This week I wrote about 12 recipes for country branding – that is 12 ways to ‘brand’ your country and take the appropriate measures to prompt your country’s image to move towards the desired direction. But, how do you know that your country needs some country branding? You aren’t sure about it?
Maybe it’s hard to [...]
Does your country need some nation branding?
12 recipes for the country branding cookbook
Nobody knows where your country is? Your country is usually mixed up with another one? People have no idea how the character of your country’s people really is? People can’t even tell 3 famous things from your country? No worries, just read through these 12 recipes to put your country on the [...]
Australia launches new ‘Brand Australia’ concept
First of all, let’s do some recap. On July 2009 we reported that several relevant voices in the Australian business space were demanding a Brand Australia Council to refresh the country’s international image and extend the already positive image Australia had on tourist aspects to the other dimensions of the country’s nation brand.
On September 2009, [...]
A pocket dictionary of Nation Branding
Even if its roots are as old as the existence of nations, Nation Branding as a discipline on its own is young and is only now being shaped into a mature and solid body. Considering its youthfulness, it’s only normal that everyone has their own perspective and have their own definitions, but this is is [...]
My comments on how the public debt crisis harms Spain’s nation brand
I was recently contacted by a Spanish journalist for my comments on a story she was writing on how the public debt crisis and the austerity wave was affecting Spain’s reputation in the world. I’ve sort out some of the comments I did:
Could the Greek crisis also impact Spain?
Yes, Spain could see its nation brand [...]
Country colors, flags and nation brands
As anybody involved in the field of branding knows, color is an extremely important part of all kind of brands. The visual look and feel, and specifically a distinctive colour set, has an impact on how we view things, how we think of brands, and how we remember them. Vodafone red, UPS brown, Deutsche Telekom [...]
The nation brand character: the case of Switzerland
Countries can’t pretend to be everything to everybody. Countries are not corporations but like corporations, countries must find their own personality and define the traits of its character, if they want to streamline their identity and reinforce their (nation) brand.
One example of well-characterized country is Switzerland. Besides all the stereotypes about the country like mountains, [...]
Airline companies as nation branding ambassadors
If there is a business market in which competing companies have traditionally been linked to their country of origin in an intrinsic, almost organic sense, that would be the airline sector.
For historical reasons, the national origin has often been very explicit in national carriers. In the past, most airline companies were created by the State [...]
The Slovenia brand book
In late 2009 an article was published titled “Branding Slovenia”. Even if it was just a nation branding experiment, it shed some light on Slovenia’s brand image and how the half-Alpine, half-Adriatic country was trying to manage its reputation. Some weeks later, we had Maja Konecnik as guest writer, sharing her opinion on the Slovenian [...]
How do you build a country brand?
You can’t really, but you have to start somewhere. Big global brands such as Nike and IKEA are large enough in revenues to surpass the GDP of a small country. However, their brands are managed better than most countries. This is a shame because powerful country brands that are carefully managed tend to yield massive [...]
