No doubt, Wally Olins is one of the world’s most experienced and influential nation branding experts. He has worked with many countries including Portugal and Poland, but with the latter he’s gone through his ups and downs. He paused his nation branding work for Poland because of political reasons, but also because of cultural misunderstandings,…
We’ve featured Bulgaria’s efforts to re-brand itself in the past, as when Bulgaria looked for its nation brand symbols back in 2008. Now, a nation-branding conference is to be held in Sofia, Bulgaria, next Tuesday March 1st. The event will circulate around issues such as Bulgaria’s image, how it can be improved, what role is…
Following our story on Southern Sudan’s naming issue, readers of the Economist online paper have suggested a number of interesting ideas concerning the newborn country’s name. A pretty conservative reader said, “Like North and South Korea……the “South Sudan” seems good to me.” A reader said Equatoria could be a good name, since it’s a name used…
The recent episode about BBC’s motor show Top Gear’s remarks on Mexico, Mexicans and Mexican products highlights the sometimes under-valued power of nation brands. The episode vividly showed to what extent countries are haunted by stereotypes and cliches, and how commercial brands and products are many times judged by their country of origin rather than…
Branding a nation entails “what is”, “what it stands for”, and “what it is going to be known for”. The director of the Latvian Institute, the country’s office for Latvia’s promotion, Ojars Kalnins, has written a short piece in which he explores how Latvia could find one of its roles on the global stage in…
We’ve looked at Switzerland’s standings on the Nation Brands Index before (look at the Switzerland at the 2009 Nation Brands Index post for an example). Now it’s time for GenevaLunch, a Swiss blog, to report about the country’s rankings in the 2010 edition of the Nation Brands Index, which evaluates the strength and attractiveness of…
India’s promotional initiative Future of Change will be hosting at Davos during the World Economic Forum two, sort-of, nation-branding events. On Thursday, January 27, India Future of Change will host an all-star ensemble of business leaders, policy makers and academicians; moderated by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, the panel will discuss how India can…
A recent story on The Media Line featured on how Middle Eastern countries have been tapping professionals to polish their public images in recent years. With its popular reputation as a hotbed of religious extremism, war, terror and political repression, the region naturally seems to be fertile soil for rabid image wizards. Because of the…
The flamboyantly punctuated Tyler Brûlé, the known global style guru and editor in chief of Monocle magazine, has in recent weeks shown strong interest in nation branding and country brands. In ‘Fast Lane’, his weekly column at the Financial Post, the chieftain of “the Lufthansa audience”, as he calls Monocle’s reader base, has touched the…
Sweden has neither an Eiffel tower nor a Colisseum, neither a Parthenon or the Big Ben. It hasn’t got a kebab, a paella or a spaghetti. It hasn’t got either the fjords that Norway has, nor the 1,000 islands that Greece enjoys nor the 1,000 lakes Finland is famous for. But, does that mean that…
Brands create nations, according to a study published by global branding consultancy Interbrand in collaboration with the Swiss business magazine Bilanz. An analysis of the rankings of the Best Global Brands over the past ten years shows that the USA is the uncontested world champion when it comes to creating leading brands, but when the…
Country naming is as old as countries. Historically most countries have ‘accidentally’ obtained their name from the peoples or tribes living on them, from empires and kings ruling over them, from physical and geographical features found on them, or from a specific word in the indigenous language of the country’s natives. However, it hasn’t been…
