barred review. No one had a bad word to say. Here's visitor Zhu Shan Bin exiting the pavilion." Bin: "It shows us the American spirit, which is multi-cultural and filled with imagination and creativity. From the movies here, I see Americans value children and a good education." Reporter: "Now that is some brilliant corporate messaging." Yet NPR's Shanghai correspondent, found quite a contrary reaction from mostly underwhelmed visitors, including this gentleman surnamed Huang: "There isn't enough to see. There's no advanced technology, even though the U.S. is such an advanced country. There are only films. We can see those at the cinema."
Pavilion exit interviews by the Public Broadcasting Service
(PBS, US) program "News Hour" found the audience pleased by what they saw, and commenting that it showed them another side of America, which was well worth the long lines endured to enter the pavilion. In a typical response, one woman interviewed by PBS "News Hour" makes the comment: "My View of America Changed…from what I saw, America seemed more sincere and friendly. …Right now, America and China, they are good friends."
A Fudan University
research study, paid for by the USA pavilion itself, and posted October 14, 2010 on PRNewswire, found that the USA Pavilion met high visitor expectations and generated positive perceptions of Americans. In the study, 95 percent of respondents felt their visit to the USA Pavilions was worth the "time and effort" and 93.4 percent thought it was a good representation of the "American spirit."
Within the US Pavilion there were four performance spaces which are used for multimedia and live shows, and experienced sequentially. Each holds 500 guests: a welcome hall, a pre-show, a main show, and a post show display area. In the first hall, visitors were greeted in mandarin Chinese in a film that included a cross-section of the United States' multi-cultural residents. The second show-space presented a pre-show film which conveys the "Spirit of America", its urging to promote collaboration and celebration of opportunity, diversity, freedom, and innovation. The third show-space was the main-show, entitled "The Garden." It presented the story of a 10-year-old girl who envisions turning a blighted vacant city lot in her neighborhood into a beautiful, urban pocket park
. The young girl enticed her neighbors to come together to make the park a reality. In the process, she also created a closer community of neighbors. The dialogue-free film, was projected upon five (5) 10-meter-high screens trimmed by programmable LED lighting effects (833 lighting cues in eight minutes), and incorporated in-theater effects such as lighting, mist, and vibrating seats, intended to help the audience feel more involved in the experience. In the post-show area, the pavilion's corporate sponsors displayed their emerging technologies and products. The displays were arranged as the themes: technology, sustainability, US tourism, lifestyle, health, and nutrition.
Foreign Policy describes Secretary Clinton's diplomatic team, when it visited the pavilion on May 24, 2010, as taken aback by its overwhelming commercialism.
A non-verbal approach to the film, and the theater's light and special effects technologies, were intended to make the message understood by all, with no language barrier to understanding the information it intends to convey. However, as discussed below, many took away a different message: that the USA is dominated by corporate interests—a conclusion that some visitors, especially Americans, felt was appropriate; and also that Chinese people are simpletons.
As described in a top story in the on-line news source "Beijing Review," the film: "With its 4-D wind and rain effects, gives audiences an amazing visual and tactile experience. Although there was no dialogue in the film, the excellent visual and audio effects make the film accessible to audiences with different cultural and language backgrounds."
The show received mixed reviews. Many reviewers found it superficial and overly commercial, since it was interrupted by continuous advertising by corporations investing in the pavilion; even the themes were "explained" by corporate CEOs. and
Also, the cost of the presentation remains at issue. In its application to the US Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status, Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the private owner and operator of the USA Pavilion, indicated it had plans to pay $23 million for these 15 minutes of film—about $1.5 million per minute of entertainment, more per minute than many Oscar winning feature films, and one third of the pavilion's budget! When this information was disclosed, pavilion co-founder Nicholas Winslow resigned his post as CEO, allegedly due to a conflict of interest involving his former occasional employer, BRC Imagination Arts. Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the private owner and operator of the pavilion, refuses to open its books to the public.
, Dee Dee Bridgewater
, and Herbie Hancock
.
A serious conflict between the student ambassadors and the pavilion management came to light late in 2010, after the Expo had closed. According to the student ambassadors who posted the original manifesto on the blog Chengdu Living.com -- "Greed and Corruption: the USA Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo" -- and the many who subsequently commented, student ambassadors were overworked, underpaid, not well resourced, and apparently forced to witness or asked to participate in unethical or illegal practices. No response from Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the pavilion's private owner and operator, has been forthcoming.
, American NBA player from the Boston Celtics
. Former US President Jimmy Carter
also visited the pavilion.
in Hanover, Germany.
It has been widely reported in the press that American laws prohibit or limit the spending of public money for participating in world's fairs. However, in an article posted on the internet blog, "The Huffington Post", Innovation Management Consultant and Customer Experience Designer, Bob Jacobson, makes the claim that this was a State Department fabrication, part of the Bush Administration's policy decision to privatize the US Pavilion. In his commentary on the internet blog, "Foreign Policy", Jacobson further explains that a 2006-2007 RFP process was eventually aborted, and the US pavilion project was eventually outsourced, in March 2008. With initial difficulty finding support in Shanghai and the US, in October 2008 the team reportedly received some undisclosed form of support from the US Consulate. [80] With the Obama administration replacing the Bush administration in the fall of 2008 election, a newly appointed Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's first overseas trip was to East Asia. Clinton soon began efforts to raise the funds necessary to make the USA Pavilion a reality. Clinton's personal intervention and her fund-raising network, in fact, are widely credited with helping the U.S. avoid the embarrassment of being a no-show at the largest world expo ever. A key factor in her efforts to support the United States participation in the 2010 Expo was Clinton's recruitment of Jose H. Villarreal, a lawyer and Democratic Party fundraiser from San Antonio, Texas, to finish the job of raising the US $61 million needed to construct and staff the US Pavilion.[75]
The US Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo is noted as the only national pavilion at the Expo—and the only US Pavilion in recent history—solely funded by the financial contributions of approximately 60 multinational corporations. Sponsors—called "Marketing Partners" by Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the pavilion producers—include: Yum!, PepsiCo
, Microsoft
, Johnson & Johnson
, Boeing
, Procter & Gamble
, The Walt Disney Company
, General Electric
, 3M
and Wal-Mart
. A contribution of US $ 5 million from Citigroup
completed the year-long campaign among corporations to reach the project's adjusted US $61 million funding goal, although additional corporate contributions (including from the American branch of Haier
, China's largest household appliance manufacturer) continued to be raised. According to one reporter, the presentations and post show exhibits, their design, projection systems, sound systems, show sets, finishes, installation, training, etc. cost us $23 million, or about $2.3 million per minute of entertainment.
In addition to dominating the formal US Pavilion, corporate America was present in several other venues. For example, the food-court building adjacent to the USA Pavilion was owned by the giant fast-food conglomerate Yum Brands, a USA Pavilion "marketing partner" (sponsor). It housed a Pizza Hut
and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and several US corporations had their own stand-alone pavilions in other areas of the Expo. A marketing document widely circulated by Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., available online, promised that "The USA Pavilion organizers will work closely with our Pavilion sponsors to incorporate their visions of the American city of 2030 into the Pavilion story" i.e., into the Pavilion's central film feature.
Expo 2010
Expo 2010, officially Expo 2010 Shanghai China was held on both banks of the Huangpu River in the city of Shanghai, China, from May 1 to October 31, 2010. It was a major World Expo in the tradition of international fairs and expositions, the first since 1992...
in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
was one of the last of the 192 participating countries to sign-up for involvement with the Expo 2010.
Attendance
As of August 31, 2010, the pavilion reported that attendance had surpassed 4.7 million and was averaging more than 41,000, people per day. On September 30, 2010 the pavilion welcomed its 6 millionth + visitor.Reception and Reviews
After the Expo opened, the USA Pavilion commissioned a poll that showed the pavilion was well liked by Chinese visitors. However, a more objective, thorough, and independent study conducted by Duke University business school professor Liu Kang, then acting as dean of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, gave "Thumbs down for US pavilion" and deemed it the "most disappointing" at the Expo (This document has since been removed from the Shanghai Daily archives, possibly under pressure from official sources. A copy of it can be found on Google Docs at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BzkHBYsY9tkfNWZlMDlhODYtZTMwZi00OTgwLTg1YTgtMDFjZjA1ZTI0NWVl&hl=en/). Administering the survey to Chinese visitors to the USA Pavilion, Kang found that most respondents were critical of the pavilion aesthetics and its content, voting it the most disappointing foreign national pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. According to Liu, "More than 70 percent of respondents said they got more favorable impressions of countries after visiting their national pavilions, but the United States seemed to be an exception. Maybe people had higher expectations so they left disappointed."Reactions among US officials were even less enthusiastic. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the most senior US official to visit the pavilion, responded tersely with "It's fine," when asked to express an opinion on the structure and its programs. US Senator Richard Lugar, former chairman of the US Senate's powerful Foreign Relations Committee, and its current ranking member, noted in a February 15, 2011 letter to his Senate colleagues, that the USA pavilion "drew criticism for its hastily organized presentations and lack of a cogent message." Lugar's letter introduced a report on US public diplomacy efforts in China, of which the USA pavilion was a part. The report claims that the USA pavilion's reliance upon corporate sponsorship "led to heavy criticism for its lack of imagination and heavy corporate branding."
Reviews in the media were decidedly mixed. A Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
editorial comments that the mainly Chinese visitors to the pavilion enjoy watching the American Citizens in the pavilion's introductory film as they make fun of themselves as they attempt to learn simple Chinese greetings. The same editorial also notes that "the pavilion is so loaded with corporate logos that the messages are nearly lost to branding by Chevron, General Electric and others."
The official, government-controlled Chinese press reported that this approach by the United States, to focus both the pavilion's show content and message on a spirit of "community," rather than on the country's history or economy, left visitors to the pavilion with a more lasting and memorable impression of "U.S. Spirit."
However, it's to be noted that the official Chinese press consistently praised the US efforts even when others did not. Given the intense efforts of the Chinese to have the US participate in the Expo, the Chinese press' objectivity is problematic.
US media, too, found a very mixed reaction among Chinese visitors. In one Washington article run in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, it was suggested that the execution of this message and the pavilion, itself, were a hit among the Expo's mostly Chinese visitors. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/05/the_united_corporations_of_ame.htmlThe same paper's Ezra Klein, however, summed up the pavilion's appeal to China visitors thusly: "We're bad at languages, in hock to corporations, and able to set up gardens when children shame us into doing so." According to one National Public Radio (NPR, US), reporter: "…corporate sponsors are front and center. Some American visitors find it gauche, but the Chinese seem unperturbed by all the corporate messages." Reporter: "I talked to more than a dozen Chinese visitors. I asked them to resist their urge to be polite and give me a no-holds barred review. No one had a bad word to say. Here's visitor Zhu Shan Bin exiting the pavilion." Bin: "It shows us the American spirit, which is multi-cultural and filled with imagination and creativity. From the movies here, I see Americans value children and a good education." Reporter: "Now that is some brilliant corporate messaging." Yet NPR's Shanghai correspondent, found quite a contrary reaction from mostly underwhelmed visitors, including this gentleman surnamed Huang: "There isn't enough to see. There's no advanced technology, even though the U.S. is such an advanced country. There are only films. We can see those at the cinema."
Pavilion exit interviews by the Public Broadcasting Service
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
(PBS, US) program "News Hour" found the audience pleased by what they saw, and commenting that it showed them another side of America, which was well worth the long lines endured to enter the pavilion. In a typical response, one woman interviewed by PBS "News Hour" makes the comment: "My View of America Changed…from what I saw, America seemed more sincere and friendly. …Right now, America and China, they are good friends."
A Fudan University
Fudan University
Fudan University , located in Shanghai, is one of the oldest and most selective universities in China, and is a member of the C9 League. Its institutional predecessor was founded in 1905, shortly before the end of China's imperial Qing dynasty...
research study, paid for by the USA pavilion itself, and posted October 14, 2010 on PRNewswire, found that the USA Pavilion met high visitor expectations and generated positive perceptions of Americans. In the study, 95 percent of respondents felt their visit to the USA Pavilions was worth the "time and effort" and 93.4 percent thought it was a good representation of the "American spirit."
Themes
Four core concepts underlay the pavilion's program content: teamwork, sustainability, health, and the spirit of striving for success.Within the US Pavilion there were four performance spaces which are used for multimedia and live shows, and experienced sequentially. Each holds 500 guests: a welcome hall, a pre-show, a main show, and a post show display area. In the first hall, visitors were greeted in mandarin Chinese in a film that included a cross-section of the United States' multi-cultural residents. The second show-space presented a pre-show film which conveys the "Spirit of America", its urging to promote collaboration and celebration of opportunity, diversity, freedom, and innovation. The third show-space was the main-show, entitled "The Garden." It presented the story of a 10-year-old girl who envisions turning a blighted vacant city lot in her neighborhood into a beautiful, urban pocket park
Pocket park
A pocket park, parkette or mini-park is a small park accessible to the general public. In some areas they are called miniparks or vest-pocket parks....
. The young girl enticed her neighbors to come together to make the park a reality. In the process, she also created a closer community of neighbors. The dialogue-free film, was projected upon five (5) 10-meter-high screens trimmed by programmable LED lighting effects (833 lighting cues in eight minutes), and incorporated in-theater effects such as lighting, mist, and vibrating seats, intended to help the audience feel more involved in the experience. In the post-show area, the pavilion's corporate sponsors displayed their emerging technologies and products. The displays were arranged as the themes: technology, sustainability, US tourism, lifestyle, health, and nutrition.
Foreign Policy describes Secretary Clinton's diplomatic team, when it visited the pavilion on May 24, 2010, as taken aback by its overwhelming commercialism.
A non-verbal approach to the film, and the theater's light and special effects technologies, were intended to make the message understood by all, with no language barrier to understanding the information it intends to convey. However, as discussed below, many took away a different message: that the USA is dominated by corporate interests—a conclusion that some visitors, especially Americans, felt was appropriate; and also that Chinese people are simpletons.
As described in a top story in the on-line news source "Beijing Review," the film: "With its 4-D wind and rain effects, gives audiences an amazing visual and tactile experience. Although there was no dialogue in the film, the excellent visual and audio effects make the film accessible to audiences with different cultural and language backgrounds."
Show Design
The show aspects of the US Pavilion were conceived and produced by Bob Rogers (designer) Burbank, California based firm, BRC Imagination Arts, which has produced attractions and content for 11 world's fair presentations, including the film for the Vancouver Expo, "Rainbow War", which was nominated for an Academy Award ("Oscar").The show received mixed reviews. Many reviewers found it superficial and overly commercial, since it was interrupted by continuous advertising by corporations investing in the pavilion; even the themes were "explained" by corporate CEOs. and
Also, the cost of the presentation remains at issue. In its application to the US Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status, Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the private owner and operator of the USA Pavilion, indicated it had plans to pay $23 million for these 15 minutes of film—about $1.5 million per minute of entertainment, more per minute than many Oscar winning feature films, and one third of the pavilion's budget! When this information was disclosed, pavilion co-founder Nicholas Winslow resigned his post as CEO, allegedly due to a conflict of interest involving his former occasional employer, BRC Imagination Arts. Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the private owner and operator of the pavilion, refuses to open its books to the public.
Plaza Stage
In addition to the theater shows, entertainment was provided at the US Pavilion on an ongoing basis with live performances by various US artists. The opening weeks of Expo 2010 included the Philadelphia OrchestraPhiladelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
, Dee Dee Bridgewater
Dee Dee Bridgewater
Dee Dee Bridgewater is an American Jazz singer. She is a three-time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award - winning stage actress and host of National Public Radio's syndicated radio show JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater...
, and Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
.
Student Ambassadors
Many bloggers and newspapers have highlighted and praised the role of the pavilion's "Student Ambassadors." These students were chosen through a national competition organized by the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California]. These university students all speak Chinese, have distinguished academic records, and are responsible for introducing exhibits, talking to visitors as they wait to enter the pavilion, working with visiting dignitaries and delegations, and going outside the Expo for various community projects (e.g., a Habitat for Humanity effort). Several of these student ambassadors have appeared on Chinese television and have been interviewed by newspapers about their experience working at the Expo and living in the Expo Village.A serious conflict between the student ambassadors and the pavilion management came to light late in 2010, after the Expo had closed. According to the student ambassadors who posted the original manifesto on the blog Chengdu Living.com -- "Greed and Corruption: the USA Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo" -- and the many who subsequently commented, student ambassadors were overworked, underpaid, not well resourced, and apparently forced to witness or asked to participate in unethical or illegal practices. No response from Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the pavilion's private owner and operator, has been forthcoming.
Celebrity Guests
A notable guest of the convention was Kevin GarnettKevin Garnett
Kevin Maurice Garnett is an American professional basketball player who currently plays power forward for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association . After a high school basketball career at Farragut Career Academy which included winning a national player of the year award, he...
, American NBA player from the Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics are a National Basketball Association team based in Boston, Massachusetts. They play in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. Founded in 1946, the team is currently owned by Boston Basketball Partners LLC. The Celtics play their home games at the TD Garden, which...
. Former US President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
also visited the pavilion.
Architecture
The US Pavilion, with its theme of "Rising to the Challenge", was a gray steel structure designed to resemble an eagle with its wings outstretched to welcome pavilion visitors. The 60,000-square-foot (5574 sq. meter) United States Pavilion, constructed largely from glass and steel, was designed by Canadian architect Clive Grout. The exterior of the pavilion has not been without its critics, however. In May 2010, one on-line article criticized the exterior of the structure as unimaginative and resembling an ordinary office building. This simplicity in design was likely to have been the intent of the facility designer, as months before any reviews of the exterior began to surface, Grout expressed the design intent of this building was precisely to deemphasize the United States' physical presence at the fair. In a February 2010 article in Fast Company magazine, Grout exclaims: "We have not felt the need to do an architectural handstand to get attention."Funding
The United States had previously failed to attend the Universal Expo 2000Expo 2000
Expo 2000 was a World's Fair held in Hanover, Germany from Thursday, June 1 to Tuesday, October 31, 2000. It was located on the Hanover fairground , which is famous for hosting CeBIT...
in Hanover, Germany.
It has been widely reported in the press that American laws prohibit or limit the spending of public money for participating in world's fairs. However, in an article posted on the internet blog, "The Huffington Post", Innovation Management Consultant and Customer Experience Designer, Bob Jacobson, makes the claim that this was a State Department fabrication, part of the Bush Administration's policy decision to privatize the US Pavilion. In his commentary on the internet blog, "Foreign Policy", Jacobson further explains that a 2006-2007 RFP process was eventually aborted, and the US pavilion project was eventually outsourced, in March 2008. With initial difficulty finding support in Shanghai and the US, in October 2008 the team reportedly received some undisclosed form of support from the US Consulate. [80] With the Obama administration replacing the Bush administration in the fall of 2008 election, a newly appointed Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's first overseas trip was to East Asia. Clinton soon began efforts to raise the funds necessary to make the USA Pavilion a reality. Clinton's personal intervention and her fund-raising network, in fact, are widely credited with helping the U.S. avoid the embarrassment of being a no-show at the largest world expo ever. A key factor in her efforts to support the United States participation in the 2010 Expo was Clinton's recruitment of Jose H. Villarreal, a lawyer and Democratic Party fundraiser from San Antonio, Texas, to finish the job of raising the US $61 million needed to construct and staff the US Pavilion.[75]
The US Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo is noted as the only national pavilion at the Expo—and the only US Pavilion in recent history—solely funded by the financial contributions of approximately 60 multinational corporations. Sponsors—called "Marketing Partners" by Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., the pavilion producers—include: Yum!, PepsiCo
PepsiCo
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
, Boeing
Boeing
The Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
, Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
, The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
, General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
and Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
. A contribution of US $ 5 million from Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
completed the year-long campaign among corporations to reach the project's adjusted US $61 million funding goal, although additional corporate contributions (including from the American branch of Haier
Haier
Haier Group is a multinational consumer electronics and home appliances company headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong, People's Republic of China. Its products include air conditioners, mobile phones, computers, microwave ovens, washing machines, refrigerators, and televisions...
, China's largest household appliance manufacturer) continued to be raised. According to one reporter, the presentations and post show exhibits, their design, projection systems, sound systems, show sets, finishes, installation, training, etc. cost us $23 million, or about $2.3 million per minute of entertainment.
In addition to dominating the formal US Pavilion, corporate America was present in several other venues. For example, the food-court building adjacent to the USA Pavilion was owned by the giant fast-food conglomerate Yum Brands, a USA Pavilion "marketing partner" (sponsor). It housed a Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut is an American restaurant chain and international franchise that offers different styles of pizza along with side dishes including pasta, buffalo wings, breadsticks, and garlic bread....
and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and several US corporations had their own stand-alone pavilions in other areas of the Expo. A marketing document widely circulated by Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., available online, promised that "The USA Pavilion organizers will work closely with our Pavilion sponsors to incorporate their visions of the American city of 2030 into the Pavilion story" i.e., into the Pavilion's central film feature.