There is one country south of Russia with a dire need of re-branding. This country has nearly 50 million people in it and is roughly as big as France, but the country has little influence, little attractions, lttle fame, little everything.
That country is Ukraine. To complicate things more, of the few things known about Ukraine, [...]

This is an oldie – an “old” 2008 article first published on Singapore’s The Business Times. It was written by Joseph Baladi, CEO at BrandAsian, shortly after the staging of the Olympics in Beijing, China. Even if somewhat old, some of the points being made in this article around Brand China specifically are still worth [...]

If ever there was a daunting nation branding challenge, that would be Israel. We have spoken about Israel’s nation brand before: the country is notorious for being at the very end of the tail in most national perception rankings. At the 2009 EastWest’s global nation brands perception index, Israel was 192 out of 200, behind [...]

Some days ago we published a blog post at which we listed 10 things nation branding isn’t. Now we have the opportunity to define nation branding by the what it is and not by what it isn’t. That’s because Mathias Akotia, the newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer at the newly-founded Brand Ghana Office, has written an [...]

Some 80 guests and friends of Finland gathered on a sunny October 14th afternoon at Dutch Zoetermeer to hear a panel discussion about the theme “Finland Country Branding”. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness about the ongoing country branding project in Finland and create discussion around the theme among the Finnish-minded business [...]

One of the basic tenets of nation branding is that there often exists an intimal relationship between a nation brand and national brands, that is, companies hailing from that particular nation.
This relationship allows a usual nation branding tactic, which basically consists in exploiting this relationship for the benefit of either the nation brand or the [...]

Through deals, diplomacy and promotion, Latin America and the Caribbean have begun to cast aside outdated conceptions and reposition the region as one not just open for business but also good at business.
A late-20th century description of the countries south of the United States might well have been laden with stereotypes ranging from fun-in-the-sun to [...]

After publishing the Branding Slovenia story in early November 2009, I got an interesting response from an accredited source, Ms. Maja Konecnik Ruzzier, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ms. Konecnik has been involved in Slovenia’s national re-branding from the core, so her vision on the issue is [...]

There is a wide gap between how foreigners think about South Korea and the country’s reality. And this gap has severe consequences on South Korea’s national ambitions. For instance, in terms of nation-brand value relative to GDP, the U.S. stands at 143 percent and Japan at 224 percent, while South Korea is at less than [...]

Switzerland is widely admired for its system of government, but is not perceived as having offered much to the world in terms of culture.? These were two of the findings of last year’s edition of the Nation Brands Index, which put Switzerland in eighth position overall – three places lower than in the same study [...]