Na ch..... nam branding (miejski/narodowy) ? {EN} Why we need city/nation branding?

Poetic viral promotes the Athens

2010-02-09T11:54:00.003+01:00

Breathtaking Athens, the official DMO for The City of Athens,Greece produced a short viral film to promote Athens as a tourist destination to a global audience. The film reveals a wide variety of city locations in a poetic way.

Czy to dobry patent na viral promujący destynację? Moim zdaniem przy długi chyba i za mało chwytliwy jak na viral. Bardziej taki testimonialik może? Ale zdjęcia ładne, trzeba przyznać...

Łódź - The Best Candidate ECC 2016

2010-02-04T21:41:00.001+01:00

Film promujący ostatni etap działań miasta Łodzi w kierunku uzyskania tytułu ESK 2016.

The film promotes the final stage of the city of Lodz in the direction of obtaining an European Capital of Culture in 2016.

Special workshop in Pecs, Hungary (3-5th March 2010)

2010-02-04T09:02:00.005+01:00

Będę miał niewątpliwą przyjemność być uczestnikiem specjalnego warsztatu w mieście Pecs na Węgrzech organizowanego przez British Council w ramach projektu Urban Idea Bakery (http://creativecities.britishcouncil.org/urban_ideas_bakery).

Pierwszy warsztat w ramach tego projektu odbył się w Kownie na Litwie (10-11grudnia 2009), w którym niestety nie mogłem uczestniczyć. Ty razem warsztat odbędzie się na Węgrzech w mieście Pecs. Tematem przewodnim warsztatu będzie "Społeczność - powiązania i wspólne przestrzenie". W fazie diagnostycznej określone zostały potrzeby w tym temacie przez interesariuszy. Warsztat ma za zadanie wybrać te potrzeby, które poprowadzą Pecs do osiągnięcia swojej pozytywne wizji przyszłości.

Dodatkową atrakcją jest fakt, że w tym roku Pecs jest Europejską Stolicą Kultury ! Mam nadzieję zebrać na miejscu informacje na temat przygotowań miasta do bycia ECC - promocji, tworzenia eventów itd. oraz pierwszych podsumowań. Materiał przyda mi się do opracowywanego specjalnego Raportu na temat polskich miast biorących udział w konkursie ECC 2016 (jest ich aż 11). Raport zostanie opublikowany w maju tego roku.

I will be a participant in a special workshop in Pecs (Hungary) organized by the British Council under the project 'Urban Idea Bakery' (http://creativecities.britishcouncil.org/urban_ideas_bakery).

The first workshop in the project 'Urban Idea Bakery'was held at Kanus in Lithuania (December 10-11, 2009), which I unfortunately could not attend. This time workshop will be held at Pecs in Hungary. The theme of the Bakery will be 'community connections and shared community spaces'. These are the needs identified and agreed on by stakeholders during the diagnosis and they are currently putting together additional evidence that these are the core needs of the city that get in the way of Pecs Achieving its positive visions of the future.

An additional attraction is the fact that this year Pecs is the European Capital of Culture! I hope to collect on-site information on the preparation of the city to be ECC - promotion, events, etc. and some first evaluations. Material will be useful for me to prepare the special report on the Polish cities participating in the contest ECC 2016 (there are 11 cities in Poland). The report will be published in May this year.

AUSTRALIA - Come Walkabout - The best nation branding commercial EVER

2010-02-02T23:23:00.007+01:00

First Lviv Tourism Conference “Win with the Lion!”

2009-10-23T15:50:00.003+02:00

I will be the speaker at the First Lviv Tourism Conference “Win with the Lion!”

The agenda looks interesting.

October 29, 2009

16:00 Pototsky Palace (Kopernika Str., 15)
Solemn opening of the First Lviv Tourism Conference “Win with the Lion!”

Welcoming word:
• Lviv City Mayor – Andriy Sadovyy
• Head of Lviv Regional State Administration – Mykola Kmit
• Head of the State Tourism Service – Anatoliy Pakhlia
• Head of the Tourism and Resorts Council - Yevhen Samartsev

17.00

Dieter Hardt-Stremayr, President of European Cities Marketing Association, Managing Director, Graz Tourism Office, Graz, Austria
• “How can you make use of an international network like European Cities Marketing”

Igor Goncharenko, Project Manager, “Effective Management” Foundation
• Lviv Tourism strategy and its role in the increasing of economic competitiveness
• Representative of Monitor Group consulting company
• “Role of Tourism in Lviv Economic Development”

October 30, 2009Parallel Sessions:
10.00 – 13.00 Hotel “Suputnyk”, Knyahynya Olha Str., 116
Participants' Registration
Round Table “Lviv Hotels as a component of the tourist infrastructure of the city”
9:00 — 18:00 Pototsky Palace (Kopernika Str., 15)

9:00
Registration of the participants of the First Lviv Tourism Conference “Win with the Lion!”

9.30
Dieter Hardt-Stremayr, President of European Cities Marketing Association, Managing Director, Graz Tourism Office, Graz, Austria:

• “How does it feel to be a second city (since Vienna is # 1 followed by Salzburg and Innsbruck as far as tourism is concerned); including a short case study what tourism in Graz is all about”
• “How can cities cooperate (for instance within a country; example: Creative Austria)”
Brigitte Weiss, Vienna Tourist Board and its tourist information center, Vienna, Austria
• “Vienna Tourist Board as a Tool for Tourism Development in Vienna”
• “Vienna Brand”
• “Activity of the Tourist Information Center in Vienna”

Ossian Stiernstrand, R&D Director, Göteborg & Co, Göteborg, Sweden
• “Competitors with similar challenges: Medium-sized cities in a world of superlatives”

Dr. John Heeley, Founder and Director of Best Destination Marketing, Great Britain
• “City Branding in Western Europe. Best Examples of Branding”

Wolfgang J. Kraus, Strategy director, Vienna Tourist Board, Austria (until 2008)
“Win with the lion. The destination marketing jobs”

13.00-14.15 – lunch break

14:30
John Heeley, professor at the University of Nottingham, founder of the Best Destination Marketing company, Great Britain
• “Measuring the Impact of City Tourism and City Marketing”

Adam Mikolajczyk, Executive Editor & CEO, Brief for Poland, Warsaw, Poland
• “Tourism positioning and innovations in promotion of regions and cities – Polish experience”

Ostap Protsyk, Head of the Information Policy and Foreign Relations Office at Lviv City Council
• “Lviv City Brand”

Andriy Sydor, Head of the Office for Culture and Tourism at Lviv City Council
• “Lviv as a City of Festivals”

Zenoviy Mazuryk, Head of the Association of Museums and Galleries, Vice-President of the National ICOM Committee, lecturer at the Arts Management Department of Lviv National Academy of Arts
• “Museums as a Component of the City Tourist Product”

Oleh Zasadnyy, Head of the Department "Euro-2012"at Lviv City Council
• “Euro-2012 in Lviv”

18:00

Official closing ceremony of the First Lviv Tourism Conference “Win with the Lion!”

Piano stairs

2009-10-22T14:32:00.003+02:00

Mówi się, że mieszkańców jest bardzo trudno namówić do czegokolwiek - a tutaj mamy genialny przykład, że można, trzeba jedynie podejść do tego w kreatywny sposób. Poza tym.... to wspaniała inspiracja dla Warszawy i innych miast Polski w kontekście zbliżającego się Roku Chopinowskiego.

Jamaica considers cashing in on its image

2009-10-22T12:16:00.003+02:00

Boltmania has Jamaica trying to protect its brand through trademarking anything from the national colors to its celebrities.

Usain Bolt had just been crowned the undisputed sprint king when a businessman boldly walked into the government office here hoping to cash in on the Jamaican track star's record-setting dash. The visitor from the Cayman Islands sought to brand his creative ideas: U-Sane Energy Drink and Lightening Bolt Energy Drink.

``Our antennas went up immediately,'' said attorney Carol Simpson, who heads the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, which oversees trademarks, patents and copyrights. ``The truth is we are very, very careful in looking at instances like this.''

Before Bolt's world records in Beijing and Berlin, the gentleman might have gotten his way. Not any more. In an unusual move for one of the most marketed countries in the world, Jamaica has launched an aggressive campaign to protect its image -- and profit from its brand.

``That Jamaica Brand, that sort of thing that pops up in people's minds because of the Bolt-mania, that can lift you over the edge,'' Prime Minister Bruce Golding told The Miami Herald, referring to the renewed interest in all things Jamaican after Bolt set world records in the 100 and 200 meters at the Beijing Olympics last year then broke them at the recent World Championships in Berlin.

Brand Jamaica is everything distinctively and creatively Jamaican: from Blue Mountain coffee and Bob Marley, to reggae and Rastafarianism to herbs and seasonings.

But while Jamaica has one of the strongest images of any country in the region, thanks largely to its successful tourism marketing campaigns, the country's economy doesn't profit much beyond tourism from its powerful identity.

``Lots of firms around the world use Jamaican imagery to promote their products and services but Jamaica remains firmly stuck in a holiday destination stereotype,'' said Simon Anholt, who advises governments on how to improve their image.

``We don't have a problem creating stuff; the problem is monetizing it,'' said Dillon Powe, marketing executive with Passa Passa, a popular street party in one of Jamaica's roughest neighborhoods. ``Whether it's music or culture, there is something about Jamaica that draws people in. It's just a question of how to capitalize on it.''

GOING TOO FAR?

Still, Anholt said Jamaica may be going too far with its branding campaign.

Though Jamaica's campaign is centered around creating a ``Nation Brand'' -- a term Anholt coined in 1996, Anholt believes the term ``encourages politicians in the belief that they can simply spin their way into a better national image.''

``Countries have images, and those national images are as important to the prospects of those countries as brand images are to corporations,'' he said. ``Countries with a powerful and positive image find that everything they do ... is easier and cheaper.''

The Jamaica campaign is not unlike what South Africa did after apartheid, rebranding itself into the ``Rainbow Nation'' under Nelson Mandela.

No one can say with certainty how much Jamaica loses every time its name or black, gold and green colors appear on a pair of Puma tennis shoes, or when its familiar flag is hoisted.

Everybody seems to be benefiting from the Jamaica craze -- except Jamaica, said Finance Minister Audley Shaw.

``From Puma in terms of Bolt and his shoes to major entities that are using things that were created right here in Jamaica,'' he said. ``We are going to take a very aggressive and proactive approach to the branding in so many respects, in sports and in foods... to make sure we benefit.''

Added Lisa Bell, the deputy president of Jamaica Trade and Invest, a government agency working with companies to help them understand the benefits of brand marketing:

``[The Jamaica Intellectual Property Office] gets complaints on a daily basis of companies infringing on our intellectual property and our brand. We have to lock it up and make it authentic.''

NOT AN EASY SELL

But getting Jamaicans to buy into the idea of managing intellectual property is not an easy sell. Bell said she had a tough time before the Olympics convincing companies -- and even potential Olympians -- to trademark their brands. Few did.

``Can you imagine a consortium of Jamaican companies wrapping up their intellectual property related to the MVP runners club, tying that up, designing products using Jamaican expertise,'' said Bell, referring to the MVP Track and Field Club, whose members include former world record holder Asafa Powell and other top athletes.

Bruce James, president of the club, said he's spoken to the intellectual property office and isn't totally convinced of the benefit of trademarking his runners. ``We have 100 athletes in the MVP Track and Field Club. It's not practical,'' he said. ``What I do in Jamaica only covers Jamaica. I would have to do the same thing in all 200 countries of the world and major markets.''

One Jamaican athlete has been aggressively protecting his image: Bolt. He registered several trademarks, including his famous stance after winning gold in China. He has trademarks in Jamaica, the U.S. and several other countries.

But protecting an athlete's image globally can get expensive because Jamaica is not a signatory of the Madrid Protocol, which provides trademark protection in signator countries with just one registration. Lawyers, eager for business, have lobbied against joining the agreement but government officials say they're making an effort to get Jamaica to sign.

Last month, the government introduced a National Branding Committee. Its task could include researching whether the word jerk, which refers to both the seasoning and a specific way of cooking chicken and pork, can be protected.

Even the name Jamaica is being considered for a trademark, officials say.

But Anholt, the international image expert, said trying to legally protect the nation's assets through branding is a ``dangerous'' idea that is ill-advised.

``It's surely more important for Jamaica to work on ways of leveraging and profiting from its wonderful image,'' he said, ``rather than dreaming up ways of preventing others from doing so.''

By Jacqueline Charles
www.miamiherald.com

Australia - Transcript - Joint Press Conference with Simon Anholt, Parliament House

2009-10-22T12:12:00.002+02:00

SIMON CREAN: We've committed to developing a brand for Australia and we announced the tenders some time ago. Today what I'm announcing is the business advisory group that will help us develop the creative brief to go to the short-listed group of those that have tendered for the initiative.

We've had over 60 expressions of interest, some of them I'm told are really excellent. So we're hoping that what we've really got is a good opportunity to test and challenge the successful tenderer. But this is not just a government decision. This requires importantly some business savvy in it because it's got to be a brand that business is confident about, but also that the community accepts as a credible expression about what Australia is and what it's seeking to offer the rest of the world both in goods and services.

Today we also have the privilege to have with us Simon Anholt who is a world expert in national image. It's Simon's reports that were initially used by Austrade to take a step back and say how does the rest of the world view Australia? And Simon's expertise is in analysing and researching how others view other countries.

So we brought Simon out and we had a very good discussion today with the representatives of the companies that have been appointed to this advisory body. I'll invite him in a minute to talk about the concept of national image and where Australia is perceived in that regard.

We think it's important to try and get this dynamic right so that what we're coming out with is the proper outcome. And not only in terms of the best spend of the money, but the most effective way of promoting that which we take inherently as our breadth of strengths, that which the rest of the world has a strong view about certain aspects of, but not the rest of.

So that's the exercise for us. I should also say that I'm heading off - I'm very busy for the rest of this week. In fact we've got the Pacific Islands countries in Brisbane ....to advance PACER Plus, that was the important initiative that came out of the Cairns meeting in August.

This is the first meeting of trade ministers to advance PACER Plus.

I'm then going to Japan which is the first meeting by an Australian minister in Japan since the new government has come to office. I've already spoken with my counterpart Mr Naoshima by phone. We've had a very good dialogue to date and I'm looking forward to getting into that further, face-to-face.

I also hope to catch up with Deputy Prime Minister Kan, I met him when I went to Japan again as the first minister from Australia when we got elected. He was in the DPJ then, I established contact with him, so we'll try and build on that.

And then of course to Korea at the end of the week to advance the bilateral relationship there.

So if there are any questions about that, let's leave those until last. I'll ask Simon to speak to you about what he's telling us and you can question him as well and then we'll throw it open.

SIMON ANHOLT: Thanks very much Simon. Well, no great surprises really. Australia is a greatly admired country. In fact the phrases often used about Australia is that it punches above its weight and that's certainly true in image terms. It regularly comes within the top 10 of the most admired nations in my survey, the nations' brands index.

Considering that most of the other countries at that level in the index have got substantially larger economies, land areas, political power, economic power and so on and so forth, Australia does remarkably well. There's work to be done of course for a number of reasons.

First of all you never own a good national image, you only rent it. And you have to keep paying the rent and I think some of these initiatives are a very good way of starting that process. I think Australia's image doesn't quite do it justice - even though it's very, very positive – it's a tiny bit soft.

In other words the associations are all with tourism, and that's partly because the tourism industry has done such a good job of promoting Australia as a tourist destination. But it's all a little bit to do with tourism and lifestyle and food and culture and soft stuff.

I think Australia needs and deserves better, and I think the process that is starting with this initiative is starting to tell the world about some of the serious stuff that Australia does in terms of its economic impact, its political gravitas, its intellectual capability: that this is a major power.

And I think that's the message that needs to start to be driven across, that it's not simply decorative, it's also useful. Unlike a great many of the countries I advise Australia faces a rather interesting challenge. A vast majority of the countries that I talk to, their problem, their question is how they can improve their national image, how they can update it, how they can make it more positive, how they can make it better.

Australia's interesting challenge is what do they do with this fantastic image? How can you use it? What can you do with it? And I think you're only beginning to see the beginning of the potential that you can use by leveraging that image in the world. So these are exciting times.

QUESTION: What elements do you think Australia has that gives us this positive image?

SIMON ANHOLT: Well, I think the fact that people in so many of the countries where I run the survey seem to instinctively like and trust Australians. This may be because you don't come with any of the imperial baggage that so many of the great powers come with.

Australia has an enormous capacity, thanks to this image, to move around, to move flexibly, to engage with many other countries without a preset agenda, without mistrust, without fear. This gives you enormously good access and all kinds of opportunities to engage in the challenges of global governance that are proving so difficult for the conventional big powers to tackle.

QUESTION: Mr Crean, what are the practical benefits of not necessarily rebranding Australia but repolishing our image overseas? What do you hope to achieve from this process?

SIMON CREAN: What I hope to achieve is a far more effective mechanism by which we join the dots. Australia is well regarded for its commodity base, its agriculture base. What does the world need at the moment? It needs energy security, it needs food security and it needs to develop its skill base.

Australia can participate in all of those three spaces in spades. But it's not just supplying the raw material. It's marketing quality food. Australia can be the food basket to Asia. And as the Asian economies grow in wealth, their demand isn't just going to be for food for sustenance, it's going to be for nutrition and quality.

When it comes to energy what we also provide is not just the commodity but the cleaner fuel. Australia is effectively to gas what Saudi Arabia is to oil. And so cleaner fuels will have a premium but it's not just our ability to produce the fuels. What makes us good is the efficiency with which we extract it, by which we value add to it, by which we develop the technology around it, by which we market it. And it's all of those services that strengthen the comparative advantage of the nation.

And in the case of education, if nations are going to move forward they have to build the skills of their people. Australia is uniquely placed. It's a trusted provider, an image that's been tarnished somewhat with the Indian students issue. And that has been an attack on the brand if you like because what we offer is quality education, not just any education but quality education, and we have to reinforce that brand.

But the Expo next year and those who - if you were at the launch of the Expo yesterday I think I made this point. Shanghai is going to provide us with a huge opportunity next year to target the fastest growing market in the world and a market going through fundamental transition.

China knows that it's got to move away from simply a growth model based on exporting product to the rest of the world. They have to develop a consumption driven economy. For that they need to embrace safety nets and Australia is well placed to advise in the space of a whole range of things, whether it's medicine, health services, superannuation, those sorts of things.

But China also understands what many countries in Asia are understanding now, that if they want to make the leap from developing country to developed, they've got to be far more embracive of a services based economy.

All of the developed economies in the world have an important feature, that 60 to 70 - in our case 80 per cent of their GDP is contributed to by services.

And so therefore, the combination of the challenge is obviously to create a trade negotiating framework in which the market is opened up for services, but in which we connect the services factor as an enabler to economic development, and Australia's strength is so broadly spread in those areas, as I said at the beginning, we want to join the dots and we want to do it in a way that so whatever the component is, when people say it's Australian, they say quality – and therefore attractive.
They do it in a number of areas now. We've got to broaden the perception about where those areas are. And the Expo in Shanghai is going to provide a huge opportunity for us next year because it's got 80 million people coming to it. Most of them will be in China itself, but there will be a significant international population. We have the opportunity I think to present the breadth of what we've got to offer next year in a big way.

QUESTION: Are services therefore in that, in that sense the new frontier for trade, are they?

SIMON CREAN: I believe they are, and I said this when we came to office, that in the case of the Doha round we said we wanted to give greater emphasis to services. If you look at the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement that we've signed, it's the most comprehensive free trade agreement that ASEAN has entered into because it picks up services and investment. Why are Malaysia and Korea so aggressive now in pursuing their FTAs? Because they know if they want to be considered by the OECD as developed they have to build their services economy.

There is a huge opportunity for Australia to get into this space. One of the reasons we've got a bit of an unlocking in the Doha log-jam is because we've elevated services into that equation.

So, I think that there is a huge opportunity on the trade front for us on services, not just services as a sector in its own right - financial services, education, etcetera – but services as the enabler, the enhancer of one's comparative advantage: smart manufacturing, quality food product, value-added resource materials. It's the enabler, but it's also got an aspirational dimension to it. If countries want to move to the developed phase they've got to embrace services.

So, there's a number of dynamics working in our favour. We have got to pursue the policy framework for that, but we've also got to create the environment in which people understand that we have a lot to offer on that front.

QUESTION: Minister, the rising Australian dollar has hurt a lot of exporters. What message do you have for them?

SIMON CREAN: Well, obviously when the dollar rises it's harder to export. I think that's a given. But the fact is that this fluctuation in the Australian dollar has been a fact of life for our exporters over the past 25 years now since we floated the dollar.

I've got no doubt that the decision to float the dollar was one of the most fundamental policy decisions that this country made that ensured its competitiveness and its ability to actually punch above its weight on so many fronts with the rest of the world.

Now it's true that when you've got the volatility it makes it hard, especially when it's going up. But I think that quite frankly most of the exporters I've spoken to, whilst they don't like it, they've understood over the 25 years how to adjust to it - they either hedge differently or they build factors in that take account of the fact that the dollar might rise.

I might say, Australia is not just an exporter, it's also a value-adder, and for that it needs imports.

And so whatever the exchange rate is doing against exports, it's cheapening, it's lowering the cost of the import that is an input. And so that needs to be taken into account too in terms of cost competitiveness and to a large extent the strength of the dollar is commodity price driven, and that of course is adding significantly to the national income of the nation.

QUESTION: [Inaudible question]

SIMON CREAN: The Japan visit is to talk about the Free Trade Agreement, the bilateral economic relationship. We are about to enter the tenth round of negotiations. What will be interesting to see is how the new government approaches this challenge.

Again, whilst there are difficulties still remaining in agriculture I think there are huge opportunities in the services sector, and with investment flows between the two countries.

There will also be a revitalised business delegation going up there. Rod Eddington has chaired the Australia Japan Business Council. Peter Drysdale has just put out an interesting new study that really demonstrates that there is great opportunity for Australia, Japan, and the strength of its relationship to actually jointly target markets within the region.

One interesting spin-off of is the Lion Nathan takeover by Kirin, and whilst Kirin has bought out Lion Nathan it's retained the marketing arm in Lion Nathan's name, because they understand the strength of that as a marketing mechanism within the region.

Now to me, this opens up huge opportunity for us to get into the food and beverage space much more effectively.

So there are those dimensions to it, and so the business dialogue, the partnership, the opening up of the relationship, but importantly establishing very early in the piece with a new government still our strongest trading partner, the seriousness with which we place the relationship.

QUESTION: Simon, just back to nation branding, you say that Australia has long enjoyed a good reputation overseas. There is a renewed debate in this country about asylum seekers. Do you believe that that could tarnish our reputation overseas, if it hasn't already?

SIMON ANHOLT: In my experience these kinds of happenings don't do very much to the image of the country. One of the things that I have found studying national image over many years is that they are remarkable stable phenomena. It's much more like a capital asset than a liquid currency. It takes many years to build, and most of the time it's pretty hard to damage as well.

Because, the simple reason is that people don't think very much about other countries, and consequently they don't - their perceptions of other countries don't move around very quickly.

So generally speaking, there is a period of grace. If things go wrong, you may suffer some temporary unpopularity, but it doesn't affect the overall image of the country unless the behaviour is repeated over many, many years and then it becomes part of your image and it's very, very hard to undo. But there is this period of grace.

If things go wrong for a little while, it's not going to impact the image dramatically. So there's time to fix it. There's time to change the policies. There's time to make things better. There's time to make amends. There's time to do some high profile gestures to show that you're not the country people think you are, and the image is generally safe.

One of the advantages of having a powerful and positive national image is that it is an insurance policy against things going wrong. People will continue to trust you for a little while, not forever, but for a little while.

QUESTION: Some commentators have said Australia has an image that is racist overseas, particularly with countries in Europe. Is that something you have found at all?

SIMON ANHOLT: No, not at all.

QUESTION: Never?

SIMON ANHOLT: I have never seen any evidence of that whatsoever. In fact, quite the contrary. All the evidence is that people associate Australia with a wonderful, laid back, easy going kind of personality, which I know irks some Australians. I mean, it's a thing I've often said that in a sense the defining image of the Australian is the movie Crocodile Dundee, and the Australians are infuriated by this because it seems like a reduction, a cliché, and so on and so forth. But actually it's not half bad.

Just as an introduction to the kind of people, it bares perhaps a distant relationship to what Australians are really like, and it's very positive indeed.

QUESTION: Minister, can I just ask you - sorry - do you endorse Kevin Rudd's comments that people arriving on boats are illegal immigrants?

SIMON CREAN: Well, some of them may be but in the main they're refugees.

I mean, I think the importance about what we're trying to do and the fundamental difference between our approach to this and the previous government, we always said we were going to secure our borders. We said that. But we also recognised that the refugee issue is of a global dimension and requires a global response.

Our criticism…

QUESTION: Is it premature to call them illegal, though?

SIMON CREAN: …of the previous government was that they never did anything to work with other nations to deal with the flow and then the accommodation. And that's what we said going into the election we would develop, and that's what we'll continue to develop.

And I think you can see the relationships that we've had with Indonesia in the last week or so, an important part of that country to country, but we need to take it further and develop the international response as well.

QUESTION: It's not premature, though, to call them illegal?

SIMON CREAN: No.

ENDS

Seoul to Use Expats for Promotion

2009-09-24T13:21:00.002+02:00

Seoul sees expatriates living in Korea as its key promoters to the world.

"The best way to promote the city is foreign residents telling their friends that Seoul is worth visiting," said Kang Cheol-won, director-general of Seoul's Public Relations Planning Bureau.

Kang is reaching out to expats because Seoul is not as well-known globally as Koreans believe. Any help in increasing global awareness of the city is welcomed, as far as he is concerned. Kang is leading overseas marketing for Seoul.

According to a survey by the Korea Tourism Organization, 42 percent of foreigners said they don't know about Seoul and therefore don't make plans to visit the city.

"We think Seoul is widely known, but that is the first myth we have to dismantle to let the world know our city and Korea better," Kang said.

Seoul ranked 33rd out of 40 in the Anholt Nation Brands Index in 2007, lower than other Asian cities like Tokyo at 20th, Singapore at 23rd and Hong Kong at 26th. "Those cities put millions of dollars into promote themselves," Kang said.

As Seoul's chief of overseas marketing, Kang considers the city a product and seeks ways to "sell" it.

"First, we have to raise the name recognition of Seoul and then promote the charm of the city, where tradition and modernity coexist. We want to solicit foreign investment through Seoul's strong points of safety and convenience," he said. "Ultimately, we want to create Seoul's brand image as a city where people want to come, live and invest."

Seoul spent 21 billion won ($17.5 million) on overseas marketing last year, up 10-fold from the previous year.

For effective marketing, the city has identified Japan, China, Southeast Asia, the Americas and several countries in Europe as benchmarks and concentrated its efforts to boost tourism.

The city has made several commercials featuring local people and celebrities last and this year, with "hallyu" ― or Korean wave ― stars such as TVXQ making appearances in this year's segments.

"We have also attracted Chinese television producers to shoot variety shows in Seoul," he said. For example, actress Lin Chi-Ling visited the city for a photo shoot and television show with Korean actress Yoon Eun-hye, Sunday.

Seoul also signed sponsorship contracts with Manchester United, the English Premier League football team where Korean player Park Ji-sung plys his trade. "Manchester United games are aired worldwide and with audiences averaging 300 million."

Rain, a top Korean singer and actor, became Seoul's global goodwill ambassador in June and actively participates in promoting the city. "The singer suggests ideas for city promotion by himself. He might have a concert on the Han River this winter against the backdrop of the beautiful fountains of Banpo Bridge," Kang said.

The city will hold Big Air, an urban snowboard jump challenge, in December to showcase its downtown area including the new Gwanghwamun Plaza. "Seoul's scenery will be aired through sports channels around the world," he said.

"City marketing is not something we can see the results of right away," Kang said. "However, we are seeing an increase in tourists and a boost in city recognition, and expect to see good results in three to four years."

AC Nielson analyzed the effect of Seoul's overseas marketing through surveys on 2,000 potential visitors. After the promotional efforts, Seoul topped as the city most people want to visit among people in China, Japan and Thailand.

The number of visitors to Korea increased from 6.5 million in 2007 to 6.9 million last year. By April, 2.7 million visited and almost all passed through Seoul. This is a 24-percent increase from the same period last year, proving the marketing abroad has been fruitful so far.

Kang also recognized that Seoul still has a way to go to attract more tourists. "Accommodation in hotels and traditional food is expensive and the language barrier for tourists still exists," he added.
By: Kwon Mee-yoo
Source: www.koreatimes.co.kr

Łódz in NY Times: Despite Global Recession, A Polish City Is Thriving

2009-09-09T10:09:00.003+02:00

NY Times za pomocą W.Reymonta i miasta Łodzi opisuje dobrą kondycję polskiej gospodarki.. ciekawe!

In the 19th century, the Polish novelist Wladyslaw Reymont titled his masterpiece about Lodz "The Promised Land" because the city attracted people from throughout Central Europe to work in its booming textile mills.

These days, the industries have changed, but something similar is happening again, helping Poland to escape the searing global recession. With multinationals like Procter & Gamble, Dell and ABB leading a wave of foreign investment, cities like Lodz, in central Poland, are experiencing relative booms.

Poles who left the country in search of work years ago are trickling back. As its peers in Central and Eastern Europe face a very rough year, Poland is emerging as the one economy in the region that has the heft to withstand a vicious downturn. And it just may end up being the one economy in Europe that avoids an outright contraction in 2009. One of the most flourishing corners of Lodz is a vast former textile factory that is now a complex of stores, restaurants and even a beach volleyball court. The brisk business at the site, known as Manufaktura, illustrates how far Poland is removed from the searing experiences of Latvia or Hungary, not to mention London or New York. "Maybe without the crisis, business would be better," said Slawomir Murawski, the director of Manufaktura.

"But who knows?" Poland has the advantage of being preoccupied with itself these days. Because it sells far less to the rest of the world than its neighbors, Poland is shielded from the vicissitudes of the global economy, while reaping its benefits, reflecting a wave of foreign investment. That, in turn, has helped keep its labor market strong at a time when many Europeans fear for their jobs.

The government reported Friday that Poland's economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.1 percent in the second quarter, bolstered by exports, construction and services. Growth in gross domestic product was well above the 0.5 percent expected by analysts, as well as the first quarter's 0.8 percent annual rate of growth. "We're the only country in the whole European Union that has such good growth, and we've come here to brag," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a news conference in Warsaw, Bloomberg News reported. "Poland is the E.U.'s undisputed growth leader." At the beginning of the year, Poland suffered along with other emerging markets as investors pulled their money out en masse. To the immense frustration of Polish business, however, the picture of the region for outsiders has been dominated by countries like Hungary, Latvia, Serbia and Ukraine, whose crushing debt loads drove them into the arms of the International Monetary Fund.

For Poland, a relatively light borrower, the crisis created a riptide in the form of a fast-depreciating currency, the zloty. That hurt some companies, namely those that had carefully hedged themselves against a rising currency, which was the previous year's problem. But Polish banks, keen to avoid driving their clients into bankruptcy, refinanced the hedges to reflect the new reality. "In retrospect, the crisis proved manageable in Poland," said Ryszard Petru, chief economist at BRE Bank in Warsaw. "But it was hard to know at the time." The zloty plunged 27 percent against the euro in the six months ended in March. It has since risen more than 13 percent.

Poland has landed more softly than its neighbors because its economy is far less dependent on exports than other Central European countries, where exports can approach 90 percent of the gross domestic product. Poland, a nation of 38 million people, lives far more from domestic demand, and that depends on a stable labor market. Mr. Petru predicts that unemployment will rise to 9.9 percent by the end of 2009, from 7.1 percent, but that is about even with the European Union average. And it masks some pockets of strong growth; the jobless rate is 2 percent in Warsaw, and about 8 percent in Lodz, or less than half what it was five years ago.

One reason for the surprise in Lodz is clearly the influx of foreign investment. Procter & Gamble has one factory in Lodz and is opening another this fall. Fujitsu, the Japanese computer company, opened a service center in the city this year. Others include Infosys Technologies, the Indian information technology firm; ABB, the Swiss manufacturer of infrastructure equipment; and TNT, a Dutch logistics firm. Even after the shock of last September, when the bankruptcy of the investment house Lehman Brothers sent global business into free fall, "companies in Lodz kept searching for labor," said Piotr Broncher, the Lodz regional director for Manpower, a provider of temporary employees. "I was surprised. Everybody was surprised."

Manpower will probably find jobs for 1,200 people in the Lodz area this year, down slightly from 1,500 in 2008. Dell, the computer maker, made the investment that truly electrified Lodz. In January, Michael S. Dell, the company's founder and chief executive, officially opened a 400,000-square-foot plant that will handle logistics and assemble computers, particularly for customers from Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Over the next three years, it will employ up to 3,000 people. In a symbolic shift, Dell moved operations to Lodz from Limerick, Ireland. Ireland has protested the 52.7 million euros in subsidies that Dell got from the Polish government, but Dell cited the skilled work force in Lodz and proximity to growing markets as the reasons for its move.

The Irish boom, now possibly the worst bust in Europe, attracted many Poles, who worked with Dell there and are now finding their way home. "We even have some workers in Lodz who have come from our Limerick, Ireland, factory and who are very happy to have come back to help set up this one," Mr. Dell said at the opening in January. Tomasz Rybinski, 30, was among those Poles who left the country after it joined the European Union in 2004. He found work in Britain, which was booming and where he spent three years mixing salads, moving boxes in a warehouse and then, finally, working in a factory that made industrial refrigerators.

Rumors this year that layoffs were in the works were enough to convince Mr. Rybinski that the possibilities in his native Lodz trumped what had by then become a shattered British economy. After taking some time off, he found a job quickly. He recently started work in a factory that produces monitor and computer parts as an operator of a machine that molds plastic into specific shapes. Financially, Mr. Rybinski said he would earn about the same monthly pay, the equivalent of about $500, that he earned in Britain.

The turnaround in Lodz has been startling for a municipality whose population was still declining as recently as three years ago. Mr. Murawski, the director of Manufaktura, said his business benefited from that growth. But one multinational on the horizon might be less welcome for his operation, which combines shopping, eating and entertainment for children. This autumn, the Swedish retailer Ikea will open its own complex in Lodz, employing much the same strategy: bring them in to shop, but amuse them as well.
"That is likely to affect us much more than the crisis," Mr. Murawski said. "It is something concrete." By: Carter Dougherty Source: The new York Times

The World's Happiest Cities

2009-09-03T11:36:00.007+02:00

Ever since Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared in the 1933 film Flying Down to Rio, the world has been fascinated with Rio de Janeiro. Popular perception of the city is infused with images of starry-eyed youngsters dancing into the dusk, backed by imposing mountains and dark sea. That view has propelled Rio to the top of our list of the world's happiest cities. Famous for its annual Carnaval festival (starting Feb. 13 next year), the second-largest metropolis in South America finished first among 50 cities in a recent survey conducted by policy advisor Simon Anholt and market researcher GfK Custom Research North America. "Brazil is associated with all these qualities of good humor and good living and Carnaval," says Anholt. "Carnaval is very important-it's the classic image that people have of Rio, and it's an image of happiness."

Next on the list is the top city from Down Under: Sydney, Australia. Known for balmy weather, friendly locals and an iconic opera house, Sydney fared well in Anholt's survey because of its association with a popular brand--Australia. "It's where everybody would like to go," he says. "Everybody thinks they know Australia because they've seen Crocodile Dundee. There's this image of this nation of people who basically sit around having barbecues." Rounding out the top five are third-ranked Barcelona, Spain, which Anholt calls "the classic Mediterranean city"; fourth-ranked Amsterdam, Netherlands, because Anholt's young respondents "know you can smoke dope in the bars"; and Melbourne, Australia, which makes the list simply because it's in Australia. "People know it's in Australia, and that it's full of Australians," says Anholt. "Therefore, it must be fun." Behind the Numbers The data Anholt provided for our list is part of the 2009 Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index, released in June. The research was compiled through online interviews with 10,000 respondents in 20 countries. Happiness is difficult to quantify, and Anholt acknowledges that his data is less an indicator of where local populations are happiest than a reflection of respondents' thinking about where they could imagine themselves happy. "This is a survey of perception, not a survey of reality," he says. "People write me all the time and say 'that's not true.' It probably isn't true, but it's what people think. The gap between perception and reality is what interests city governments." The French historian Fernand Braudel wrote that " Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history." (More quotes on happiness.) But a perception of happiness leaves a strong trace on the balance sheets of cities that depend on conventions, tourism and an influx of talent. The Pursuit of Happiness Anholt notes that the results of his survey reflect the longstanding reputation of Mediterranean and Latin American cities as non-stop party locales. "It's pretty much the expected bunch," says Anholt. "Though I'm a little surprised about Spain outdoing Italy. It's interesting that the Spanish are perceived as being happier than the Italians--I find the Spanish rather gloomy." Still, Barcelona--Spain's highest-ranked city--has plenty of supporters. "The beauty of the city and its environs, along with affordable housing and business opportunities, is the fantastic lifestyle," says Michelle Finkelstein, a vice president at travel agency Our Personal Guest. "There's not the stress of getting a child into the best preschool--the public ones are good and close by. And they have the top soccer team and some of the best weather in Europe." Other places in the world that lack the metropolitan flair of the cities on this list are often identified with the notion of happiness. "Anyone lucky enough to visit the magical Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan would know that there is no competition: There can be no happier place," says Patricia Schultz, author of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. "This small Buddhist nation of incredibly stunning beauty follows a unique guiding philosophy of GNH--Gross National Happiness. You can see it in their open faces--they smile from the heart. Barcelona has nothing on them." Global rivalries notwithstanding, Anholt notes that his findings more or less support historical trends, with one notable exception. "The cities on this list would probably be the same if I'd been running this survey in 1890, aside from Sydney and Melbourne," he says. "Australia is kind of a branding miracle." Not bad for a former penal colony.
BY Zack O'Malley Greenburg
Source: www.forbes.com

Is Bruno - the most famous Austrian since Adolf Hitler - ruin the image of Austria?

2009-09-02T12:16:00.000+02:00

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie about a fictional gay Austrian fashion fanatic who wants to be "the most famous Austrian since Adolf Hitler" has some Austrians up in arms even before its release next month.

The lead character, Bruno, sometimes spelled Brüno, is also a TV presenter reporting for the "Voice of Austrian Youth TV."

People Today columnist Lisa Trompisch said she, for one, finds some lines of the film irritating and upsetting.

"How could a line that obviously points to the most horrifying crime that Austrian has seen in decades, namely a father [Josef Fritzl] keeping his own daughter in a dungeon for 26 years and fathering her seven children during that time, be considered humorous or funny?" she asked, citing one of Bruno's controversial lines, "I want to live the Austrian dream of finding a partner, buying a dungeon and starting a family."

Trompisch said, "I would rather call that irreverent and cynical." She also pointed out that in her heute.at (today.at) column she highlights another quote, "K is for Kampf, as in 'Mein Kampf,' ze fashion bible written by Austria's black sheep Adolf Hitler" as politically incorrect and unacceptable.

"I can't decide which is worse, the insult to Austria, or to present Hitler merely as a black sheep," she writes.

Austrian writers are reminding their readers of Cohen's last movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (2005), a satire in which the small town of Glod was portrayed in a backward land (Kazakhstan) of poverty and bigotry.

The film hurt a lot of feelings in Kazakhstan at the time and upset many local officials with "the derogatory way" in which their country was presented.

Suggesting that Kazakhstan has been suffering an enormous loss of identity because of Cohen's movie, ORF, the Austrian Broadcasting Corp., published an article on its Web site headlined, "Could that happen to Austria, too? Will Nazis replace our Dirndl image?"

"Could tourists be thinking of Nazis and hatred towards foreigners instead of mountains, lakes and friendly hosts wearing Dirndl dresses?" the article said, referring to the kind of traditional dress worn in southern Germany, Liechtenstein and Austria. "Should we laugh about this movie, or should we simply ignore it? Is this going to threaten our country's image?"

Will the Sacha Baron Cohen Curse Strike Austria?

Austrians needn't worry, said author Simon Anholt, a British nation-branding expert who has just published his latest book "Competitive Identity."

"Absolutely not, they should not worry, this is not how it works," he said.

Anholt, who works with international countries as a policy advisor on national identity issues, said, "This is a lot of wild talk. I know the Austrians are very sensitive about their image, but if a country's image is pretty well established, almost nothing can change it. If at all, this movie will have a short-term superficial impact which will be forgotten as soon as the reporting about it dies down.

"In the case of Kazakhstan, the situation was completely different. Nobody knew the country to begin with. It had no image to lose. In fact, Baron Cohen's film 'Borat' put the country on the map. It made people curious and tourism saw a ten-fold increase after the film. The Austrians would be best advice to ignore it, or better even, to respond with humor."

That's what Alfons Haider, Austria's most famous TV presenter, is suggesting, too.

"It's difficult to judge a film that you haven't seen but I expect it to be very funny, he said. "Sacha Baron Cohen is a wonderful actor; I'm definitely going to see the movie and I'll invite him to show him what the country is really like.

"The only thing that makes me feel strange is the idea to see Austrians marching again in Nazi uniforms and to see Hitler portrayed as entertainment. Hitler simply cannot be a comedy star. I think Cohen is walking on the edge there."

Haider, who is preparing to host a TV show on national Austrian TV ORF the same day the film is released, is thinking out loud. "I have three things in common with the lead character Bruno; I'm male, I'm gay and I'm Austrian. Maybe I'll present the show that night as Bruno."

Author: CHRISTEL KUCHARZ
Source: ABC NEws

Finland beyond Nokia - public diplomacy case study

2009-09-02T12:14:00.000+02:00

Finland was one of many European countries that, in the early 1920s, received loans from the U.S. Government. In 1929, a sudden collapse in the stock market triggered the Great Depression, leading to a worldwide economic downturn. All but one country ceased making repayments to the United States. That country was Finland.

This period also marked the start of Finnish public diplomacy.

Approximately three thousand articles were written in the U.S. about a Scandinavian country in the north of Europe that had repaid its debt to America. Even today, older generations of Americans who lived through the Great Depression remember the story of the trustworthy and honest Finns.

Public diplomacy, as a phrase and paradigm, found its way to the Finnish Foreign Service less than a decade ago. Media relations, cultural diplomacy and exchange programs had all been part of the communications portfolio of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs since the early years of independence; but with the introduction of public diplomacy, the “attempts to manage the international environment through engagement with a foreign public”1 have become more strategic and focused.

“Half of the work of an embassy consists of traditional diplomacy, while the other half consists today of public diplomacy” stated Alexander Stubb, Finland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs last August, at the annual gathering in Helsinki of Finland’s ambassadors.

Soon after, the Foreign Minister appointed a high-level delegation to lead efforts to develop a country brand for Finland. Jorma Ollila, Chairman of Nokia Corporation and Royal Dutch Shell, was invited to chair the delegation.

The delegation is charged with the creation of a country brand for Finland; a strong national image that will enhance Finland’s international competitiveness. The appointment is based on the present Government Programme, an action plan wherein the strengthening of Finland’s image is one of the government’s objectives.

The purpose of the country brand is fourfold: strengthen the operating potential of Finnish businesses; increase foreign political influence; promote interest in Finland as an investment target; and increase tourist flows to Finland. The country brand is regarded as a cornerstone for success and prosperity.

As with any national endeavor, the branding project has become a target for skeptics. Some claim nation branding is just another marketing and communications project. Others claim that as a top performer in international comparisons, Finland need not worry about its brand and, therefore, does not require a high-level delegation. Responding to such criticism at a business seminar last January, Jorma Ollila declared that countries which fail to foster their brand could find themselves in the company of North Korea, Myanmar or Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the Finnish national brand project will rely on hard facts rather than simply a shiny veneer.

The delegation’s tasks include defining key strategic selections, networking, raising critical questions regarding content and devising services that will enhance Finland’s prestige, in addition to monitoring and steering the project. The country brand project can thus be described as the first layer of the Finnish public diplomacy concept and a broad framework for public diplomacy operations.

The second layer of Finnish public diplomacy consists of large-scale public-private cooperation among Finland’s main actors on the international scene. Those actors include the Finnish Tourist Board (MEK), Invest in Finland Agency, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology (Tekes), the national airline Finnair and the Finnish Forest Foundation, among others. This public-private partnership is chaired by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Joint public diplomacy efforts include Finnish participation at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and “This is Finland” (http://finland.fi). Such cooperation makes it possible for other stakeholders to be informed about and partake in public diplomacy operations if they believe it will benefit them.

The third layer of the public diplomacy concept consists of specific country programs. Public diplomacy efforts are currently focused on eleven countries Finland considers most important and where a relatively small investment can yield strong returns. These countries are Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States.

For each of these countries the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and its embassies have developed a public diplomacy program. Each program includes an analysis of the operational environment, the status of the nation brand, definitions of objectives, key messages, target groups, tools and, ultimately, an action plan. The Finnish Embassies and Consulates in the above-mentioned countries will receive additional funding from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to execute the programs.

The action plans of the public diplomacy programs include a variety of activities. For example, in China, an important market place for Finnish products, Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Finland will, this year and next, develop a comprehensive website for the Moomin characters in Chinese; present Finnish food safety guidelines for Chinese journalists and food authorities; promote Finnish environmental know-how by planting trees in Beijing; distribute Chinese-language books about Finland to Chinese universities; and administer an exchange program for Chinese civil servants to come to Finland for a month-long training period.

And what of Finland’s debt to the United States? Firstly, Finland received goodwill for decades for repaying its debt to the U.S. Secondly, part of the paid debt was converted into a fund to finance Finnish-American scientific and educational exchanges—the ASLA-Fulbright program. The fund, managed jointly by the U.S. and Finland, is certainly one of the most important and long-lasting investments in public diplomacy. It has opened invaluable contacts and international avenues for many Finnish scholars and scientists in the United States, and many Americans in Finland. It may sound cliché, but nothing beats the joint will of two countries to understand each other.

Finland beyond Nokia

Finnish public diplomacy makes use of its economy’s shining star, Nokia, whenever possible. For Nokia, a global business, Finnishness in and of itself does not seem to represent any special advantage, although it is not a detriment, either. After all, in theory, Nokia could have been born elsewhere. But the high level of education, especially amongst Finland’s pool of talented engineers, is one reason for the company’s success. The Finns’ positive mindset toward technology has also contributed to Nokia’s success, as have Finnish management culture and values.

Finland, like many countries, has embarked on a nation branding initiative to determine how its brand should be developed, and in which direction. Leading the way in this endeavor is the chairman of Nokia’s Board of Directors, Jorma Ollila. However, one shouldn’t infer that Nokia is seeking a role in Finnish public diplomacy. To be precise, Nokia is always associated with Finland anyway. Rather, it is in the company’s best interest to influence the way the country brand is developed. In this matter, Nokia and Finland have a common interest.

Authors:

Petri Tuomi-Nikula is the Director General for the Department of Communications and Culture at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

René Söderman is the First Secretary at the Public Diplomacy Unit, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

Source: publicdiplomacymagazine.com

Place Branding: New Tools for Economic Development ?

2009-09-02T12:12:00.000+02:00

The principle that cities and regions can be branded is a natural extension of corporate brand theory. George Allen, using several examples, explains how this reality offers new opportunities for attracting economic development and tourism. He also reviews the unique dimensions of place branding that make it an especially challenging task.

The idea that physical places can be branded is a natural extension of corporate brand theory. Indeed, it is generally accepted that places, as defined by culture, politics, and geography, are increasingly seen to be products, as subject to brand management practices as a cup of coffee or a car. For brand and design managers, this opens up new opportunities within the world's number-one industry-tourism-and within larger economic development initiatives. However, the branding of places is not without its unique challenges, which go far beyond a compelling marketing campaign or a new logo.

While the place-as-product analogy provides a useful filter through which to understand a place-brand approach, there remain fundamental differences in the implementation of brand theory in the place environment. These include, among others, the role of government organizations, the difficulty in defining the entity to be branded (city, region, or country), the challenges of aligning internal stakeholders (residents, business owners, frontline workers), and the difficulty of sustaining brand consistency and resources over time in the face of competing societal, as opposed to corporate, interests.

Beyond marketing and identity

While it is true that destinations have been "marketed" or otherwise promoted to travelers for decades, if not centuries, the explicit and competitive nature of tourism destination marketing has become more pronounced since the mid twentieth century. Tourism is now seen as a quintessentially consumerist activity, and it has burgeoned since the 1960s, paralleling the main expansion of consumerism during the second half of the last century.1 Indications now suggest that travel has become a "significant lifestyle indicator for today's aspirational consumers" and, indeed, may even be regarded as a fashion accessory.2

What has recently come to distinguish the concept of place branding is the need to provide clear product differentiation in an increasingly competitive, globalizing marketplace that rests on memorability and emotional connection with consumers, delivered through all points of contact in the product/service value chain. Destination marketers are "confronted by increasing product parity, substitutability, and competition," write Nigel Morgan and his colleagues in their book Destination Branding. "Today most destinations have superb five-star resorts, hotels and attractions, every country claims a unique culture and heritage, each place describes itself as having the friendliest people and the most customer-focused tourism industry and service, and facilities are no longer differentiators."' Branding, therefore, now has a role as a strategic lens, a decision-making tool, and as shorthand for the personality of place in the place environment that broadens the traditional role of marketing beyond communicating features and benefits to one of deepening relationships with customers.

The experience of place: Physical and virtual

Places are fundamentally experiential in nature in the way they provide combinations of indoor and outdoor environments, service encounters, products, psychological experiences, experiences over time, and all manner of sensory encounters. But the experience of a place also extends ahead of the actual travel there or the physical experience of being there. That experience includes the period during which an intent to visit/purchase is formed, and to the post-place experience of memory formation, loyalty reinforcement, and word-of-mouth dissemination and communication of the brand. "The traveler's choice of a given vacation destination depends largely on the favorableness of his or her image of that destination. ... The image connotes the traveler's expectation of the destination and a positive image promises the traveler a rewarding life experience. Consequently, the images held by individuals in the marketplace are crucial to a destination's marketing success."4 This applies to images held by customers after visiting a place, as well as before visiting a place. Therefore, it is increasingly important to create a compelling virtual brand experience outside the physical place. Among other things, as communication technologies, most notably the Internet, become more sophisticated, the ability to enrich the preand post-physical experience of a place increases significantly.

The perception of a place formed by potential customers prior to actually visiting is of critical importance within the branding process. As with consumer products and services, formulating predisposition and intent to buy is one of the central drivers of brand investment and decision-making.

Images of a place may be formed internally, by residents or those close to a place, or externally, by potential customers. Such image perceptions may overlap or have little in common and may change over time. The importance of understanding image formation from a brand perspective is that this has a potential impact on several key brand building blocks, including brand identity, service and stakeholder alignment, and marketing strategy.

A place brand is, by its very nature, a complex amalgam of strategic and tactical initiatives involving the management of multiple layers of stakeholder groups and multiple channels of communication, often across diverse geographies, histories, and cultures. In recent qualitative research conducted by the author on the Super, Natural British Columbia brand, two key issues stood out in consideration of the application of brand theory within the place brand environment: the management of stakeholder groups and the role of government as dominant stakeholder.

Stakeholders: Delivering on the front lines of the brand experience

Stakeholder groups, among whom are those delivering the brand experience, can be difficult to manage and align behind brand objectives. These groups may include hotel owners, attraction owners, transportation authorities and, not least, government agencies. It should also be noted that anyone with whom visitors may interact, such as residents, the media, or nontourism-specific service workers, whether or not they are part of the tourism industry, will affect the brand experience.

Beyond front-line service workers, a place brand is often a composite of secondary attractions and destinations. In some cases, individual attractions have their own strong reputations that extend well beyond the region and may or may not constitute important elements of the umbrella place brand. The question arises as to how the relationships among these various elements of the brand are negotiated and aligned. Stakeholder dynamics (for example, sub-brand relationships, brand buy-in by front-line service providers) emerge as a theme in both the corporate and place-brand literature with the conclusion that a common and resonant understanding by stakeholders of a brand's core attributes provides the foundation on which brand strength ultimately sits.

The Starbucks coffee experience, for example, depends in large part on the quality of its frontline employees; but to carry a brand throughout a country involves thousands, if not tens of thousands, of brand stewards, none of whom consider their citizenship necessarily makes them stakeholders in a brand.

Government organizations = challenging partnerships

Government or quasi-governmental tourism agencies, as important players within the stakeholder mix, typically occupy a leadership role in constructing the marketing/brand framework. These agencies often lack the political power within government that tourism income would warrant; funding formulas and, therefore, marketing budgets play an important role in determining promotional tactics.

Government or its related agencies have often played a central organizing role in the management of tourism/destination activities. It is clear that governments can have a significant impact, positive or negative, on brand development and implementation through key roles in the areas of funding, brand leadership, coordination of subbrands, and provision of essential travel and tourism infrastructure, such as roads, airports, electrical power, and land management, for example. While government agencies often lead brand initiatives, the stakeholder domains within which they operate are arguably more difficult to manage than those faced by corporate brand managers. However, despite the lack of role clarity and the vagaries of political processes, government or government-affiliated organizations will continue to play a leading and unique role within the place brand stakeholder spectrum for the foreseeable future.

Managing uncertainty and evolving the brand model

The fragmentation of stakeholder groups and the instability of top-level governmental brand leadership suggest that the coherence deemed critical for brand success may not even be possible in the place brand environment. However, it does suggest potential opportunities for more tactical application of brand tenets that may yield substantial economic benefits. Key brand assets may be identified that have the potential to resonate across other points of brand contact, as identified through the place brand model (on previous page). For example, transportation infrastructure (airports, marine terminals), often seen as strictly utilitarian, can make for compelling first impressions of a place that can resonate throughout a visitor's experience. This model also suggests that the organizations responsible for managing brand need to be executing more than ad campaigns; they need to be liaising with a broader spectrum of organizations responsible for physical infrastructure, visitor support services, urban planning, and even clean public toilets!

Conclusion

In summary, successful place branding requires that attention be focused on the following:

* Understanding the role and dynamics of government

* Isolating key points of brand contact

* Focusing marketing campaigns internally, as well as externally

* Understanding the physical and virtual requirements of the brand experience

* Developing new research frameworks that drive meaningful customer experience

There continues to be confusion in the marketplace, both among brand practitioners and clients, that a logo or an identity is all that constitutes a brand. As a result, brand strategy tends to be driven by short-term, narrow-scope thinking through which the primary tool of brand expression becomes the marketing campaign executed through traditional media channels. Brand strategy should, however, more effectively be used as a tool of a broader economic development strategy that includes public and private infrastructure development, the quality of the built environment, service design, and planning and public policy, among others. Notwithstanding the challenges of an expanded perspective of place brand, this view opens up many new opportunities for design practitioners.

Case Study; Super, Natural British Columbia

The Super, Natural British Columbia brand has maintained a strong market presence for more than 25 years, as measured by brand awareness and recall surveys, and has successfully evolved by building on its core attributes. The author's research reveals that the brand benefited from a solid foundation built with a combination of resonant brand attributes and key early management decisions. There was a large measure of positive intuitive response to the core brand attributes. This appears to have been particularly important, because it allowed brand focus and buy-in to develop more easily despite the recognized complexity of managing stakeholder interests. Although the core attributes of the SNBC brand may have been more obvious than is the case in other jurisdictions, this does point to the critical importance of the formative stages of the branding process and the need to attain clarity of brand essence at the outset of any branding initiative.

The following themes emerged as critical success factors:

* Brand definition: Early establishment (1978) of a brand identity with deeply resonant key brand attributes (mountains, ocean, forests). This brand essence was successfully captured by clearly differentiated visuals and supported by media campaigns that were sufficiently funded to establish early market leadership. While largely driven by powerful landscape imagery, the brand has successfully evolved through the development of complementary regional subbrands and sights and activities, such as agricultural tourism, wildlife viewing, and ecotourism.

* Stakeholder dynamics. The brand has benefited from the early establishment of internal branding practices exemplified by a tourism Superhost program that educates, trains, and rates front-line service providers and services. Stakeholder management practices have also evolved through Tourism British Columbia's public/private partnerships, which incorporate regional subbrands and representation from different industry sectors.

* The role of government: Involvement of key government personnel, up to and including the Minister of Tourism, in providing early focus and leadership, ultimately led to the creation of a culture in which a de-politicized brand was supported. While underfunding is a chronic problem in the tourism sector and, indeed, within many government-dependent programs, strong brand roots make such programs less vulnerable to short-term political tampering.

* Managing the brand environment. Challenges have included ensuring that funding levels are sufficient for long-term brand support and establishing appropriate brand measures that not only track brand awareness, but also track customer response to the brand experience and anticipate future trends important to the evolution of the brand.

Case Study: Seattle Metronatural

With the objective of increasing tourism to the city, the Seattle Convention and Visitors Bureau faced the typical challenge of encapsulatirrg a vast array of attributes into a-cemprehensible and compelling brand position. The keyword metronatural emerged from a year-long consultative process that settled on a combination of urban and outdoor experiences as key brand attributes.

While the new tagline has apparently been well received, the predictable detractors have weighed in with references to urban nudist camps and similarities to words such as tnetrosexual. Stakeholders often acknowledge the need for change but rarely embrace it. As a result, new brand positions need time to take hold.

More worrisome, from a place-brandingstrategy perspective, is that Seattle has adopted a whole string of identities over the past 20 years, including Emerald City, Jet City, and see-@-L: Soak it Up, not to mention the Say WA? campaign (which refers, of course, more to the state than to the city). Adding to the confusion is the fact that the metronatural press release explicitly encourages people to continue using the Emerald City and Jet City monikers, all of which calls into question the city's ability to sustain a focused branding initiative over the 5-, 10-, and 20-year time frames required. The mixed messaging of these past efforts and the narrow focus of the research and vision underpinning the current iteration of the brand also suggests that Seattle still hasn't quite come to terms with its core personality.

Case Study: Brand Manitoba-Spirited Energy

The Canadian province of Manitoba launched its new Spirited Energy brand in 2006, after a two-year development process under the auspices of the Premier's Economic Advisory Council and the branding consultancy Interbrand. The Manitoba process was inclusive of the highest levels of government; it directly addressed the resident population of the province through the research and launch phases; and its vision for a new brand was to draw immigrants and investors to the province and drive resident pride, as well as draw tourists.

Even a comprehensive program, such as that developed for Manitoba, represents only the starting point of what needs to be a sustained effort involving all stakeholders (government, economic development and tourism agencies, frontline businesses, residents) over time.

Case Study: 100% Pure New Zealand

The isolated nation of New Zealand counts tourism as its number-one export earner. Since the launch of its 100% Pure New Zealand campaign in 1999, it has continued to build on its brand foundation of spectacular scenery and ecotourism/outdoor activities. 100% Pure clearly meets many of the criteria for brand success: an image built on obvious attributes that resonate both internally and externally, a strong Internet presence, a global marketing strategy supported by compelling visuals, training of front-line service providers, and a comprehensive and long-term research commitment.

Author: George Allen, Principal, Design|Strategy|Reseorch|lnc
Source: Design Management Institute

Australia chce jednej, spójnej marki

2009-09-02T12:11:00.001+02:00

W Australii, pomimo przeprowadzenia w ostatnich latach kilku bardzo udanych projektów promocyjnych w obszarze turystyki (m.in. kampanii "So where the bloody hell are you?" oraz z tego roku opartej na filmie Baza Luhrmanna "Australia" - opisywanej w marcowym numerze Brief for Poland), cały czas dyskutuje się o budowaniu marki kraju. Tym razem mówi się o unifikacji wizerunku, wykorzystaniu sukcesu działań promocyjnych w obszarze turystycznym na gruncie promocji gospodarczej. Proponuje się także powołania "Brand Australia Council". Więcej w artykule poniżej:

One nation, one brand, one shrimp

Tourism chiefs across Australia are calling for one unified Australian brand to use when selling the country's products and services and encouraging tourists from the rest of the world - so are we gearing up to expect another ‘Throw a shrimp on the barbie' ad or what? TheMoveChannel finds out...

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been approached by Australia's major exporters calling for a ‘Brand Australia Council.'

Selling Australia with one unified brand will strengthen people's awareness of the country both as a tourist destination and business hub.

Whilst tourism has done most of the legwork in selling Australia to the world thus far, there now needs to be a coordinated approach which will see the will see the marketing efforts of all Australian businesses, artists, musicians, actors, sportspeople, designers and more, leverage off each other, under a unified Australian brand.

Managing Director of the Tourism and Transport Forum, Christopher Brown, said that it was an easily affordable project.

"Australia is one of the most recognisable country brands on Earth, and the brand has been valued at around £391 billion.

"In context, the most valuable corporate brand in 2008 was Coca-Cola, valued at £24 billion. Coca-Cola has tens of thousands of people worldwide looking after its brand, but at the moment we are going into the market without a marketing department," he added.

Mr Brown said the forum had been working on the proposal for an Australian brand for a couple of years.

Amongst the suggestions for the brand is playing on Australia's relaxed, laid back, outdoorsy nature coupled with a sense of space.

Unlike other cities such as London and New York, Australia offers an uncrowded way of life with a reliable climate and fantastic beaches.

Other suggestions included playing on the physical beauty of the country.

Chief Executive of advertising agency Leo Burnett, Todd Sampson, said, "The challenge facing Australia now is to find its own space in people's heads.

"Just like Las Vegas instantly means adult playground, so Australia needs to find its own brand," he added.

Author: Catherine Deshayes
Source: www.themovechannel.com

Consensus key to vibrant national brand

2009-09-02T12:08:00.000+02:00

W rankingu marek krajów z 2008 r. (Anholt-Gfk, 2008) Korea uplasowała się na 33 miejscu. To rozczarowujący dla nich wynik, biorąc pod uwagę potencjał gospodarczy (15 gospodarka na świecie, 4 w Azji) oraz atrakcyjny świat kultury i sztuki. I to właśnie koreańska kultura ma dodać energii marce kraju. Więcej w wywiadzie z Kim He-beom-em, dyrektorem organizacji odpowiedzialnej za promocję kultury, afiliowanej przy Ministerstwie Kultury.

Consensus key to vibrant national brand

‘It is our responsibility to draw the whole picture of Korea for [the world],and offer facts on the rest of the spectrum.’

A decade or two ago, few thought that a country or a culture could be called a brand in its own right, a marketable, profitable name capable of generating business and trade deals all on its own.

Yet Koreans these days are constantly reminded of the importance of the country’s image as a brand and marketing tool, since the Lee Myung-bak administration is particularly keen on promoting Korea and commercializing its culture.

According to Anholt-GfK, a New York-based market research company that ranks the world’s national brands, Korea was 33rd of 50 countries in 2008 in terms of the power and quality of its image. For number-conscious Koreans, the ranking is both disappointing and alarming, especially considering that the country is the world’s 15th-largest economy, and No. 4 in Asia.

There are several government organizations in Korea responsible for promoting it and its culture to the international community. Perhaps one of the oldest is the Korean Culture and Information Service. Kim He-beom, a veteran government publicist, took the helm at the Culture Ministry-affiliated organization about three months ago. The JoongAng Daily sat down with him for his take on Korea the brand.

Q. How have efforts to promote Korea abroad changed over the years?

A. Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the Korean Culture and Information Service. [The agency has existed under different names depending on the leadership at the time.]

In the early years [of the 1970s and ’80s], the work was largely about the justification of the government. Amid rising calls for democracy, the military regimes that came to power in coups d’etat lacked legitimacy. Thus, our main function was to provide justification of the government.

Then in the early 1990s, North Korea began to provoke the international community with nuclear threats. Our prior task then was explaining to the world the situation with the North Korean nuclear program - to tell them precisely what’s going on on the Korean Peninsula and defuse unnecessary concerns or crises.

In the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis erupted. Thus, our work was mostly about reporting to the world how Korea was handling the situation, and how it was recovering in order to win back credibility and investment from foreign partners.

Today, Korea no longer has to prove the legitimacy of its government, but the North Korea issue lingers, and like many other countries in the world, Korea has been hit with another economic crisis.

So we are working to let the world know how Korea’s quickly recovering from the crisis using its previous experience from the late 1990s. We are also working to promote Korea’s cultural aspects, since as a member of the OECD and the G-20, the country has a lot to offer culturally, too.

What Korean cultural content do you think is particularly viable in the global arena?

Korean food is one. There is a diversity in Korean food that is rarely seen in food in other countries. And that variety, along with richness in taste and quantity, has so much potential. We just have agree on how best to promote it overseas.

The Hallyu [Korean Wave] phenomenon is another. When I ask foreigners about the appeal of Korean films and dramas, they pick their lack of sexual and violent content and abundance of emotional and moral elements, which certainly set them apart from say, Hollywood films.

The Korean government’s green initiatives can also be utilized. Korea is a small country with high population density and few natural resources. Thus the government is extremely interested in eco-friendly, sustainable development. Green is the buzzword in the international community today. If we succeed in these initiatives, we could become an exemplary model for others.

Finding a linkage among these elements can also yield synergistic effects. One example would be a bicycle tour to take participants on Korean food tasting experiences in different regions. The green element would be the bicycles, and the cultural element, the food, and they would work synergistically to promote Korea and enhance its image.

How do foreigners perceive Korea? And how is the Korean Culture and Information Service working with these perceptions?

It seems that there are two very contrasting views on Korea.

At the one end of the spectrum is the negative perception that Korea is politically unstable because of the North Korean nuclear threat and that the economy is also weak and unpredictable due to factors like management-labor conflicts and protests.

At the other end of the spectrum is a sense of respect, even awe, for successful Korean-made goods and content like Samsung products or [the drama] “Jewel in the Palace.” This is often seen in regions in Southeast Asia, Central Asia or the Middle East.

I don’t want to call these perceptions stereotypes because they are, after all, what make up Korea. Instead I would call them partial, unbalanced views on Korea. In that sense, it is our responsibility to draw the whole picture of Korea for them, and offer facts on the rest of the spectrum.

There has been criticism of the official slogan “Dynamic Korea,” adopted by the government in 2001. Do you think it does a good job of representing Korea?

I am aware that there are both supporters and opponents of that slogan. One thing that cannot be ignored is the amount of research, work and money that went into creating that slogan. Another equally important thing is the brand recognition it has accumulated abroad over the years. In fact, “Dynamic Korea” is more famous abroad than here in Korea.

The key to a good slogan is coming to a consensus among ourselves about what facet of us we want to present to the world. Is it our 5,000-year history? Historic sites like Gyeongbok Palace? IT? A slogan is important, but no slogan can satisfy everyone. Some will like it and others are bound to hate it. All we can do is find consensus as best we can beforehand.

There are many government groups working to promote Korea and its culture: the Council on Nation Branding under the presidential office, the Korea Foundation under the Foreign Ministry, the Korea Tourism Organization, and others. Is this ever challenging for you?

The launch of those organizations was inevitable given circumstances in the past. But the situation has changed now. It seems that Korea has grown in body size, yet is still wearing old clothes. It’s crucial that we differentiate these group’s missions while centralizing efforts and strengthening networking.

As part of these efforts, we envision something like the British Council or the Japan Foundation. Its tentative name is the “Korea Center.” The center will centralize the nation’s PR efforts, which are now scattered, and enhance communication among organizations like the Culture Ministry, the Korea Tourism Organization and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.

By Kim Hyung-eun, The JoongAng Daily

(Kim He-beom, Director of the Korean Culture and Information Service)

Source: joongangdaily.joins.com

Australia searches for new tourism slogan

2009-09-02T12:05:00.000+02:00

Australia szuka nowego sloganu, który będzie promował turystyczną "twarz" kraju. Rząd chce przeznaczyć na to nawet do 20 milinów. Premiera nowego systemu wizualnego marki turystycznej odbędzie się w przyszłym roku. Więcej w artykule:

Australia searches for new tourism slogan

Australia's search for a new identity to match New Zealand's successful "100% Pure" and South Africa's "Rainbow Nation" brands will see the Government put up $20 million to find it.

The Trade Minister, Simon Crean, will today challenge the nation's marketing agencies to come up with a catch-all slogan, image or logo that best exemplifies Australia and promote it overseas.

The brand will be launched domestically in February and internationally in May, at the Shanghai World Expo.

''We are much more than a nation of great people and great places,'' Mr Crean will say at today's launch.

''We have won 10 Nobel Prizes and we are a nation bursting with creativity and ingenuity. The Australian way is to underplay our achievements but this kind of modesty only surrenders the edge to our competitors.''

The successful brand must have an ''unashamedly commercial focus'' to promote Australia as a tourist destination, and as a great place to live, do business, and invest.

The exercise, an initiative of Austrade, trumps an idea put forward by a group of prominent businessmen - led by the former Qantas chief Geoff Dixon - for a ''Brand Australia Council'' to manage big industries such as tourism, education, resources and services.

Mr Crean supported that idea last September at a tourism conference in Canberra.

Representatives of the Brand Australia Council initiative are due to see Kevin Rudd within the next month to get the Prime Minister's support for the idea.

At the same time the federal tourism body Tourism Australia is close to signing off on a new blockbuster advertising campaign to follow in the footsteps of the marketing campaign that hinged on Baz Luhrmann's epic movie Australia. Tourism Australia is believed to have been consulted by Mr Crean's office.

Mr Crean will use today's launch to push back against protectionism, saying the brand project ''is another sign that we are not turning inwards and going down a path of a mandatory Buy Australia campaign''.

With the world emerging from the financial crisis, Mr Crean will declare the ''protectionist push has been contained''.

BY PHILLIP COOREY AND JULIAN LEE
Source: www.illawarramercury.com.au

Klip promocyjny Australii z 1984 r.:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn_CPrCS8gs

South Africa 2010 communication: still no central message

2009-09-02T12:03:00.000+02:00

South Africa 2010 communication: still no central message

Having attended the fourth and final National Communications Partnership (NCP) Conference last week, I hoped to gain clarity on the NCP's communications plan and my role as a communicator in delivering on that plan. Although feeling inspired to take on an active role, I'm still unsure of what that role will be and the central message is that the NCP wishes professional communicators to champion.

Despite being a brand leadership workshop for the communication industry, the session aimed to serve two functions: not only to debrief the industry on the Confederations Cup and provide a status update on the progress for 2010, but also to discuss and agree on a way forward for communication for 2010.

Holistic message

The partnership, consisting of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), the Local Organising Committee (LOC), FIFA, Brand South Africa, the National Tourism Board, and various communications agencies and stakeholders in the private and public sector, aims to drive a holistic message and create brand ambassadors in South Africa in acting as hosts to the world in 2010.

Everything made so much sense. If the practice of branding, and in this context nation branding, is essentially about creating consistency around the 2010 brand message, then mobilising and uniting people through a centralised message and calls to action that encourage citizens to act as brand ambassadors is a natural strategy.

The process, it seems, is well understood by those in control of our nation's 2010 communication; however, there is still no brand message.

Lot of talk

There was a lot of talk surrounding Germany's 2006 campaign, a nation-building campaign that united Germany and greatly improved the perception of Germans and Germany as a whole.

Quite simply, the campaign encouraged making friends. The ‘Time to Make Friends' campaign was honest, and spoke directly to the perception and relationship troubles that Germany had with the rest of the world and, most importantly, gave the German people the tools to literally, be friendly.

On top of this, the country launched a ‘Land of Ideas' campaign locally and internationally that positioned Germany as a cultural centre, and delivered on that external promise by investing large sums into arts and culture in the country.

It didn't matter which host city you went to; Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, the messaging was consistent and the communication was coherent. It sung of one Germany, one voice. It was - by all accounts - a masterfully managed and delivered campaign.

What are we telling?

So in South Africa, what are we telling the rest of the world, for 2010?

With the exception of the ‘Diski Dance' campaign, the national tourism board is not creating any new campaigns, and using old positioning and campaigns with the 2010 logo stamped on them.

2010 provides us with an opportunity like no other to refocus our international positioning as we reach out to the millions of people visiting our country and the billions watching around the world and what are they going to see?

Well, so far no one knows.

In addition, South African Tourism will be using an American service provider to research and train 500 000 service industry staff (a debate for another day). Again, what will the campaign message be that aligns everyone in preparation for the delivery for service excellence? ‘Come and feel it?' ‘South Africa, It's Possible'?, ‘Welcome'?

No-one knows

Again, no-one knows.

At the end of the conference there was agreement on several symbols and calls to action that we can communicate and rally support for. The Diski Dance, Flying the Flag, learning and understanding the National Anthem, and support for Bafana Bafana were but a few.

However, none of these provide a great context; none of these adequately represent what South Africa has to offer the world. They are all sub-components of a bigger message - which, with less than 300 days to go, is unknown.

Dr Irvin Khosa said in his address at the NCP conference that he's not feeling it, there isn't enough hype and we need to get moving. Well, Dr Khosa. we aren't feeling it either.

It's time

So maybe it's time for the 2010 national communication partnership to dispense with the consultation and commit to a core message that as communication professionals and South Africans we can all get behind.

By: Karin Botta
Source: www.bizcommunity.com

Brand Sweden goes local

2009-09-02T12:02:00.000+02:00

Szwecja rozpoczęła budowę swojej marki od działań na poziomie centralnym. W 2006 r. Rada Promocji Szwecji uruchomiła platformę brandingową dla swojego kraju. Platforma opisuje istotę komunikacji Szwecji na zewnątrz. Obecnie działania brandingowe schodzą o jeden poziom niżej - do miast i regionów. Więcej w artykule:

'Brand Sweden' goes local

Nation-branding, though controversial in some quarters, is becoming ever more important and can be of great value to towns and regions wishing to reach out to the wider world, writes Joakim Norén of the Swedish Institute.

Nowadays, a place is also a brand. But branding a place is fairly different from branding a product. For Swedish regions and municipalities, the “Brand Sweden” platform may make the job easier.

In 2006 The Council for the Promotion of Sweden (NSU*) launched a brand platform for Sweden. The NSU is a cooperation between the Swedish Institute, VisitSweden, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Invest in Sweden Agency and the Trade Council. The platform describes the essence that is the foundation or starting point for all official communication of Sweden abroad.

It is quite unique that organisations with such diverse missions from the government share a brand platform, and similar organisations from around the world have shown interest in the platform. The Swedish Institute has also noticed a growing interest from Swedish regions and municipalities, both to learn from the process of developing a brand platform with a broad group of interested parties and to relate to “Brand Sweden” when they develop their own brands.

Branding is becoming ever more important. For companies targeting the consumer market it’s a prerequisite, and for most business-to-business companies as well. But many still think that branding of places is a little bit strange, sometimes even controversial. However, places have as much to gain from a strong brand as products and services. And quite often product brands and place brands interact; you all know which country builds the best quality luxury cars or where the most cutting edge consumer electronics come from.

Branding of places has some additional challenges compared with branding of commercial products. Products can often be changed to fit a brand platform, something which is very difficult or impossible when it comes to a place. There is also a broader range of interested parties involved, who will have to contribute to realising the brand but also have something to benefit from a successful brand. A brand platform for a place needs to be accessible to the public and is therefore more likely to be questioned and criticised.

The Swedish regions and municipalities have far less resources to allocate for branding than the NSU, so sharing the experience from developing “Brand Sweden” is a good way for the Swedish Institute to help them move forward in this process. In the spring of 2009, the Swedish Institute arranged a seminar together with Geobrands, where we presented the brand platform for Sweden together with some insights into how the national brand can be interpreted and used on a local or regional level.

For the regions and municipalities it is essential to know how Sweden is perceived abroad for their own branding efforts, and they wouldn’t be able to afford to carry out all the research that the Swedish Institute does. Sharing this information broadly is also a way for the Swedish Institute to reach its target of a stronger, clearer and more up-to-date image for Sweden abroad.

Brand Sweden is the sum of all encounters between people around the world and anything Swedish – products, people, culture or actual visits to Sweden. The key to a clear and strong national brand is not only in what message the Swedish institute or the rest of the NSU send out, but what all Swedish regions, product brands, people, etc do and say.

For example, companies like Volvo and Ikea have done a great job of positioning Sweden as a country that makes products where design and innovation is really used for the benefit of ordinary people. If we can get more Swedish organisations to share and use the Brand Sweden platform and communicate the unique values and the position that sets Sweden apart in the world, it will surely benefit both the image of Sweden in general and any brand associated with Sweden.

Author: Joakim Norén, Brand Development Manager, Swedish Institute
Source: www.thelocal.se

Country branding for unity and growth (Kenya)

2009-09-02T12:01:00.000+02:00

W kolejnym afrykańskim kraju, tym razem w Kenii, zaczyna się ponowna dyskusja o marce tego kraju. Posiadanie pozytywnego wizerunku na arenie międzynarodowej może pomóc w utrzymaniu silnej gospodarki, nawet w przypadku niewielkich perturbacji politycznych. Ciekawy artykuł CEO jednej z agencji ze Wschodniej Afryki.

Country branding for unity and growth

The current political standoff and intolerance is threatening to erode the major economic gains that Kenya has achieved over the past five years. Not only is the situation affecting logistics within the country, it is also affecting our hard-earned international image.

Whereas we had reached a point where Kenya was seen as a case study in political tranquility and economic stability, we are now being showcased in the international media as a war torn economic time bomb. One solution to counter this is to create a strong country brand.

Why brand a country

Much has been said in the past about Brand Kenya but not much has been done, possibly because only a few people could understand the power of branding for a nation like Kenya. A strong focused country brand strategy not only strengthens the international image of a nation, but it also realigns the citizen's mindset about their country and speeds up healing and reconciliation.

Currently Kenya is experiencing strong economic growth of approximately 7% and this is projected to continue growing, especially if we rapidly upgrade our road network. However, the upgrade of infrastructure will provide only part of the desired growth. It will get us to double digit growth but may not keep us there. Countries like Singapore and South Africa that have been through similar situations also realised that one way to enhance their growth beyond what will be provided by improved infrastructure, is country branding. Just like in the world of product brands, country branding can position a country way above its peers, even though both may have the same offering. Ireland and Scotland are widely acknowledged as having created country brands that punch far above their natural weight.

Principles of country branding

The principles of branding apply in equal measure to countries as they do to corporations; the only difference is the methods applied. Countries compete daily with neighbouring countries or block regions for tourism, inward investment and export sales. Due to the limited amount of business available in the global market those countries that do not develop and hone a competitive edge will find it difficult to boost their commercial success beyond a certain level. Countries that have an unknown or poor reputation will find themselves limited or marginalised. Consequently they will always languish at the bottom of the influence ladder at regional economic summits.

Germany, a country that has been at the centre of two world wars, today has a clear and positive reputation, whereby products made in Germany have a certain aura of meticulous engineering. The added brand equity they possess by originating in Germany opens door and wins contracts. According to statistics on the European car business, the vehicle of choice for the mass market in each country is largely indigenous brands; for example Citroen and Renault in France and Seat in Spain. However, when a second car is required, more often than not it's a German brand.

Creating a branding programme for a country requires an integration policy that most countries do not possess. This entails the ability to act and speak in a coordinated and repetitive way about themes that are the most motivating and differentiating for a country.

The benefits of consistent and professional country branding can be observed in every region, including the ability to win more investment business because the country image says the right things about taxation, labour skills, safety, the environment and political stability. It also gives weight to the “made in” label because it will positively aid the sale of products in foreign markets. Furthermore, it builds up patriotism and pride that goes far beyond personal political opinions and inclinations.

Developing a country brand

To develop a country brand you require having the cooperation and involvement of representatives of government, business, the arts, education and importantly the media. Usually the media will be keen to be involved because it gives them the opportunity to objectively settle some scores on unfair attacks by foreign media. The media also enable fast and uniform dissipation of the country brand message to the general populace.

Using qualitative and quantitative research methodologies you also need to find out how your country is perceived both internally by citizens and externally by people abroad who you want to influence. You should also consult with opinion leaders on the countries strengths and weaknesses and compare their views with the research information gathered.

Similar to how brand strategies are developed for corporations; the research information is collated and analysed using professional brand strategy models. This enables the development of a brand idea and positioning that positively and clearly differentiates the country from any other. The brand idea enables the development of messaging to the various audiences previously identified. The message created for tourism will be different from that created for investment; however they will both portray the same overall brand positioning.

The most difficult part of country branding is on the ground roll out. You should work out a programme to make the strategy tangible through improvement projects. For example, people want their country to have the best physical impression at ports of entry, city centres, entertainment venues etc.

A major challenge is to create a system that links together the different organisations and departments that drive implementation of your brand strategy, without making it look too governmental, because people will instinctively avoid working with it. In addition to this the government needs to drive support for the initiative but shouldn't try to take all the accolades, otherwise all you will end up with is a number of re-branded ministries and government bodies.

Most of all, to be successful, it is actions that really count. You cannot impose branding on a country, but you can find out the aspects that appeal to the widest group of people and which are different and special. The execution of the strategy takes time but you have to be consistent, building an integrated picture and always backing it with quality. The consistency in execution should not be affected by the day to day changes in the political atmosphere.

These same principles and methodologies of country branding can be applied to a city or an economic region. Two great examples of city branding are New York and Jo'burg. Visitors to these cities tend to state the name of the city as opposed to the country when they are discussing their trip. The same can be done for Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu cities.

By: Richard Mukoma (Chief executive at Interbrand Sampson East Africa)
Source: www.bizcommunity.com

Re-branding Nigeria should go beyond sloganeering

2009-09-02T11:57:00.000+02:00

Coraz więcej krajów uświadamia sobie, że budowanie marki to nie tylko logo i hasło promocyjne ale o wiele, wiele więcej. Minister ds. Informacji Nigerii uważa, że należy zacząć od etycznej rewolucji przywódców kraju. Jeśli dadzą oni dobry przykład, ich zwolennicy łatwo pójdą w ich ślady. To się dopiero nazywa re-branding! Więcej w artykule poniżej:

Re-branding Nigeria should go beyond sloganeering

The current hype on re-branding Nigeria project may not achieve the desired result unless, there is a radical change to purposeful leadership by the leaders.

A mass communication expert and Public Relations cum Advertising consultant, Sulaimon Osho gave the verdict in his assessment of the on-going effort at lifting the country image.

He noted that the present approach of the Minister of Information, Professor Dora Akunyili to the re-branding Nigeria project is predicated on sloganeering, and has failed to address the core-issues that would serve as impetus that could galvanize the followers toward positive and exemplary conduct.

Osho who is a member of many professional bodies such as Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ); the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR); Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON); Nigeria Institute of Management (NIM) and many more spoke to Daily Sun in Abeokuta, Ogun state capital. This erudite scholar is also an author and among his numerous books are: Political Public Relations and National Stability (1999), Advertising and Public Relations Law (2001), Public Relations and Development (2003), Public Relations Copy and Media (2008), Public Relations Policy, Planning and Strategy (2008) and others.
According to Osho, re-branding Nigeria goes beyond the present approach of Minister of Information, Professor Akunyili to the concept. The superficial launching of the logo and slogan, making pronouncements in the media are not enough.

“Re-branding of Nigeria must start with the ethical revolution of our leaders not superficial launching of logo and slogan, and making pronouncements in the media. If the leaders lead by good example, the followers will easily follow in their footsteps. You cannot use the same strategy and tactics used for re-branding a product like Milo, MTN, and GLO for a country”, he said.
To him, there must be total behavioral change. There must be purposefulness and determination to turn the country around for good by our leaders.

The communication guru also spoke on several burning issues such as national development, leadership, politics and why the step adopted by the federal government to re-brand Nigeria will fail if the abnormality in the campaign is not corrected

Nigeria as a Brand
No doubt, Nigeria is a brand any day, anytime. Nigeria as country is a brand and re-branding is a different branding, a brand is a corporate entity, product, services or an institution.
Re-branding is the re-packing of a brand to promote the brand, the promotion of the brand is what will be called branding.

Nigeria is a brand under the concept of branding. Nigeria is a marketable commodity because it has geographical location, people and a government. It is a sovereign state, it has all the qualities it takes to be called a brand. Nigeria can be presented for people to come and visit, trade and many more. Nigeria has a product to sell. It has a collection of people in it and marketable people for that matter, therefore, it has human and material resources that are marketable.

Re-branding Nigeria
It is necessary to re-brand Nigeria because the country has a bad image among the comity of nations in the world, but it is just the approach, strategy and tactics being used by the federal government that is wrong.
Nigeria is regarded as the giant of Africa in terms of population, human resources and natural resources , when you put all these together, you will know that Nigeria is a country that needs to be re-branded because when you look at the image of the country, you will realize that something is wrong.

If you travel out of the country regularly , you will know what it means once they see you as a Nigerian outside the country. They do all sort of things to you to search you because of their past experience in the hand of Nigerians. Even in the country, despite the huge amount of resources the country is blessed with, Nigeria is still proverty stricken, a country that sells about 3million barrels of oil daily in the world market is still ranked second to the last among the poorest nations in the world .
Nigeria lacks natural resources it produced itself , no social amenities for citizens, educational system is something you cannot be proud of , health sector is down, brain drain syndrome has taken over the country, so many professionals have left the country for Europe ,Asia, America, even some little African countries which are not up to Nigeria .

The situation of our political setting is not even helping the matter, the kind of democracy we practice is something that is shocking. look at the rate at which election petition is increasing from 1999 till date. The last election conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the country was adjudged as fraudulent, full of malpratices yet INEC still goes ahead to declare the “selection “ not election as free and fair.

The true picture of the last election is what we are seeing now which is the reversal of INEC declaration. In a situation where a Governor has ruled for several months and election tribunal now throws him out for taking short cut to get to office , is it not free and fair according to INEC ? A state where election tribunal declared that there should be re-election to determine who really won the election and INEC had earlier declared that election in that state is perfect , is it not perfect? All these are giving us a bad image in the international community. Foreign observers who monitored the election in the country said the last election was fraudulent, bad, full of manipulation but the only thing INEC can say is that the election was free and fair , when we heard about all that happened through out the whole country during the election.

Apart from that, look at our economy, we have many refineries, many terminals, yet none is functioning properly, we export the whole crude oil out of the country in order to get the finished product. Iran which is not up to Nigeria has about seven functioning oil processing companies and they only export the finished product, they don’ t export all their crude oil in order to get finished product but the story is not the same here. They said we have NNPC and there are people working there. What are they doing ?, even look at where the oil is being got, it has beeen negelected for long. No education for them , no good water , poor health care and many adnormality.

By LUKMAN OLABIYI
Source: www.sunnewsonline.com

Jeremy Hildreth o brandingu miejsc

2009-09-02T11:56:00.000+02:00

Jeremy Hildreth, jeden z najbardziej doświadczonych konsultantów ds. brandingu miast i państw, były współpracownik Wally Olinsa w Saffron Consultants (Londyn, UK), autor (razem z Simonem Anhotlem) bestsellera "Brand Ameryka: Tajemnica Megamarki" odwiedził w kwietniu br. Chile, gdzie dał inspirujący wykład.

Jest szansa, że będzie można obejrzeć i posłuchać Jeremiego na żywo już 20 listopada podczas II edycji Form Praktyków Marketingu Miejsc (w Łodzi, przy okazji pierwszych targów usług marketingowych dla administracji publicznej organizowanych przez Brief for Poland).

A tymczasem poniżej transkrypcja wykładu Jeremiego z Chile.

While people are coming in, I’ll put this introductory slide up. I love this. These are the end pages from a book by Douglas Coupland. Douglas Coupland is the guy who invented the term “Generation X.” So he always has his finger on the pulse of things and you know what this is about. This is about... this is when you finish a document and you call it “final version” and you’d send it out and then someone calls you up and says, “There’s a mistake on page 6. You need to fix that,” and you do it again. And then you have the second final and then the absolutely final and all of that. And I just laughed when I saw when I opened the book, I saw this in the end pages because every article I write for The Wall Street Journal, every report I do for a client, this is how I feel, too. I know that as soon as I give this talk I’m going to want to give it a different way right at the end, so this is always the case.

Now what about me? The question was where...the question at the top of the presentation is, “Where are you from?” I say, “Soy de los Angeles pero vivo en Londres.” I like to say I’m an American who lives abroad and regards the world as his home. Anyway, these issues of identity fascinate me. I agree with Simon completely that this is some of the most interesting stuff that one can possibly turn one’s attention or efforts to. And until two months ago, I was working for a company called Saffron, which is a brand consultancy based in London, Mumbai, Madrid and New York, which specialized in what we used to say was working with companies, countries, and other entities on issues related to identity and reputation. And there was a lot of corporate identity work, a lot of corporate clients and often the issue of provenance came into it. If there was a Turkish phone company, then the issue of their Turkishness was very much paramount in their thinking about the brand.

For the last two of the five years I was at Saffron, I was head of place branding and in that post, I did have clients, a number of actual place clients and now I’m on my own. I do work for various people but in this presentation I refer to work that I did while I was at Saffron, or work that Saffron did while I was there.

Let’s talk first, what does it mean for a place to be branded? I think to be branded is to mean something. To be known, to be thought about in a certain way, to be deemed relevant, to be appreciated, understood, valued, liked, loved, personally identified with. Therefore, I think you could say that the strongest place brand, at least in theory, is the one that belongs to the place that the most people identify with most strongly and positively. I mean, there is no way to quantify this kind of thing. But if you were, I think the ultimate place brand is probably New York. Because the worst I ever heard anybody say about New York is that “it’s my dream to visit it some day.” Some people would say “I wouldn’t want to live there,” but I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t interested in at least visiting New York. And I’ve never met anyone who hadn’t heard of New York or known something about it.

Brand, I should put my cards on the table and say that when we’re talking about brand, because people mean a lot of things and so it’s worth defining on terms.

Brand for me is: substance plus feeling, or reality plus image, or truth plus imagination, fact plus impression. It’s some combination and good branding work and good marketing keeps both of these things in mind. So now to this question of, “Where are you from?” From a commercial standpoint, companies and brands have been trying to answer this for a long time. This is an age old question. This is a Victorian-era can of condensed milk portrayed as an English brand. Nowadays, often the law requires you to say where you are from. But even when the law doesn’t require it, people seem to prefer products that are from somewhere. They like you more if you are from some place because then they think they know something about you. This bottle of wine doesn’t exist and I think there’s a very good reason why it doesn’t exist. I don’t think it would sell very well, because it’s not from anywhere. And some things are supposed to come from certain places and if they don’t it’s just weird. So you buy Scotch whisky and you’ll enjoy it and you think about highlands and islands while you drink it. But if I try to sell you Roberto Rastrelli Italiano whisky, you wouldn’t pay any extra for it. Probably you’d want it at a discount and if you did drink it, you’d imagine, you’d believe that you were tasting olives in it somehow. It wouldn’t be any good at all. Italian olive oil, on the other hand, is no problem, but scotch olive oil just wouldn’t be credible.

So people like a good story and place can fit into that. The story doesn’t have to be perfectly true. Neutrogena Hand Cream Concentrated Norwegian Formula is naturally produced by a Belgian company that’s owned by an American conglomerate. But still, when you put it on your hands, you can imagine a fisherman pulling up his nets and pulling out a tube of Neutrogena and, uh, softening his hard palms.

Bailey’s Original Irish Cream, naturally invented by product development and branding people in 1973 in Soho, London. But it--never mind, because these stories have resonance, you know, they work. They fit with what we think we know about a place and that helps. There’s a concept that’s relevant here called “truthiness” which is a term coined by an American satirist called Stephen Colbert and the definition of truthiness is a felt sense of something being true independent of logic, evidence, intellectual examination or actual facts. So it’s basically you’re saying to yourself, “I feel it’s true and that’s what matters.” And, like it or not, a lot of effective brand stories seem to have this quality of truthiness and I’ll hasten to add that it’s very hard to achieve truthiness without some degree of truthfulness, but they are not the same thing and it’s truthiness that at the end of the day matters the most.

So how do commercial companies deal with where they are from? Let’s look at a few examples.

Germany. A few years ago, a branding agency in London called Wolff Olins carried out a series of studies with the Financial Times, on what “Made in Germany” means to people. What does that label mean? I think they did it with telephone interviews with senior executives around the world. And what they came up with they asked things like, “Which industries do you associate with Germany?” Most people, a vast majority in fact, associate Germany with automotive and engineering products and meanwhile give very low association to areas with high emotion or passion and that’s why you see, very obviously, a company like Volkswagen--they actually ran an ad campaign in the U.S. some years ago, where they used a German word. Every American of a certain age can tell you what “farfegnugen” is or knows what it is. They can tell you what it means and it has something to do with pleasure of driving. And this is not the only German automotive company that I’ve seen that uses actual German language in their ads. Another car company recently ran some ads in Britain which played on all kinds of stereotypes about Germans and Germany and had “Ride of the Valkyries” playing in the background, you know, this Wagnerian music and you get to the end of the ad and in fact, it’s an ad for Citroen, a French car that they are describing as “unmistakably German.” It’s quite controversial these ads, but they did get attention. And then after that a screenshot, a little while later this little asterisk comes up that says “Made in France”. It’s bizarre, but it shows the overwhelming power of provenance sometimes. And it’s why a company like Miele, which is a super-premium, incredibly expensive white-goods appliance manufacturer doesn’t even bother trying to have a brand personality of their own. They just pin it all on German-ness. That’s all they tell you about them. “We are Miele, you’ve heard about us, we are super-premium and we’re German. Pay lots of money for us.” And it seems to work. But a company like Deutsche Bank doesn’t--it’s neither hurt much nor helped much by being German. And so they call themselves Deutsche Bank and they don’t take it further than that. Same thing with SAP, a software company. Their German-ness doesn’t do anything for them.

At the other extreme you’ve got, if you are a fashion company from Germany, being German is probably unhelpful to you. So, what do you do? You know, fashion is an industry that’s marketed on emotion and there is a complete misfit here between national perception or misperception, or whatever it is and the reality of the brand—same with Jil Sander. OK.

Spain: The images people had of Spain for a long time, I think, it’s changed a lot now. We are dominated by romanticized nonsense, shall we say, and particularly by this grotesque caricature of a particular region of Spain called Andalucía. People thought all of Spain is like that and this includes—you know, the images of Spain were of toreros, and Sanfermines, Pamplona. More recently you’ve got Almodóvar films –and all of this amounts to, in a very roundabout kind of way, some idea of passion, some central, loose, guiding principle of passion which Spanish brands, or brands that want to portray themselves as Spanish can pick up on. And hence San Miguel beer, which is owned, I think, actually by a Filipino concern, but it’s certainly offered as Spanish product, sells beer where Spain is basically one of the ingredients in the beer—this is effectively what they are doing. They are saying this beer with water, malt, barley, hops, and a little spoonful of Spain in there; and that’s what you find in the bottle. And say our cars use this tagline auto-emoción so they play on their origins as well. And I couldn’t find an actual label showing this but I understand some years ago, Spanish wine was marketed under this slogan. And it all ties in to ideas that people have about Spain.

Brazil: Another case. The image of Brazil is funny because at least beyond South America, the image of the whole country is dominated by the image of one city in that country, Río. As Marie Castro, a Brazilian writer put it: “Anything for good or ill that’s going on in Brazil’s 3.3 million square miles is thought of outside Brazil as happening here. A forest catches fire in Amazonia and its thought someone in Río had something to do with it. This is funny because it’s very... it’s one of the few situations where the city image absolutely dominates the national image. And the city has some common associations: favelas, Carnival, Carmen Miranda, if you are a little before my time. And you know, the beach and the relaxed life style that goes with it. I’ve been told that Río is a city composed of people who live like they are nowhere near a city. This is the idea of Río out of Brazil; which is great because if you are Havaianas, then all you have to say is, “Look, we are the flip-flop from the flip-flop capital of the world, buy us.” And it works, your marketing’s done for you. You just identify where you are from and go home.

And then other people will try to use your brand equity. They’ll try to steal a bit of it. So Estée Lauder comes out with a new fragrance--I took this photograph in the Duty Free Shop in London a week ago. They’ve come out with a fragrance and call it “Brazil Dream,” and it says, “Go where it’s warm, exciting and full of life.” They just bottle a little bit of Brazil’s brand equity and try to get that to do their marketing for them.

Estée Lauder, incidentally, is an American cosmetics company named after the daughter of a ... well, Estée Lauder’s original name, her given name, is like Esther Metzner or something, her father was Czechoslovakian and her mother was half Hungarian Jewish and half French Catholic and she changed her name because she had an innate sense of the power of place, I guess. Although it’s easy for her to answer the question “Where are you from?” She was from Queens, New York.

This image of Brazil though, doesn’t help you very much if you are Embraer and you are trying to sell serious aircraft to serious people, and I would argue that Embraer has built their brand, which is a strong one, despite being Brazilian rather than because of being Brazilian. It’s no surprise that mostly they don’t use their Brazilian-ness in their identity. They call their model the “Phenom.” I did find one example from the history books, in which they did call a plane the “Brazilia.” But you’ll note that they didn’t call the model the “Copacabana” or the “Caipirinha” or the “Bossa Nova.” They call it something relatively serious. Although I think I’d like to fly a plane called “the Saudade,” I think that would be interesting.

Anyway the apparent lesson here is that if your national stereotypes are helpful then you milk them and if what you’re doing or selling doesn’t have much to do with the prevailing perceptions of your national origin, then you downplay or hide where you are from. And I can’t really fault people who do that, I guess, it’s hard to criticize. It’s certainly easy to understand why they do it, but I think there are two constructive alternatives that I want to propose to you:

The first is to turn a widely-held perception or stereotype, presumably somewhat negative, into a real positive, and the other possibility is to employ creative labeling to recast where you are from. One that I quite like is an Indian brand that came to Saffron some months ago, called Apollo Tyres. They are the second largest manufacturers of tires in India and they are getting ready to enter the European market, they want to sell tires in Germany, and they wanted to sell very discounted tires. And we said, “Hang on a sec. OK. You’ve got to price it at a discount to Michelin and Goodyear but sell at a normal price for a branded tire and make your Indian-ness into an asset by saying, “Look, we design tires for these kinds of conditions, we design tires for the worst roads and the worst drivers in the known universe and if we can do that, can we certainly make tires that are good enough for your European roads. So we gave them this brand idea which was written up like this: “Where the silk road meets the autobahn.” And they liked that. We gave them a visual identity to go with that, sort of based on four wheels but building in little bit of Indian color, the bright colors that are very popular in India, that are a very basic expression of Indian identity and they went on like that. We’ll see how successful it is, but I think it should work.

Now, the United States is by far, the best-known nation in the world. Simon and I wrote a book about the history of the image of America and it’s coming out again on the 4th of July in a revised version, but anyway... The United States is famously the land of the brave, home of the free, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, all of that. Democracy, freedom, opportunity. Well, it was like that for a long time but recently things changed and we got some new sides to the image and U.S. brands had to react to that and one of my favorite reactions to this is what Apple did. Does anyone have an iPhone or an iPod with them? Who’s got one? Can you take it out, look at the back and tell us where it says it’s made? Do you have it with you? Someone’s got an iPhone or iPod. No, no, read the whole line. What it says, not made in USA, it says, “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” This is perfect, it portrays the origins and exactly the proportions that we, as consumers, are absolutely delighted to accept. It’s a faultless line of copy in terms of labeling. We’ll take it. Designed by Apple, that’s great, in California. We like California. We know that a technology company in California is probably among the best in the world. And we are OK with things being assembled in China now. We accept that that’s not a diminution in quality, especially if it’s supervised by a great company in California like Apple. This is brilliant, the way they walked around being made in America. It assumes, probably correctly, that people know about California, and know about Apple. What if they don’t, as in the case of Chile? Then I think you need to teach them. So here’s my idea. Why not label export products clearly but also creatively. Why can’t “hecho en…” be a national advertising space for a not-so-well-known country? I think it can be. I’ll come back to that.

But first I want to show you a third constructive alternative which is much more ambitious, which is to change the context that the product lines or company brands are operating in by re-branding the country or a sector of the country. For this I’ll go back to Spain. Spain, in addition to those threadbare, you know, the real stereotypes, also has recently become known for a lot of other things, especially in the U.K. You know, its soccer, it’s Real Madrid, Costa del Sol and great new architecture by Gehry in Bilbao or Calatrava who is himself Spanish, or global financial institutions like Banco Santander or major retail chains. Zara’s got more than a thousand stores in more than sixty countries now. It’s a major flagship for Spain, although I don’t know how many people know they’re Spanish and maybe it’s a missed opportunity. Or Richard Rogers’s airport terminal in Madrid or Fernando Alonso, Rafael Nadal, these sports championships that Spain had a habit of winning for a little while, and real world-class Spanish designers that are gaining a real international notoriety. These all are new or relatively recent reputational aspects to Spain. And unfortunately, one of them is not technology, even though technology from Spain is one of the pillars of the economic success of the resurgent Spain. And you might not know it, in fact you almost certainly don’t, but Spanish technology is all around you. These are some American examples but the U.S. Navy, the only non-American supplier to the US Navy is a Spanish company called Indra. Hotels, like ones in las Vegas are routinely built with Spanish cranes. Both Coca-Cola and their rival, Pepsi, use bottling equipment that’s designed by a Spanish company. And the U.S. Coast Guard aircraft are Spanish. The Metropolitan Transport Authority of New York City hired a Spanish company to extend one of the subway lines. And when it comes to windmills it’s not just Don Quixote anymore: A Spanish company called Iberdrola is one of the most important private energy groups in the world, operating in more than forty countries. And even in software, some Spanish company has this software that analyzes pop songs after they are recorded but before they are released and it suggests, based on its database, like tweaking the song to make it more likely that it will become a hit. The point is that there’s real substance here. There’s real substance to the claim that Spain is a powerhouse for certain types of technology and yet in the words of one of our former clients, and I love this line, “no sólo hay que serlo, hay que parecerlo.” Which, as best I can grasp the translation, means: it’s not enough to be, you have also to seem, which is such a profound thought. So, in that interest, in that goal of seeming, the Spanish export office appointed Saffron in 2005 to create a brand identity for Spanish technology; not a brand for Spain, just for the technology. And we came up with this idea which, in my view, is a bit generic but anyway, sustainable ingenuity and we devised a mark which would be used as an endorsement. It would go next to other people’s logos, like trade organizations and private companies, and we had to convince them to use it. No arm twisting was allowed—this mark had to be something that people would want to use alongside their own identities, and we had to portray the benefits and the potential to the people who might use it. So we showed them things like the wall mark, or this UL, the Underwriter’s Laboratory seal, or the European version of that, or the Royal Appointment Crest that products take and our holy grail was that this brand mark become for Spanish technology exports what the Joan Miró sun logo had become for Spanish tourism, which is another export, actually. In other words, a true seal: Eventually we hoped that it would have this kind of recognition and ability to transmit meaning. We told them, too, “Look, the communications that you use, even if communication isn’t the essence of an image change strategy, have to reflect the high quality of the products on offer, so take these lousy product catalogues that you’ve got that look like auto parts, you know, sprinkler heads and combined harvesters and the way....” You know, they were just ugly, we said, “Get rid of this. Get some style, photograph them nicely, present that, think about your presentation, bring some more attention to that and while you are at it, tell authentic stories because there are enough ones and back the claims that you are making with true facts, and cases and real people.” And they did that, and so when they ran ads --and these are real ads—they told little stories, all of which portrayed real people doing something real as part of that. And then we made this video. We worked with another company to make the video, and the point of the video was to connect what people thought they knew about Spain –in other words, current perceptions-- with what we wanted them to know about Spanish technology, and to do it in a way that was harmonious so it wouldn’t jar. So they would go, “Of course,

Spain should be good at this kind of technology. This makes perfect sense.” It’s so natural and maybe it doesn’t show as much about the people as Simon would have it. It’s more about the machines and things. But I think it has a human side and it’s stylish and slick. There should be sound.

[Video]

You can argue its merits, but I think that it does a, it’s an example of at least a halfway decent attempt to do something very worthwhile, which is to connect perceptions, existing perceptions, to some new perceptions that you’re trying to engender. And the royal family of Spain, I know, took it to China with them for two days after the--I think they held off the trip a day or two so that they could take this thing with them on a mission to China. And the important thing is that the brand, this brand of Spanish technology, was about not only showing off Spanish technology, but actually using this platform of Spanish technology to show off modern Spain and modern Spanish-ness. So there is real interplay of the place and the products, which leads me to promoting a place—kind of an abrupt change, but I think most of you out there are advertising people working for Chilean companies but some of you are working for the Chilean government promoting Chile in different ways, so I thought I would touch on that.

I want to show two country promotion slogans.

One I think is the worst going right now and one I think is the best, which they don’t use anymore. It’s really a way of saying, I guess, my favorite and my least favorite. My least favorite is the one Panama is using right now, which says “Panama, it will never leave you.”

And whenever I see this on a bus in London I always giggle and I imagine how the committee that chose this had it narrowed down to two: “It will never leave you,” or “You will never leave it,” and they were arguing about it… and this one won by one vote. I don’t know, that’s how I imagine its happening. But I think it’s awful.

And then Norway, many years ago, ran a campaign where they used this slogan. You know, Norway, known for the Fjords and has a very similar environment to Chile, as you know, because of the Norwegian connection to the salmon business here, among other things. Norway run a campaign where they said, “Any decent doctor would prescribe Norway.” And it’s dated in its style and so on, but it’s has charm and it has real confidence and speaks in a subtle but unmistakable and very alluring way to something genuine about Norway that they were seeking to promote, and that’s why I like it.

Now, what about Chile?, Well I’ve only been in this country for six days, this is my first visit. Four of these days were in Easter Island, and as I flew from Easter Island to Santiago the other day, I caught this in the lobby, in the check-in area, “All ways surprising.” And I think it’s in vogue to put down this slogan right now. But anyway, I think it’s somewhere in the middle, it’s not the worst slogan even written, that’s for sure, but what I want to point out here, because you guys are a lot in this business of promoting things to countries that do not speak Spanish, is when you look closely at this thing, it’s advertising Eastern Island, which probably exists somewhere but it’s not in Chile. The point is, be very, very careful. There’s really no excuse for this—if you’re going to run an ad in a foreign country, get a native speaker to have a look at it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen this kind of thing, and it’s really amateurish. Its power to undo a lot of the other things that you are doing should not be underestimated.

And anyway, do you really have to use a slogan? This is a question I’ve been pondering a lot lately. And I think the answer might be, in many cases, is no.

One example of this is Visit London, a project that I led for Saffron last year. Visit London is the tourist board for London basically. And we won this job of creating a new corporate identity for them. And they are, it’s fair to say, the marketing arm of Europe’s largest city. And this challenge was to find something that let London be historic and charming and also contemporary and evolving and which avoided the clichés, because they said, “No Big Ben, leave Big Ben and the changing of the guard out of it, please.” We had tussle with them, because we said, “Yes, OK, but these are assets.” We had to find the way to get all of this in there. And the other tricky bit was that the identity had to be used for business tourism and conferences and things, and also just leisure tourism. And so it couldn’t be too, you know, too much fun. It had to have a bit of sobriety to it, because of the business aspect. And this is what we were replacing, this is the identity that they had. Which is based on the street signs around London. It’s the same typographic style. And our solution was also typographic and it was based around the core idea of the Visit London guides being the champions for London. Which is really what they do. And we did it in red because red is, if not uniquely, then very strongly identified with London. And it’s this: Visit London. This version was “Established 50 AD.” And we didn’t just have “Established 50 AD.” We had a whole range of things that they could choose from, depending on the situation. So “GMT+0,” “Black cabs in 12 colors,” “300 hundred languages spoken,” “31 tailors on Savile Row.” So any kind of situation that they might be in, they could choose a different one that would suit that. So if you are promoting the Tate Modern, then you have this “Visit London, Established 50 AD.” This contract is really nice, because London, is not merely about... it’s not just old and new. It’s not like that, it’s completely utterly ancient Roman ruins, right next to an absolutely vital, most modern and significant stuff happening in the world. And that’s uniquely London, and we wanted to get that across. Another side of London is the humor. I mean London is in Britain, even though more than half of Londoners are non-British. Only city in the world where more than half the people living there are not from the country that the city is in. So there’s a humor there, so we said you could have a mug, and they actually made a bunch of these where it says, “Tea time, 4 o’clock.” So you could play a little bit, it was very flexible. And it came in different colors, and they used it. Although in fact, as you see, the ad agency that was working for them couldn’t resist a slogan, and came up with, “See the world, visit London,” which they used alongside the material that we provided. So there’s the “Established 50 AD,” “The greenest big city in the world.” There are more than 600 parks in London, I’ll have you know. “Black cabs in 12 colors,” and in all of the versions it’s very unpretentious, unadorned and it befits London’s stature. We were very concerned about this because London, it’s a premium product, it’s not a cheap holiday destination. And it needed to be handled and marketed that way.

So back quickly to Chile and my thoughts about labeling, and the opportunities that you have here. Simon said that the export stuff is the main way perhaps that Chile is likely to... it’s the main lever at your disposal, for changing the way that you are perceived. And if the basic goal is to get people to know and like Chile, more than they do already, wherever they are on that curve, then your tools when it comes to labeling are language, facts and flair. And really, I have no idea what you should say, but I think that you should say something. You should label in a way that characterizes and conveys Chilean-ness, and teaches people something about the country. 40:15 There was some discussion earlier about aspects of Chilean-ness. Well, you need to pin that down, and then label accordingly on a case-by-case basis. So in wine, Chilean-ness might mean one thing, in fruit something slightly different, and in a manufactured product, or in services it could be really quite different but it’s all Chilean. And I imagine what Simon’s done, I’m not very familiar with the work that has been done or the foundation that’s being created, but I imagine that that will help. But here are some random ideas that occurred to me. So you could say, “Made by Chileans, the British of South America.” I’ve never seen anything labeled like that, but why not? Why couldn’t you do it? I can’t see a reason. Or “Made in Chile, called the thin country by the Nobel prize winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.” That can fit on a bottle of wine. I’ve never seen a country say anything other than “Made in” on their bottles of wine, but you could do it. And Simon talked at length about the incredible benefits of being winemakers, so add to that some facts that you can plant in people’s heads—a Nobel prize, that’s not a bad thing. Or “Made in Chile, the most stable, safe, prosperous and democratic nation in South America.” It’s not an exiting thing to say, I wouldn’t put it on a bottle of wine, but you could do it. Or “Chile, Latin America’s success story.” Really, I’m not sure how you would use this, but I can conceive of a situation where, the simple, rather dull but entirely sober and somewhat bold statement, could be helpful. More helpful than a catchy slogan. Or you could say, “Product of Chile, home of 55 active volcanoes.” You could use that in tourism, or you could use that on textiles, some outdoors products, some fruit. I don’t know, I know volcanic ash –I learned this on Easter Island-- volcanic ash is good for the soil. So you could tell, if there’s room on the back panel, you can tell some story about that.

The possibilities are nearly endless and what’s appropriate will depend on context and circumstances. But it should be always link to the basic brand strategy. And to this national image strategy that Simon Anholt has worked out with you. I’ve pulled these out of the air, so take them with a grain of salt. As Woody Allen said, right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.

So, those were my notions. I hope you’ve found some of my remarks useful, and or provocative. Thank you for listening.

"Made in Swiss" in danger

2009-09-02T11:54:00.000+02:00

Kolejny przykład na to, że marka kraju oraz produkty z niego pochodzące są ze sobą mocno skorelowane. Szwajcaria dostrzegła problem pojawiających się coraz częściej podróbek ich koronnych produktów (tj. zegarki), które psują markę kraju i deprecjonują oznaczenie "Made in Swiss". Więcej w artykule:

Switzerland fights to safeguard "Swiss made" label

ZURICH (Reuters) - "Fake watches are for fake people: buy authentic, buy real" -- that is the slogan of a campaign by the Swiss watch industry to fight booming demand for counterfeit goods during the global downturn.

Switzerland knows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but wants to preserve its reputation for quality products, from watches to cheese, by setting strict rules on Swiss content and more rigorously tracking down fakes.

Defending "Swissness" will be an uphill battle beyond Swiss borders and promoting premium products is a risky strategy in a recession, but Switzerland wants to be ready for a rebound.

A search for "Swiss made" on the Internet returns dozens of websites offering replica watches at knock-down prices but also assurances that the mostly "made in China" fakes can match "made in Switzerland" quality.

"We're able to offer low prices, and you can be certain of the craftsmanship that goes into every watch," boasts one company based in Shenzen, China, offering a Rolex Santos "with correct markings and engravings, replicated to the smallest detail" for $449 (272 pounds) instead of $952.

Exports of Swiss watches slumped by 25 percent in the first five months of the year to 5 billion Swiss francs ($4.6 billion), with 2.5 million fewer watches sold than a year ago.

The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry estimates that more than 40 million fake Swiss timepieces are made every year, generating profits of around $1 billion.

"People still like brands in an economic crisis but unfortunately if there is not enough money at their disposal, they buy counterfeits," said Yves Bugmann, head of the federation's legal division.

The threat from fake goods has spurred the Swiss government into action to try to protect its precious "Swiss-made" label and the white-on-red Swiss cross logo by setting strict rules on Swiss content and production.

Switzerland's squeaky-clean image has been dented by a global crackdown on its secretive banking industry, in particular its top bank UBS, accused of helping tax dodgers hide their money in offshore accounts.

However, the image of most Swiss products is untarnished. A global study conducted by advertising firm McCann Erickson and St Gallen University in 2008 showed Swiss products are perceived more favourably that those from any other country.

QUALITY PREMIUM

"People are prepared to pay up to 20 percent more for certain Swiss consumer products and for luxury goods they are prepared to pay even more," said Felix Addor, deputy director general of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.

"But if they pay more and they are disappointed because the product has not the expected high quality it hurts the reputation of Switzerland."

Juergen Haeusler, chairman of the brand consultancy Interbrand for central and eastern Europe, said achievements by prominent Swiss such as tennis ace Roger Federer and prize-winning architects Peter Zumthor and Jacques Herzog have helped the country's image. "People think of Switzerland in terms of quality, precision," he said.

The leading Swiss brands in the Business Week/Interbrand top 100 include Nescafe coffee and Rolex watches, as well as UBS, although the bank dropped several places when it suffered record losses last year and came under a U.S. tax fraud investigation.

Some of the top brands such as Nestle do not actively market their Swiss roots, perhaps because they imply premium pricing, but a growing number do so, with more than 5,000 brands using the tag "Swiss" in 2006, up from 1,500 in 2000.

"'Made in Switzerland' is a valuable asset of the Swiss nation and helps Swiss industry to compete worldwide. More and more corporate brands like to associate with the image of Switzerland compared with 10 years ago," Haeusler said.

To defend the brand, the government is planning legislation that will demand that the Swiss share of production costs must be 60 percent for industrial goods to be labelled "Swiss."

The watch industry has proposed an even tougher requirement for itself, demanding an 80-percent share of total production costs in Switzerland, up from the current 50 percent, seen by many as too lax and allowing too much production elsewhere.

Under the new legislation, at least 80 percent of the raw materials for food products must be from Switzerland and most of the processing costs must occur in the country.

So Swiss cheese will not only have to be made in Switzerland but also must use largely from Swiss milk. The dried beef industry is up in arms because simply curing meat in Switzerland will no longer be enough. It will have to use Swiss meat, rather than Argentine.

Swiss chocolate makers such as Lindt need not worry as the legislation foresees exceptions for products such as cocoa that are not sourced locally and for raw materials that are temporarily not available, for example because of poor harvests.

NO BRAND MANAGER

Sven Reinecke, marketing professor at St Gallen university, said it would be hard to enforce the new rules on what is allowed to be called "Swiss-made" globally, but it was important to try, especially for luxury industries such as watchmaking.

"It is difficult to defend the brand all over the world. You do not have a brand manager for Swissness so everybody can use it. But for a premium brand you need to show it is quality so it is necessary to define it," he said.

Bugmann of the watch industry federation said the recession was already making China less cooperative in pursuing counterfeiters.

Some might question the wisdom of pushing the premium quality of Swiss products when consumers are trading down, hurting expensive watch brands Swatch Group and Richemont as well as premium chocolatiers such as Lindt.

Interbrand's Haeusler disagrees: "Marketing is often the opposite of what seems to be reasonable.

"Even if we can't have premium, we still aspire to have premium. I would not just begin to communicate the image in a different way just because of a temporary crisis."

Kepler Capital Markets analyst Jon Cox said promoting the Swiss brand would set the country up well for a recovery.

"The whole trend towards premium products will go on even if it is a trend towards less conspicuous consumption," he said.

Experts foresee little lasting damage from attacks on banking secrecy, noting that a Nazi gold scandal in the late 1990s over the emptying of Jewish accounts with Swiss banks did not have a lasting effect on the country's image.

"Country brands are big ships that don't change course quickly," said Addor from the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property. "A Swiss watch is a high quality watch. It has nothing to do with whether or not Swiss banks have done something good or bad."

By Emma Thomasson
(Additional reporting by Josie Cox; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

Source: www.swissinfo.ch

Korea starts running an ad on advanced technologies

2009-09-02T11:53:00.000+02:00

Korea już prawie od 10 lat działa na rzecz budowy silnej marki swojego kraju, właśnie pod kątem gospodarczym, kładąc duży nacisk na markowy eksport związany z nowymi technologiami. W 2000 r. ówczesny Minister Handu, Przemysłu i Energetyki zapowiedział, że rząd będzie wspierał tworzenie marek narodowych, aby gospodarka Korei była bardziej konkurencyjna na arenie międzynarodowej (tworząc m.in. 'Design and Brand Policy Division’). W 2002 r., podczas mistrzostw w piłce nożnej FIFA World Cup rozgrywanych w Korei, zaprezentowane zostało logo i hasło, za pomocą którego Korea prowadziła potem działania promocyjne.

Obecnie planowana jest duża, międzynarodowa kampania, która ma wzmacniać wizerunek Korei jako kraju o innowacyjnej gospodarce, produkującego zaawansowane technologicznie produkty.

The Korean government plans to start running an ad featuring Korea's indigenous and advanced technologies on international news media such as CNN and BBC, beginning from the middle of September, a source said Sunday.

The ad is aimed at promoting Korea's technologies for WiBro wireless data transmission, flat-screen televisions and other telecommunication areas where Korean firms have an edge over global competitors.

The government will also run the ad in a local newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Penn., targeting participants of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit, which will take place in the U.S. city from Sept. 24 to 25.

``We've made the ad for global media as part of efforts to embolden Korea's image as a technological powerhouse,'' the source from the Presidential Council on Nation Branding said. ``The ad will also be helpful for Korean technology firms seeking to raise their global positions.''

He hoped the ad will open the way for Korean ``hidden champions,'' the little-known but powerful small firms equipped with the world's best technologies, to draw more global attention and boost their sales.

In addition, the government is considering setting up public relations offices at major airports and exhibition centers around the world to promote the competitive small firms abroad, according to the council.

By Na Jeong-ju, Staff Reporter

www.koreatimes.co.kr

Ładne bo polskie

2009-09-02T11:48:00.000+02:00

Kontynuując gorący temat z Twittera – o marketingowym wykorzystaniu Euro 2012 dla Polski – chciałbym napisać, że coś się pod tym względem ruszyło! Tak, nie przesłyszeliście się, ruszyło się ostro z kopyta! Powodem, że się ruszyło jest fakt, że spółka PL.2012, w ramach swoich szerokich kompetencji i obowiązków, przygotowuje kompleksową strategię marketingową dla Polski, właśnie w kontekście i pod pretekstem Euro 2012 ! Czyżby czytali nam w myślach?… a może po prostu czytają Brief for Poland? Tak czy inaczej, informacja ta jest, na pierwszy rzut oka, bardzo pozytywna. Hmm… martwić może jednak trochę fakt, że jest to jedna z trzech strategii marketingowych dla Polski o których, mniej lub bardziej oficjalnie, dowiedzieliśmy się w ostatnich miesiącach. Swoją strategię przygotowuje MSZ, swoją także opracowuje Ministerstwo Gospodarki, a trzecią ma już POT. Niestety tajemnicą poliszynela jest, która strategia będzie tą główną, nadrzędną, która z której wynika i tak naprawdę o co tutaj w ogóle chodzi? Konia z rzędem także temu, kto dowie się czy te strategie będą się w jakiś sposób w ogóle przenikać, czy zainteresowane strony konsultują się ze sobą, i w którą stronę ostatecznie ma pójść marketing Polski? Sprawa konsultacji zainteresowanych organizacji, naszym zdaniem, jest mocno wątpliwa, bo jak dowiedzieliśmy się ze sprawdzone źródła, największym problemem od wielu lat przy tworzeniu szerszych projektów promocyjnych dla Polski jest niemożność zgrania kalendarzy kilku ministrów i dyrektorów by spotkać się w jednym, konkretnym dniu. No cóż.. widocznie są inne priorytety. Kolejny problem – instytucje odpowiedzialne za promocję Polski wzięły sobie tak mocno do serca fakt, że funkcjonuje u nas już od jakiegoś czasu wolny rynek, że zamiast współpracować, konkurują ze sobą – o przyszłe budżety, o zainteresowanie mediów, o to, kto szybciej wypuści jakąś kampanię reklamową, o utrzymanie „na rynku”. Zdrowa konkurencja - bardzo proszę. Ale w tym przypadku efekty takiej działalności chyba nie są najlepsze. Aby jednak nie wpadać za nadto w pesymizm i nie podążać utartym nurtem krytycyzmu wobec działań różnych urzędów i instytucji chcemy pomóc, a nie ganić. I tym sposobem doszliśmy do sedna – ze względu na tak aktywną pracę różnych instytucji nad (różnymi) strategiami marketingowymi dla Polski chcemy, trochę na serio, trochę z przymrużeniem oka, przytoczyć kilka naszych pomysłów na kierunki promocji naszego pięknego kraju. Dzisiaj jeden z nich. Pierwszym pomysłem na promocję, jaki od dawna chodził nam po głowie, ale chyba wstydziliśmy się do tej pory o nim głośno powiedzieć, są nasze piękne, polskie kobiety. Chyba nikogo do tego, zwłaszcza z męskiego grona czytelników, nie trzeba przekonywać. Jest to także fakt ogólnie znany wśród mieszkańców wielu krajów europy czy nawet świata. Nie przypominam sobie relacji telewizyjnej czy radiowej, w której pytani o powody przyjazdu do Polski mężczyźni, z bardzo różnych zakątków świata, nie wymieniają na jednym z pierwszych miejsc urodę naszych pań. Podobnie sprawa się ma w mniej lub bardziej oficjalnych sondażach czy nawet badaniach, podejmujących temat motywów przyjazdowych do naszego kraju. Tezę tą na pewno potwierdziłyby także statystyki zawieranych małżeństw panów z innych krajów, z naszymi rodaczkami. Skoro tak się dzieje, to dlaczego mamy tego faktu nie wykorzystać? Wszakże chyba jest to lepszy wyróżnik i koncept promocyjny niż eksploatowany do granic możliwości przez ostatnie kilkanaście lat motyw Szopena, II Wojny Światowej, polskiej wsi czy oscypka. Nie przypominam sobie także by taki kierunek promocji przyjął jakikolwiek inny kraj w europie, toteż warunek unikalności mamy już na wejściu spełniony. Fakt, że ograniczamy w tym przypadku do dość homogenicznej i sprecyzowanej grupy docelowej, ale cóż, w działaniach marketingowych nie da się zadowolić wszystkich, trzeba się na jakiś wybrany target zdecydować. Z drugiej strony, być może polski mężczyzna też się nie ma czego wstydzić na tle urody innych panów z europy. To, że Polska nie kojarzyła się do tej pory jakoś silnie z walorami fizycznymi polskich mężczyzn nie jest wielkim problemem.. od czego w końcu mamy specjalistów od strategii i komunikacji marketingowej, zwłaszcza w instytucjach odpowiedzialnych za promocję. Na koniec ciekawi mnie najbardziej opinia pań o tym wszystkim. Z jednej strony pewnie powinny czuć się wyróżnione, wyjątkowe. Z drugiej jednak, pod wpływem rosnącej popularności nurtu feministycznego, pewnie mogłyby podnieść się głosy o przedmiotowym traktowaniu kobiet. Cóż, tego nie wiemy! Mamy jednak nadzieje, że nasz głos w dyskusji o kierunku promocji Polski zostanie zauważony i doceniony.

Finlandia wzmacnia swoją markę

2009-09-02T11:46:00.000+02:00

Pod koniec zeszłego roku Minister Spraw Zagranicznych Finlandii powołał zespół ekspercki pod przewodnictwem Prezesa Zarządu Nokii i Shela - Jorma Ollila - by wzmocnić markę kraju. Co robi Minister z naszego MSZ podczas spotkania o brandigu Polski (http://www.brief4poland.pl/aktualnosci/art384...) - wychodzi po godzinie bo ma inne, ważniejsze zobowiązania !

Guardians of our national reputation

What do those foreigners really think about the Finns?
I am not joking. I am not being sarcastic. I am serious. I really want to know what those foreigners think about us Finns. I also want them to think something quite magnificent of us.

Finland's most overly-cultivated cliche is that we Finns are pathologically interested in what foreigners think of us.

The other 192 countries in the world supposedly have no such concerns. The reason is that Finns while are plagued by weak but that other nations are not.
Poppycock!

The reality is quote the reverse: we Finns pay far too little heed to what others think of us. We are arrogant and pathologically self-assured, and we imagine that others admire our northern plot of land as much as we do ourselves.

Fortunately the Finnish government has finally understood that it is not possible to get very far with such an attitude. Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb appointed a working group last week to think about a Finnish national brand - that is, the image, or reputation of the country. The group of 18 wise persons is chaired by Jorma Ollila, chairman of the boards of both Nokia and Shell.
As competition intensifies, Finland will not be able to afford not to care about how others see it. A strong country image creates success and well-being, the proponents claim.

Not too little, but perhaps too late?
In other countries national brands have been nurtured since the beginning of the decade. The Estonians are pioneers, and right behind them come the Swedes and the Danes. In Britain and Germany - you know, those two West European countries that appear rather often in the media - the image of the countries has been honed consistently for years.

The aim of establishing a stronger national brand is that when a foreigner hears the word “Finland”, many pleasant thoughts will pop into that person’s mind. The more positive the thoughts raised by the word “Finland”, the stronger Finland’s brand, or reputation will be.

If a country’s brand is especially strong, a foreigner will go batty every time he or she is exposed to a stimulus involving Finland. The foreigner will want to buy Finnish products, to travel (if not actually move) to Finland, to agree with Finnish opinions on international arenas, and to be the Finns’ best friend in other ways as well.

Even a large country can have problems with its national image.
In France a few years ago, Germany sought to brand itself as a sexy country. “We could do all kinds of nice things together”, the Germans indicated to the French, tired as they were of having a reputation of being mainly engineers. In Britain, Germany’s national brand campaign focussed on something completely different: Germany is more than just the Second World War.

The mission of Ollila and his partners will take more than two years. It is a short time to set a brand for an entire state.

Furthermore, country brands are not established through administrative decisions, or through any other decisions, for that matter. National images are mostly based on random and coincidental events, whose significance is understood only in retrospect.

Or as Simon Anholt, the British pioneer of nation branding, said: “National image is like starlight which, by the time it reaches us on Earth, is only the distant echo of an event that started and finished long before.”
Nevertheless, Ollila’s working group would do well to put some speed in its work. I want my neighbours to start whispering as soon as possible: “She’s a Finn. We were lucky!”

Until then I’ll have to boost Finland’s national brand on my own. It’s terribly difficult, having to think about what others think.

Annamari Sipilä / Helsingin Sanomat

To visit IKEA is to visit Sweden

2009-09-02T11:43:00.000+02:00

Marki krajów i komercyjne często są ze sobą powiązane. Marki komercyjne zasilają markę kraju z którego pochodzą, i odwrotnie. Ma to tym większe znaczenie im wartości marek komercyjnych są bliższe marce kraju (Apple i USA - innowacje, technologia), Giorgio Armani i Włochy (moda i styl) oraz BMW i Niemcy (niezawodność, jakość).

Poniżej przykład symbiozy marki IKEI ze Szwecją (artykuł, niestety po angielski, zaciągnięty z Public Diplomacy Magazine, autor: Olle Wästberg).

The Symbiosis of Sweden & IKEA

Frankly, IKEA is doing more for the image of Sweden than all governmental efforts combined.

That might be a sad statement coming from a governmental official tasked with enforcing “the brand of Sweden.” But IKEA’s 285 stores in 37 countries feature the blue-and-yellow national colors, serve Swedish meatballs and sell blond-wood Swedish designs and books about Sweden. To visit IKEA is to visit Sweden.

Every “nation brand” is a simplification. But even though it may be paradoxical in a globalized world, most countries have found that they must stress their individuality to be able to compete. Reputation is the new currency now that countries are beginning to understand that soft power can be more forceful than the hard power that has so often failed.

Enhancing Sweden’s image involves creating a clear position for Sweden internationally – a unique place in people’s consciousness that distinguishes Sweden from other countries. Specifically, we, Sweden’s image makers, must define what unites all things Swedish, and also dare to identify the associations people around the world make with Sweden. The leading Swedish agencies dealing with “Sweden” – the Swedish Trade Council, Visit Sweden, Invest in Sweden Agency and the Swedish Institute – have together established a mutual brand platform, which places the word “progressive” in the center, with four core values around it:

To elaborate, four words represent these core values:

Innovative means new ways of thinking. Seeing things from a new perspective. Seeing opportunities and solutions and having faith in a better future. Not allowing oneself to be limited by ingrained opinions or traditions.

Open means having a positive attitude toward free thinking and differences among people, cultures and lifestyles. It involves being curious and sensitive to others as well as giving people space and creating exchanges; space for the ideas and views of individuals, as well as physical space to move freely without obstacles, fences, or crowding, in our readily accessible countryside, cities and places in between.

Caring means safeguarding every individual. Providing safety and security as well as respecting and including all people. It means feeling empathy and sharing with those who are most vulnerable; becoming involved with others and trying to see to the needs of every individual.

Authentic means being natural and unaffected. It means being reliable, honest and informal. It also involves being straightforward, unpretentious and clear, as well as standing up for one’s values even when it is not comfortable to do so. To be authentic means to be in touch with your past and your roots, while open to the future.

This might not be entirely unique, but the combination says a lot about Sweden and research shows that these are values that people from other countries associate with Sweden.

IKEA fits very well in that context. The company has been a forerunner in corporate social responsibility, putting emphasis on the working conditions of their contractors as well as on sustainability. The IKEA brand could very well be categorized by the same progressive descriptors as the public diplomacy platform of Sweden outlined above.

The brand of IKEA is not independent; it is closely interlinked with the image of Sweden, drawing from Swedish design innovation going back more than a hundred years. It is not by chance that The Museum of Modern Art in New York last year published the book Modern Swedish Design: Three Founding Texts, which presented the first English translations of three seminal texts by pioneers of Swedish design. The three founding texts are “Beauty in the Home” (1899), by the philosopher and critic Ellen Key; “Better Things for Everyday Life” (1919), by Gregor Paulsson, art historian and director of the Swedish Arts and Crafts Society from 1920 to 1934; and “acceptera” (1931), co-authored by Paulsson and the architects Gunnar Asplund, Sven Markelius, Eskil Sundahl, Uno Åhrén and Wolter Gahn.

Those texts were written long before IKEA was established and were part of what founded the international view of Swedish design: spartan and blond, which may have communicated a national character, if such a thing exists.

The Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 established the term “functionalism” which has since been dominant in Swedish design and architecture, even though Sweden also has its neoclassical buildings. Function, not decoration, is the framework for what could be called the typical Swedish design creed.

On another level, the book Sweden: the Middle Way by the American journalist Marquis Childs had an enormous impact on the image of Sweden, especially in the U.S., and sold several editions in 1936. The book painted Sweden as the ultimate compromise between capitalism and socialism, a sort of paradise where basic class conflicts were gone. It offered a social design that interplayed very well with functionalism. This has been beneficial for Sweden. However, it is largely a stereotype, as today’s Sweden is one of the most market-oriented countries in the world.

Does Sweden use design as a tool for nation branding today? Yes, the Swedish Institute continuously has exhibitions of Swedish design that travel the globe. Sweden is a small country, about the size of California, with a population equivalent to New York City, and a GNP the size of New Jersey. To be successful from that small base, Swedish companies must add value and special knowledge to their products. Some companies have learned the hard way that neglecting design will hurt. Ericsson’s problems with cellular lines at the end of the 1990s were the result of the engineer-driven company’s late realization that people first looked at the surface, before inquiring about the content of the product. Consider products made of alcohol distilled from potatoes—often called “vodka.” Absolut, with its well designed bottle and brilliant ad campaign, has made that simple product an international status symbol, proving how well design can work.

It’s obvious that Sweden’s nation branding is linked to Swedish design. When the U.S. established its embassies and consulates in a devastated Europe after World War II, it built transparent modern buildings with many glass windows that were meant to send the message that the U.S. is an open, democratic society. Similarly, when Sweden built the new House of Sweden in Washington D.C. a couple of years ago, a driving focus was to showcase contemporary design. Designed by the architect Gert Wingårdh, the building is a combined embassy, exhibition hall and meeting place. It incarnates Sweden.

But Sweden can still do more to showcase its aesthetic innovations while its official representatives could be much more consistent in the details. Does everyone who represents Sweden drive a Volvo and carry an Ericsson cell? Is every embassy furnished with the latest in Swedish furniture design? Regrettably, no. You would have to search long and hard to find IKEA furniture at embassies or consulates.

For business, the image of a country can be decisive. Simply put: if you just have a couple of minutes to present your product, it helps if you don’t need to use that scarce time to explain the nature of its origin. In fact, the country of origin could actually add to the value of a product—a phenomenon sometimes called “the country of origin effect.”

I recently met with the CEO of Volvo Trucks. He told me that, clearly, Volvo is very affected by the image of Sweden. Both because Volvo as a brand is so interlinked with Sweden, but also because Volvo needs to entice some of the best car engineers to move to Gothenburg. Therefore Sweden has to spread the image of a country that is nice to live, study and work in (which actually, according to Simon Anholt’s Nation Brands Index studies, is one of the areas where Sweden excels).

The Swedish Institute is in the process of forming a network of companies wanting to use place branding as a marketing tool. It goes both ways: Sweden benefits from the way IKEA markets itself; and IKEA is one of the companies that benefits most from the image of Sweden. IKEA would not be IKEA without its Swedish background.

Autor:
Olle Wästberg is the Director-General of the Swedish Institute, a public agency entrusted with disseminating knowledge abroad about Sweden and organizing exchanges with other countries in the spheres of culture, education, research and public life in general. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of the daily newspaper Expressen, Member of Parliament, State Secretary of Finance, and Consul-General of Sweden in New York.

2009-09-02T11:37:00.000+02:00

OK, przejdźmy do konkretów. Pewnie każdy z Was pamięta, choć może już właśnie nie każdy, sławetny projekt zainicjowany przez Pana Boruca z Instytutu Marki Polskiej (KIG) i mający na celu opracowanie przez (nie wiadomo do końca) światowej sławy eksperta ds. brandingu krajów - Wally Olinsa - strategii marki naszego kraju. Długa historia jak to się zaczęło, jak przebiegało.. jednak jakaś praca na pewno została wykonana i ostatecznie skończyło się na wykreowaniu tzw. idei przewodniej marki Polska określanej mianem "twórczego napięcia" (creative tension). Potem jeszcze dłuższa historia o tym jak większość dziennikarzy myliła ideę przewodnią z hasłem promocyjnym, a większość ekspertów z 'core value' marki. Wynikła z tego taka kołomyja, że nie dziwie się, że sejm bez większego zainteresowania o projekcie posłuchał... a po kilku dniach wyrzucił go do kosza. Tym bardziej się, nie dziwie, że z całym szacunkiem dla p. Boruca (i IMP) ale kim on jest, żeby rząd, sejm, prezydent i premier chcieli wysłuchać go z uwagą i zainteresowaniem?! Od samego początku ten projekt był za nisko umocowany, jeśli miałby odnieść jakiś sukces! Następnym razem polecam inicjowanie podobnego projektu od razu od kancelarii premiera (lub ostatecznie prezydenta). Ale nie o tym chce pisać.. na ten temat wylano już mnóstwo atramentu, choć nikt chyba, poza samymi zainteresowanymi, nie wie do końca jak to wszystko przebiegało i dlaczego się skończyło! Sam Olins raz mówi o nieporozumieniach z polskimi partnerami, raz o złym czasie wprowadzania projektu (rządy braci K., których czarny PR zniwelowałby wysiłki rozwoju koncepcji 'creative tension'). Najciekawsze w tym wszystkim jest chyba jednak to, że na podstawie tego opisu wiodącej idei marki Polska (czyli w połowie drogi mniej więcej) powstał logotyp, do którego udało mi się ostatnio dotrzeć, który miał graficznie oddawać tą ideę, a de facto chyba zostać po prostu nowym logotypem Polski (jakkolwiek idiotycznie by to nie brzmiało!). Powstał podobno po tajemniczym spotkaniu p.Boruca, p. Olinsa z agencją BNA, które jest autorem tych prac.

Czy nie przypomina Wam jakoś bardzo już istniejącego logotypu, którym posługuje się MSZ? Pozostawiam komentarz całej tej sprawy i samego logotypu Wam! Poniżej jeszcze 2 aplikacje znaku.

I stało się.. nie wytrzymałem i postanowiłem założyć bloga!

2009-09-02T11:27:00.000+02:00

I to po raz drugi, bo blog na serwisie biznes.net się totalnie nie sprawdził, porażka! Tak więc od nowa..

Wiem dobrze, że nic on nie zmieni, niczego nie przyspieszy, niczego nie ułatwi, tym bardziej nie sprawi, że nasz „wspaniały” kraj „wskoczy” na ścieżkę dobrobytu i prosperity… ale pomimo tego chce pisać! Pisać o tym, o czym wiele osób myśli ale może nie potrafi tego wyartykułować.. może nie wiemy jak to nazwać.. ale wszyscy czujemy, że coś z tą naszą Polską jest nie tak. I nawet nie chodzi o braci Kaczyńskich, Panią Cugier-Kotkę czy nawet Palikota. Nawet w ogóle nie chodzi o tzw. „klasę polityczną”, choć jest ona bezpośrednio odpowiedzialna za to co jest, a właściwie czego nie ma. Nie macie czasem wrażenia, pomimo tego, że wmówiono nam, że jesteśmy zakompleksionymi pierdołami Europy, że faktycznie mało kto traktuje nas poważnie? Jak w tym dowcipie... „Panie doktorze, nikt nie traktuje mnie poważnie! – Żartuje Pani?!”. Nie twierdzę, że umieszczane tutaj informacje i przemyślenia sprawię, że Polska będzie bardziej szanowana czy podziwiana, że polscy piłkarze nagle zaczną wygrywać, a Placido Domingo po ostatniej wizycie w naszym kraju (w Łodzi) wystąpi o polskie obywatelstwo! Uważam jednak, że możliwe są do przeprowadzenia pewne działania, które tak jak w powiedzeniu, że kropla drąży skałę, mogą prowadzić do rozwoju, do uznania, do sukcesów… trzeba tylko dowiedzieć się jak je przeprowadzić, jak funkcjonują, jak się sprawdziły gdzie indziej, na ile są skuteczne.. o nich chce pisać. Jeśli komuś te informacje się przydadzą to super.. jeśli nie, to trudno, z psychologicznego punktu widzenia mojej psyche zrobi dobrze, jak przeleje czasami moje (konstruktywne mam nadzieję) żale na papier. Tak więc zaczynając dyskusję… po ch… nam branding?.. Może po to? :)