Yesterday afternoon I gave a presentation in Tokyo at the Japanese Institute of Global Communications. My topic was ‘Japanese and Chinese nation branding: Key issues and contrasting strategies’. I looked at the contrasting strategies adopted by the two countries in terms of Japan following a nation branding approach focused mainly on innovation and design, whereas China appears to be placing more emphasis upon a public diplomacy approach focused for example on the promotion of Chinese culture through the establishment of the international network of Confucius Institutes. Although this perspective is obviously a simplification of each country’s strategy, I think it is intriguing to see how the two countries are reacting in quite different ways to the nation branding challenges they both face.

In the audience was a representative from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who pointed out that a programme for Japanese public diplomacy has just been initiated, so it will be interesting to see what direction Japan takes in its future public diplomacy strategy.

To show how countries can act in a positive way to the profile-raising opportunities that come their way, I included a couple of slides in my presentation on ‘Baruto’, an Estonian sumo wrestler who has been successful in Japan. Back in Estonia, the Enterprise Estonia organisation has been alive to the unique opportunity that Baruto’s fame has provided as a means to raise the profile of Estonia within Japan. Baruto has been enlisted as a goodwill ambassador for Estonia in Japan. There is no way that Estonia would have the budget to pay for an advertising campaign to match the levels of awareness for Estonia that this one sporting personality has created.

Other countries - particularly, but not only, those with severely limited budgets - should look around and see where in the world there are prominent sporting figures that could be similarly enlisted as goodwill ambassadors. Such initiatives will become increasingly common as countries become more entrepreneurial in their nation branding efforts.  

On June 17 I was one of the invited speakers at a seminar on place branding that took place in the wonderful city of Lisbon. My presentation focused on how Spain has developed its nation branding through highlighting the successful performance of many Spanish export brands. The seminar was organised by Lisbon-based company Brandia Central, who did a great job in organising the seminar and attracting an enthusiastic audience keen to hear about the many different aspects of branding places.

It was a great pleasure for me not only to visit Lisbon again after an absence of 16 years, but also to meet and get to know the other invited speakers - David Gertner (Pace University,  Lubin School of Business); Joao Freire (Brandia Central); Bill Baker (Total Destination Management); Peggy Bendel (Development Counsellors International); and Miguel Otero (Leading Brands of Spain Forum). Each speaker had a different take on place branding and that made for a good, though-provoking set of presentations.

The seminar presentations have now been added to Brandia Central’s website, which you can find at http://brandiacentral.com/placebranding

The Euromed Academy of Business will be holding the 1st Annual EuroMed Conference on November 17-18 2008 in Marseille, France. The conference theme is ‘European and Mediterranean Trends and Challenges in the 21st Century’.

 I will be chairing the Nation Branding track at the EuroMed Conference. If you would like to submit a paper to this track, you can view details of the call for papers at the conference website: www.emrbi.com

The deadline for submissions is 20 July 2008. You can choose to submit either an abstract of no more than 750 words, or a full paper. Both abstracts and full papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

 Looking forward to seeing you in Marseille this November!

Last week I attended the Reputation Institute’s 12th annual conference, held this year in Beijing. My presentation focused on China’s public diplomacy strategy in Japan.

As everyone knows, China-Japan relations have hardly been smooth in the past and at the moment there appears to be a gap opening up between increasingly positive relations at the political/business level on the one hand, and media polls indicating rising levels of mutual animosity amongst the general publics in the two countries on the other hand. I would be extremely wary, however, of such media polls. Often they are driven by newspapers’ own political agenda; the timing of the surveys can create misleading results; the phrasing of the questions can produce biased responses; and the editorial/journalist analysis of the findings can be misleading. In other words, all the potential manipulation inherent in any type of survey research comes into play.

While waiting at the departure lounge of Beijing’s shiny new Terminal 3 for my flight back to Tokyo, I saw on one of the TV screens a great example of China’s internal nation branding. It has been widely reported in the western media that China’s ruling Communist Party has gained much respect from the Chinese people due to its rapid and determined response to the terrible earthquake disaster that recently occured. The army has been rapidly mobilised in the earthquake relief effort and prime minister Wen Jiabao has been praised for his personal dedication to the relief effort. But the coverage of the relief effort that I saw on the Chinese TV channel at the airport was different to the coverage in the western media. On the Chinese TV channel, film production techniques were used to dramatise the relief effort. Slow motion was used to show rescuers running to waiting ambulances and helicopters, carrying on stretchers victims rescued from the earthquake. The use of slow motion is a simple technique but very effective; it certainly heightens the emotional impact of the scenes being shown. Also, the editing of the pictures was very tight, cutting quickly from one rescue scene to another, emphasising the scale and skill of the coordinated relief effort. Watching those moving and inspiring pictures, it was not hard to understand why the wider Chinese population would feel great pride at their country’s response to this immense tragedy.

At the invitation of Editor Igor E. Klyukanov, I contributed a Comment to the recently founded Russian Journal of Communication’s Spring 2008 Forum on ‘Nation Branding and Russia: Prospects and Pitfalls’. The Spring 2008 edition of the journal should be published in June. I was sent the proofs to check for accuracy, and it is very interesting to read the different perspectives that the other contributers bring to the debate on Russia’s nation branding. One of the other contributors is Simon Anholt, who will be familiar to anyone with an interest in nation branding.

Other contributors come from backgrounds in Communication Studies and Theatre Arts; International Studies; Humanities; Russian Studies; Public Relations; and Economics. What struck me most forcefully was the completely different style of language that each contributor uses to express his or her perspective. All the contributions are in English but the linguistic styles employed by each contributor are enormously and vividly varied. Congratulations to the Editor for assembling such an eclectic array of contributors.

My first public talk on nation branding since relocating to Tokyo in January was a presentation to the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies (ICJS). It was another diverse audience although with one difference from previous talks I have given – this time there were some economists in the audience. Their contributions to the Q&A session following my talk provided a clear demonstration that the dialogue between nation branding people and economists is in its early days and promises to be a fruitful one.  

The main focus of my talk was a comparison of the nation branding activities of China, Korea, and Japan. To prepare the talk, I held meetings with diplomats at the Chinese Embassy and the Korean Embassy in Tokyo and their insights and information were most helpful.Within the confines of one talk it was obviously not possible to go into great depth for the strategies of all three nations, but it was interesting (for me at least, and hopefully for the audience too) to look at the different approaches each country is taking in its nation branding. China is pursuing an active programme of public diplomacy; Korea has established a brand positioning based on the theme of ‘Dynamic Korea’, supported with extensive advertising on CNN, Asahi TV, and so on; whilst Japan has set up a ‘Japan Brand Working Group’ whose three key goals are to foster a rich food culture, establish diverse and reliable local brands, and establish Japanese fashion as a global brand.

At the end of the evening business cards were swapped with academics, a lawyer, an NHK News producer, a market research executive, and various other attendees. The ICJS events regularly attract this mix of people from different backgrounds and I thank ICJS Director Robert Dujarric for inviting me to give a talk at one of these nights.

Newspaper editors love the unveiling of new slogans, particularly when public money has been spent on them. Such occasions offer an easy way for journalists to fill a few columns with spluttering derision regarding the new slogan. It lends itself to readable, populist copy. Very often such negativity may be justified.

However, sometimes the criticism is misplaced. Earlier this week, for example, the media reported how the Scottish Government replaced the previous slogan ‘Scotland – the best small country in the world’ with a new slogan, simply ‘Welcome to Scotland’. Media reaction to this development was muted and underwhelmed, with headlines such as ‘Scotland reveals stunningly dull new slogan’. But such judgements are a tad harsh. The ‘Welcome to Scotland’ slogan is a perfectly good greeting to have for visitors arriving at Scottish airports, which is where the slogan will be placed. It is certainly less provocative than the previous ‘Best small country in the world’ slogan. Some commentators criticise the new slogan for lack of creativity, but that is missing the point. When most travellers arrive somewhere, what they look for is a simple, genuine greeting, not a figment of an ad agency creative’s fevered mind.

The ‘Welcome to Scotland’ slogan at Scottish airports is a step in the right direction. What remains to be seen, however, is whether the Scottish Government are going to develop a comprehensive nation branding strategy, beyond just a few billboards at certain airports. For the past few years there have been numerous very good nation branding-related initiatives and actions in Scotland, but I don’t see much sign of strategic coordination of the country’s overall nation branding. But then again, you could say that of almost every other country in the world. Lack of coordination between the different actors – across the sectors of inward investment, export promotion, tourism, and diplomacy – is inevitable unless the country’s political leadership inspires and supports it.

Went down to Manchester Business School (MBS) Nov 20th to give a guest presentation on nation branding. Thankfully my publishers Butterworth-Heinemann managed to publish the book right on time, for which I am very grateful, so I was able to pass round a copy of it to some of the people at MBS. The audience for my presentation consisted mainly of Masters students, supplemented by a handful of PhD students and faculty. Professor Gary Davies kindly introduced my talk and wrapped things up at the end.

It was a very enjoyable visit to MBS – the audience seemed genuinely interested in the topic and there were some stimulating comments and questions in the Q&A session. One of the Chinese students in the audience raised the point that the western media may be producing a distorted picture of what is going on in China these days, and that judging another country by your own country’s values is a highly subjective thing to do. Another student, this time from Pakistan, observed that the media coverage of Pakistan highlights only the negative events without presenting the full reality of the country, much of which is more positive and inspiring than the image that currently predominates.

The points made by both these students illustrate what I believe is one of the most fundamental justifications for the practice of nation branding, namely, if you as a nation do not brand yourself then somebody else will. That ‘somebody else’ could be foreign media, politicians, Hollywood films, etc. And it’s unlikely that the externally imposed ‘brand’ will be either positive or realistic.

Many thanks to Professor Davies and to PhD student Shalini Vohra for arranging my visit to MBS and for the hospitality on the day.