Do brands create nations?

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…

Naming a nation: Southern Sudan

Country naming is as old as countries. Historically most countries have ‘accidentally’ obtained their name from the peoples or tribes living on them, from empires and kings ruling over them, from physical and geographical features found on them, or from a specific word in the indigenous language of the country’s natives. However, it hasn’t been…

Simon Anholt on Brand Sweden

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,…

Antigua & Barbuda plans nation branding for 2011

The concept of nation branding will be put into practice by the Ministry of Tourism from the start of 2011, according to Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation John Maginley. The tourism minister said the initiative will start by finding out how people view the twin island state. He said the ministry will be “going…

Overview of the nation branding concept

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…

Branding Indonesia as a challenger

According to Homer Simpson, jokes about national stereotypes are funny because they are true. That is, if we take perception to be reality, and in marketing we do. A country’s reputation is based on the perceptions of others, though these are often nothing more than cliches. People are often wilfully ignorant of what others think of…

‘Image Belarus’ forum celebrated

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…

A mission for Finland

As we announced on this update on Finland’s nation branding project, the Brand Finland delegation published the results of their work last Thursday, November 25th. The delegation, set up in 2008 by Alexander Stubb, the Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, was charged with the task to think and discuss ways to make Finland more visible,…

2010 Country Brand Index: Brand value goes North

A noteworthy trend can be seen by looking at the rankings in the 2010 Country Brand Index. In Europe, nation branding value is moving from South to North. Without a doubt, the countries winning more nation-brand value this year at the Country Brand Index were the Scandinavian ones. They all have improved their ranks in…

2010 Country Brand Index released

It’s November and it’s time for the annual Country Brand Index to be released, as we announced on our Early Results from the 2010 Country Brand Index post. This index is a yearly study made by FutureBrand, a global brand consulting firm, and is based upon a global quantitative research study with 3,400 international business…