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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Nation Branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.