Brand India

An extensive special feature has been published here about India’s nation branding: Think India. Now think the future. When we think about the India which will be, we see glorious times ahead, a golden age in the making. However, to reach that state of success or nirvana, we need to take a few giant leaps….

Branding Jamaica

A legacy article on Brand Jamaica taken from here: A number of current issues seem to suggest that Jamaica needs a clear definition of what kind of country it is, what it stands for, and where it is going. But Jamaicans need to take the lead in defining themselves or else others will define us…

Brand Malta campaign “a total failure”

At this post about Brand Malta campaign I was skeptical about this branding project by the Maltese authorities. Now it has come out that the campaign has been a failure. Reported at Malta Star: Kurt Farrugia 09 September 2006 Outgoing tourism authority (MTA) chairman Romwald Lungaro-Mifsud has kept “hidden” from his colleagues at the MTA…

Botswana to commence national branding project

A consortium of economic development and branding experts are to spend the coming six months developing a detailed brand strategy and implementation plan for the roll-out of Botswana’s national brand. Officials from Debswana form part of the multi-stakeholder team to guide the branding process. If developed and executed correctly, a national brand can provide a…

Australia markets itself – the Australian way

From the Wall Street Journal: Australia Throws Another Tourism Advertising By BRUCE STANLEY How do you advertise a country? As more nations around the world market their charms to the globe-trotting tourist, their international ad campaigns sound surprisingly, and blandly, similar. But amid invitations to visit destinations that are exotic, unique and incredible comes a…

Sloganeering in nation branding

Stolen from www.whisperbrand.com: We found this country slogan analysis performed by the Wall Street Journal. From Incredible India to Uniquely Singapore, each of these place brands make the often repeated mistake in believing that cheerleading is branding. An approach of “let’s trump the competition by use of a chest thumping slogan” is a zero-sum game….

Brand Malta

I’ve just come from a week vacations in the tiny island of Malta. I was very excited to notice that Malta has also embarked in a country branding process, something to be sincere I was not aware of. The Malta Tourist Authority (MTA) is behind the effort, which has nonetheless saddened me because I immediately…

Brand identity for Isle of Man

A website has been launched to explain the Isle of Man’s new brand identity. There are design guidelines, texts about the philosophy of the identity, videos and some other downloads. Probably a short-sighted brand, but interesting to have a look at. The Isle of Man’s new brand identity appears to have been developed by HPI…

Branding Belgium

Belgium’s brand image is undergoing trouble because of inter-ethnic tensions between the Flemish and the Walloons, hence the need of re-packing the nation as one and re-brand it. But, not surprisingly, branding such a weakened state entity is far from easy, as Dafydd ab Iago notes in this article: The Belgian dilemma is that of…

Wally Olins on nation branding and Brand Poland

Branding guru Wally Olins has contributed an article to the Said Business School at Oxford. “You only have to look at slogans, straplines and brochures to see that most national tourism programmes are interchangeable”, he says. Here is the article: For most of the twentieth century nationalism was the property of extreme right-wing political movements,…

Simon Anholt on Brand Egypt

At Business Today there’s a very interesting interview with Simon Anholt about Brand Egypt: How does a nation benefit from branding itself? Branding a country is very different from branding a product, because it’s not simply a matter of conceptualizing an image, then creating a marketing strategy and ad campaign. In my opinion, that would…

Re-branding Serbia

A good article about re-branding Serbia has appeared at Invest-in-Serbia.com: Rebranding Serbia: A Hobby Shortly to Become a Full-Time Job?!   Living in Western Europe as a person of Serbian origin leaves a lot to be desired. The reactions one experiences on a daily basis, when the word ‘Serbia’ or ‘Serbian’ is uttered, vary from…