On-board nation branding: a missed opportunity for China?

Julien Lapka of the branding agency Flamingo has written a good post on how China is not using national carriers to do some nation-branding. The article is originall titled “Airline Nation Branding: A Missed Chinese Opportunity?” Airlines have the potential of being the most persuasive cultural ambassadors for any country. The first and last memory…

Brand new country – South Sudan

It’s official now. Throw your atlases to the bin – they’re useless now. A new country’s born today. It’s provisionally called South Sudan, which will be the baby country’s name while a better, proper name is found (to have a look at the South Sudan’s naming issue, you can read this previous story: Naming a…

India’s country brand values can help the world

It’s clear that with such a long history, India has an enormous country brand potential – in tourism, culture, diplomacy, international relations, exports, et cetera. What’s less obvious, and yet more important, is how India can play a relevant role in people’s lifes across the globe. And this is entrenched in one of the main…

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…

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…

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…