Anholt quoted on Colombia and Iraq’s nation brands

We have refered on some occasion about Iraq’s inmense nation branding potential. Last week, a story on ForeignPolicy.com compared the tourist brand of Iraq with that of Colombia, and how the Middle Eastern country could learn off Colombia’s improvement in reputation and attractiveness. Three years ago, Colombia launched a nation branding campaign, “Colombia is passion,”…

South Africa’s nation branding hopes

Doctor Nikolaus Eberl is the author of the bestselling book BrandOvation: How Germany won the World Cup of Nation Branding, and the sequel The Hero’s Journey: Building a Nation of World Champions. Dr Eberl’s research study on Germany’s nation branding success story during the 2006 FIFA World Cup was featured extensively on TV, especially on…

Update on Wally Olins’s work for Lithuania’s economic image

The Lithuanian Development Agency (LDA) hired Wally Olins, one of the world’s leading branding gurus, and his team Saffron Brand Consultants to help develop Lithuania’s attractive economic image in foreign markets. The consultants are working aiming to develop the country economic image strategy for 2009-2014, a detailed plan of Lithuanian economic image strategy 2009-2011 communication…

Re-branding Nigeria

Last week we looked at how Nigeria was approaching a branding project with an article written by Sylvester Anyanwu, chairman of the Nigerian senate’s National Image Rebranding Committee. Today we try to complete the picture provinding an article by Charles O’Tudor, principal consultant at Adstrat BMC Limited, a brand management company located in Lagos, Nigeria:…

Nation Branding and Sustainable Competitiveness of Nations

A good share of Nation-Branding.info’s usual readers are students and academics in the marketing, public diplomacy and international relations fields. Usually they send questions over here for their works – questions which, by the way, some times reveal some lack of understanding of the complexity of nation branding. However, it is much less probable that…

Branding Nigeria

Generally speaking, African countries have really, really bad nation brands. Corruption, abuse, tribalism, religious fanaticism and the lack of most of the basics in daily life have rendered these countries mostly unattractive for many of the facets of a nation brand, from exports to culture or diplomacy in the world, let alone quality of life….

East West’s Global Nation Brands 2008 index released

We’ve already spoken about East West’s global nation brands index earlier, an index that is built with an algorithm and perception metrics. Today, this index released its first annual edition and, according to the results, Asian countries enjoyed the best reputation in international media: three of them (including one territory) grabbed the top three slots….

Branding Australia

Assisted by nation branding guru Simon Anholt, Tim Harcourt, chief economist of the Australian Trade Commission, has written an interesting piece about brand Australia: With the world economy in turmoil perhaps it is pertinent to take a look on how the rest of the world sees us [Australians]. This is important as we know in…

New nation brand mark for Oman discussed

The new nation branding initiative taken in Oman by the Sultanate’s authorities could not be launched if not rendered in a brand mark or, more appropiately, in a logo. Also, as usual, people have reacted in different ways to the new logo. This is only normal since it is not a logo for a company…

A critique on Colombia’s nation branding campaign

Felipe Estefan, a Colombian journalist in New York, has written an interesting piece on his thoughts about the Branding Colombia initiative. The “Colombia is Passion” slogan, coined for Colombia by US nation branding expert David Lightle, appears not distinctive enough to Estefan, who also doubts about the efficacy of this “nation branding” campaign, since Colombia’s…

Paul Temporal at a workshop about Brand Oman

A few days ago we reported about Oman’s nation branding programme, which was launched on January 25th. Apparently,the nation branding plans have brought an overwhelming interest on this hybrid half-marketing half-diplomacy discipline in Oman over recent months, and in response to this emerging interest, the Oman Brand Management Unit (OBMU) has organised a workshop in…

New national brand for Oman

Last Sunday, a new nation branding mark was launched for Oman, the Arabic Sultanate located at the exit of the Persian Gulf, after a series of workshops set to explore Oman’s brand. The Omani nation branding iniative’s launch and future development is being leaded by the  newly-created and government-run Oman Brand Management Unit (OBMU). Here…