Can a nation be rebranded?

A brand is a mental blueprint for consumers. Virtually anything can be branded. Branding can be organic. Branding can be deliberate. Branding is malleable to an extent. You can virtually brand anything including products, people and objects. Nations, too, come branded, sometimes willfully and sometimes by accident. A nation gets a brand identity based on…

Palestinians to embark in nation branding too

Palestine might not be a country yet, but it’s a nation to most people – which qualifies it to rightfully do some nation branding. And as it turns out by this story on the Financial Times, they’ve just started to create a brand-new Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, which will be charged with Palestine’s nation branding…

India – Brand that country!

With its impressive performance, Brand India is a recurrent topic on the nation branding field as the rapid changes taking place in the country force old perceptions to be updated and cope with the image of the new India rising. We’ve recently had articles like this one and this one about India’s new image. Now…

Nicolas Papadopoulos’ remarks on nation branding

One of the most knowledgeable academic experts in nation branding and the country of origin effect, Nicolas Papadopoulos, answered some questions in a recent interview – this is his remarks on the nation branding field: What must a successful branding campaign entail to not only develop a local economy, but also help sustain it? Long-term…

Norway to use black metal for nation branding

I never thought I would write such a story. News being reported on Norwegian media have it that the Norwegian foreign ministry has begun training aspiring diplomats in the Black Metal sub-culture, after foreign service missions noticed a rise in enquiries about the musical genre from around the world. Now this is a story that…

The Ripple Effect of Country Branding

Daniel Florian, associate director at the Berlin-based public affairs consultancy Dimap Communications, mentions a study by the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) whose conclusions are pretty interesting: A study by the renowned Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) found that a positive image indeed helps to attract multinational companies. “Even after taking into account…

10 tips to improve South Korea’s image

As you all are well aware of, South Korea is embarked in a nation branding project that should enhance its image in a few years time. The country feels a little like the ugly duckling that wants everyone to know it’s really a swan, and it’s investing millions of dollars to upgrade its image so…

It’s up to corporates to build Brand India

Most successful brands have something in common. They come from a country, which has a brand image of its own and the products are strongly linked to the image of the country. Italian cars are associated with qualities of style speed, innovation and design, French perfume is sold on chicness, classiness and style, and Japanese…

South Africa is Africa’s most valuable country brand, study says

South Africa was named Africa’s most valuable nation brand last Wednesday (May 25th, 2011) at the announcement of the fourth BrandFinance Global Nation Brands League. The BrandFinance Global Nation Brands League’s valuation is conducted every year by Brand Finance, an independent brand valuation consultancy. Now in their fourth year, the league covers a global sample…

Japan’s involuntary re-branding

Japan’s reputation as a safe and efficiently-governed country has been negatively altered since the multiple disasters of March this year, but it would be a myopic mistake to think that things were fine before then. The truth is that Japan’s image has been taking a beating from well before that day when the Earth moved…

Branding the Nenets region

We continue to look North. Some weeks ago we imagined how a country sitting around the Arctic Sea would be like if ruled by Tyler Brûlé (the Nippon-Nordic Confederation) and now we look at a region which could enter the confederation thanks to its Arctic credentials. In truth, we don’t normally look at anything below…

Brand Qatar – To B or not to be?

In today’s increasingly global marketplace, where plethora of choice and successful mass production have resulted in thousands of advertising messages bombarding us every day, it is interesting to note the rise of the brand. As a measure of quality, consistency and trust in a company’s products and services, the brand has taken centre stage in…