Welcome to the Nippon-Nordic Confederation – a new country sitting on the globe’s top. This new nation is our inventive approach to what an imaginary country would be like if Tyler Brûlé, former Wallpaper* magazine founder and current editor-in-chief of cult magazine Monocle were its reigning dictator. This ain’t just plain fantasy. Well, it is,…
Back in 2009, we used Estonia and Skype as an example of how a nation brand can be strengthened through the country’s commercial brands (for a longer disquisition check out our Nation branding and national brands: Making the most of them piece). Now it seems that Estonia is honouring these recommendations as the Estonian promotion…
In the last weeks we’ve tracked Wally Olins (not Wolff Olins as some say) involvement with Poland. We published a video about Wally Olins on Brand Poland, and the following week we published the entire speech (Wally Olins’ keynote speech in Poland). Now here’s an article written by Wally Olins himself on Poland’s nation branding….
Last week we published an interview with Wally Olins on his efforts to brand Poland (a project he worked for the Polish Brand Institute (www.imp.org.pl), as well as a short speech by Mr. Olins at a press room. Now it’s time to watch Wally Olins’ full-length keynote speech in Poland. As always, wonderful speech from…
As we reported last Wednesday, a Branding Bulgaria conference was held in Sofia on March 1. The day before, Simon Anholt, one of the participants at the conference, had given a half-day Masterclass to a number of government ministers and business leaders. After his participation in the conference, Mr. Anholt was interviewed by several Bulgarian…
Bulgaria is one of those countries that emerged to the world after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but that hasn’t made itself an identifiable image yet. The country is now thinking about what’s Bulgaria image now, how it has changed since 1989 and how the country can prompt it to go to the desired…
Dorie Clark, CEO of Clark Strategic Communications, is a marketing and communications consultant. She’s written a small piece on why Costa Rica is a winning brand from the touristic point of view: I recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica — and along the way, discovered that almost everyone I know has either traveled…
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…
The recent episode about BBC’s motor show Top Gear’s remarks on Mexico, Mexicans and Mexican products highlights the sometimes under-valued power of nation brands. The episode vividly showed to what extent countries are haunted by stereotypes and cliches, and how commercial brands and products are many times judged by their country of origin rather than…
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…
It’s over two years ago since South Korea launched a nation branding programme. At first, it looked as just another (fake) ‘nation branding’ project consisting of a new logo, a new slogan, some ads and some press releases. But throughout these two years the South Koreans have proved that were bloody serious about branding, and…
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…
