Branding Bulgaria conference

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 the country to have and what should it be known to be relevant for. But let us the organizers themselves talk about it, because I’ve never met a better description for a nation-branding event as this one:

The image of a country – how it looks from the outside – is so important, that the life standard of whole generations depends on it.
Until recently we were a part of “Eastern Europe” and we benefited from that fact. From the outside it seemed as if fast reforms were taking place in our country in attempt to catch up with the richer part of the continent, our economy was growing rapidly and that brought a lot of investments, which in short made us wealthier.
But Eastern Europe is no more existing. The financial crisis in the recent years changed the geographic map of the continent. Being from the West is no longer so nice – just ask Ireland and most of all, Greece. Eastern Europe also has its outstanding examples, like Estonia and its more problematic states, like Romania.
Bulgaria has the unique chance to find its place among the outstanding countries in this new European map.
We can “stand up” on Europe’s new political and economic map with a new, clear and positive image.
But in this case our task is not only communicational. It is very important that we ourselves are aware what the Bulgaria Brand looks like, so we could profit from it. And it is only through clear vision of where we want to go and with a lot of efforts, that we can reach our goals.
The purpose of the Branding Bulgaria event is to initiate this discussion. The idea is that the result from the event to be not a new marketing or advertising approach, but a concept and a completely new way of thinking and defining our most important tasks and messages related to the creation of the Bulgaria brand.
We believe that Bulgaria’s image deserves to be complete and colourful. And if we do not start creating it today, tomorrow it will continue to be grey and faceless.

Wonderful approach with clarity of mind. Wonderful description with jargon-less phrases. Makes me want to register. Right now.

By the way, if you have some knowledge of the Cyrillic (the Greek alphabet also helps), by looking at the image above you may guess who the conference’s main speaker will be. If you are interested in the Branding Bulgaria conference, you can register at the event here.