The Blog is the place for quicker and shorter entries, as well as for multimedia content.
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…
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…
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…
In early July 2010, nation brands expert Simon Anholt was invited to the city of Visby, on the Swedish island of Gotland. He was invited by the Council for the Promotion of Sweden, which includes Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry for Enterprise, Energy and Communications, the Visit Sweden office, the Swedish Trade Council,…
While the United Arab Emirates launched a popular, free-access, online-based contest to get a new logo, neighbouring Oman launched its new nation-logo about 18 months ago, the result of a consulting work with several agencies and individuals, among them Paul Temporal and branding agency Landor. Where did the new ‘Brand Oman’ logo come from? Here’s…
Six weeks ago we featured the brilliant work of Jian Jay Wang, associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism. As the lead researcher on the school’s nation branding at Shanghai Expo 2010 team, he analyzed how countries used the Shanghai World Expo for their nation branding efforts. Now we turn…
As we announced a few weeks days ago, a forum under the name “Image of the Republic of Belarus: positioning and promotion of cities and regions” was celebrated in Minsk on November 25-26, 2010. Over 100 people participated in the meeting, among them representatives of several Belarussian ministries and delegates from embassies in the former…
