Back in February I had the pleasure of giving the keynote speech on the second day of the ‘Images of Nations: Strategic Communication, Soft Power and the Media’ conference in Athens, Greece. The conference was held at the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs in central Athens, with the opening address delivered by Dora Bakoyiannis, Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs. Photos from the conference can be viewed by following this link: http://www.gpsg.org.uk/aboutgallery.html

It was interesting to participate in a conference where the focus was more on foreign affairs rather than on marketing/branding. There were a lot of interesting presentations and the organisers of the conference - the Greek Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association - did a great job in attracting a healthy mix of politicians, academics, media people, students, and other interested parties.

During the conference there was an understandable concern amongst the Greek officials present about the potential damage to Greece’s image due to the demonstrations and unrest that occurred in Athens and other parts of Greece in December 2008. However, I do not believe that Greece’s image will suffer through those events. Certainly, foreign tourists and business people who were due to visit Athens in December may have decided to postpone their trip till things had calmed down, but in the mid to long term I believe that the Greek nation brand (in terms of tourism) is strong enough to ride out such domestic turbulence. Provided of course that the unrest does not become a daily occurrence as it appears to have done in Thailand at the moment.

I lived in Athens for around 15 months in 1989-90. At that time, a titanic political struggle raged between PASOK’s Andreas Papandreou and New Democracy’s Konstantinos Mitsotakis. It was an exciting time, with gigantic political rallies held in Syntagma Square and passions riding high. Little did I think then that 20 years later I would be in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, just off Syntagma Square, giving a talk on Greece’s international image. As my favourite Greek saying goes, “Ta panta rei…”

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 1:54 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.