Finland’s brand new foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, who has always shown strong interest for brands and branding (and had previously written about the brand of Finland), has appointed a high-level delegation to lead efforts to develop a country brand for Finland, according to a press release from Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Jorma Ollila, Chairman…
Journalist Dharma Adhikari has written an article approaching how a nation brand for Nepal could be: International media images of our troubled nation are upsetting. Nepal appears like a Lilliputian comedy, with little people fighting over little things in a faraway little place. In Jonathan Swift’s classic, the Lilliputians and their enemy, the Blefuscudians, are…
Featured by award winning TV program Carte Blanche, the author of BrandOvation: How Germany won the World Cup of Nation Branding, Dr Nikolaus Eberl unravels Germany’s Success Story of the 2006 FIFA World Cup:
The classic image of Sweden is a very Scandinavian one with a lot of blond people capering around in the woods, diving into frozen lakes, and so forth. It’s very much a protestant, white, northern European and somewhat bucolic story, but a growing number Swedes are not white, male or protestant. As a consequence, this…
A MA student in Public Communication and Public Relations at the University of Westminster got in touch with me to ask whether I could answer some questions. The interview is all related to destination branding and the case of Greece.
A couple of weeks ago Korean president announced a plan for branding Korea. Now, the Korea Times newspaper has published an interview with Simon Anholt, in which he gives his opinion about this project: By Kang Hyun-kyung, Staff Reporter South Koreans have many statistics to be proud of. The country is the world’s 13th largest…
Mike Collier from The Baltic Times has published an interesting interview with Ojars Kalnins, director of the Latvian Institute, which represents Latvia at the Baltic Sea Regional Brand (BSRB) project. Here are the questions and answers: You recently chaired a seminar on the subject of attempts to create a Baltic Sea Regional Brand (BSRB). What…
Last month I received an unintelligible press release about the launch of Brand Serbia. English is not my mother language so I can’t say that the press release is awfuly written, but sure it looks as if it had been translated by computer software. In any case, here it is: PRESS RELEASE / 30.08.2008 /…
At Presence.ch, the Swiss have a nice website with materials explaining Switzerland’s efforts to mantain and enhance its nation brand. One of the them is this article and graphic about Switzerland’s key elements of its national brand: The 14 key elements are as follows: 1. Alpine living space: Few landscapes evoke such strong associations in…
Korean president Lee Myung-bak announced Friday a plan to establish a committee to raise the country’s brand value under the presidential office. In a speech to commemorate the 60th birthday of the Republic of Korea in Seoul, he pledged to “upgrade the national brand to make it on par with that of advanced countries.” “The…
The English-written Bulgarian monthly magazine Vagabond has a very interesting article on how Bulgaria, inmersed in an identity crisis, is trying to find the iconic images that the country will use to promote itself, especially when it comes to tourism. Noteworthy, the Bulgarian citizens have been given the chance to vote which symbols they believe…
An interview from the Baltic Times concerning Brand Estonia: The Image Makers: Estonia By Mike Collier Perhaps you could tell me about the genesis of Brand Estonia? EP: We understood quite early that we are so small, with such limited resources that to have some kind of critical mass there must be real cooperation in…
