I have always argued that culture should play a central role in nation branding. It is not enough for governments just to farm out image campaign contracts to advertising, PR or branding agencies. Supporting domestically and projecting internationally a country’s culture is not only the right thing to do in itself, it is also the surest foundation for developing a nation brand that is authentically rooted in the country’s essence rather than merely the laboured output of a contracted ad agency creative.

I was thinking about this today when I read the sad news that the brilliant English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor died earlier this week at the age of 96. Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote some exceptional books about Greece which, if you read them, create between you the reader and Greece the subject matter an emotional resonance far stronger than any marketing campaign could ever achieve. The logical conclusion would be that governments should invest in cultural support and promotion instead of throwing money at communications campaigns the results of which are rarely if ever evaluated.

Particularly for Greece, in the troubled times that it is going through right now, it would be good if Patrick Leigh Fermor’s legacy could help even in a minor way to redress the unrelenting tide of bad news coming from that country. A Time of Gifts is usually held up as his finest book but I prefer Mani and Roumeli,  two wonderful books in which he describes and celebrates different regions of Greece. When I did a lot of travelling around rural backroads of Greece during the late eighties and early nineties, I read and re-read Mani and Roumeli several times.  In those books, Patrick Leigh Fermor catches the beauty of the landscape and the richness of the culture and history like no other. He is a master at evoking the spirit of place, something that nation branding people should be capable of but rarely are.

For any football fan, the mere words ‘Barcelona FC’ and ‘Real Madrid’ are magical. They conjure up thrilling imagery of glorious football and epic victories. Many years ago when I was living in Lisbon, I was excited to be able to attend a Benfica vs Barcelona game which, although it ended goalless, was still a superb match full of the kind of skill and vision that you don’t see that much if you have been raised on a diet of often stodgy British football. So last Wednesday I switched on the tv for the Real vs Barcelona UEFA Champions League semi-final first leg at the Bernabeu, naively thinking, “this is going to be fantastic”.

Well, we all know how that match turned out. For many years now, professional football has been on a downward slide into prima donna histrionics and bulging-eyed intimidation of referees by grotesquely overpaid players. But new depths were plumbed at the Bernabeu last Wednesday. Apart from Lionel Messi’s magnificent second goal, the most memorable moment of an overall dismal spectacle came when one of the players threw himself at an opponent and then slumped to the ground holding his head, pretending that he had been elbowed. His team mates then joined in this farce and ganged up on the referee, venting their rage at an elbowing that never even happened.

What is a referee supposed to do when the players are carrying on like that? He has to stop the game, consult the other officials, and try to work out whether the player is really injured or not. And all that time the game has stopped and the fans have nothing to watch for their money other than their ‘heroes’ faking injury followed by the inevitable miraculous recovery. What should have been an exciting game between two iconic teams degenerated into a bad joke.

Given that the game was watched by a global tv audience estimated at over one hundred million, and that both teams are Spanish icons, it raises the question of whether that farce of a game could have damaged brand Spain. Only ongoing tracking studies of the country’s image could tell us the answer to that question, and given that in my experience almost no countries conduct such research (customised, not off-the-shelf) in a rigorous systematic way, we are reduced to mere speculation. My feeling is that the game probably didn’t damage brand Spain, mainly because the audience, although huge, would have been more focused on the clubs’ brands and the individual players rather than abstracting their impressions out to a national level.

Conversely, if the game had been the thrilling encounter that we had all been hoping for, brand Spain may have benefitted from the halo effect of being the host country of the two teams. That would have fitted in with global audiences’ pre-existing perceptions of Spain as exciting, glamorous and passionate.  It would take more than one lousy football game to damage the positive brand equity that brand Spain has built up over the past two or three decades.

In a recently completed Masters dissertation focused on Germany’s nation brand, Michael Schellenberg concludes amongst other things that there is a need to rebrand German cuisine as it appears to suffer from negative associations. A beer-and-sausage perception appears to predominate amongst foreign audiences.

In itself, a beer-and-sausage perception is not necessarily a bad thing. It is probably better than having no associations at all, and for many people the prospect of beer and sausages in a convivial atmosphere is one of life’s great pleasures. However, it is no doubt true, as Schellenberg suggests, that the full range of German cuisine is little known and could therefore benefit from a dedicated branding campaign.

For any country, food and drink is potentially one of the most powerful elements of its nation brand. A country’s cuisine is culturally grounded, authentic and pleasurable. Some countries actively incorporate the promotion of food and drink within their nation branding activities whereas other nations overlook its potential.

The only thing that is wrong with German food is that it is not as well known as it should be.

Widespread dismay has greeted the proposed new tourism slogan for the Philippines. Although slogans are only one element of nation branding and tourism is only one dimension of nation branding, the Philippines case is an interesting example of a good idea, poorly executed.

Here is the proposed slogan, which probably won’t now be implemented given the level of opposition that it has engendered: ‘Pilipinas Kay Ganda’. The rationale for the slogan is that the only way for the slogan to break through the clutter of slogans from other countries and be noticed is for the slogan to be written in the Filipino language. In principle, I agree that this is a good idea. It represents possibly the only way to avoid the cliched slogans used by other nations such as ‘Gateway to this…’, ‘Heart of that…’, ‘Undiscovered blah…’, etc.

This tactic, of drawing upon the native language, has been successfully used by Hawaii in the form of ‘Aloha’. It has been used less successfully by Japan in its half-hearted attempts to use the word ‘Yokoso’.  If a country is going to use a word from its own language that is unknown to foreign audiences, then there needs to be a committed campaign focused on promoting that word itself. It is not enough merely to hope that foreign audiences will somehow absorb the meaning of the word. Regarding the proposed new slogan, a very senior Philippines decision maker has been quoted as saying that, “Our only edge is to put it in Filipino and hope that the others learn it.” Well, it is not enough just to hope that others will learn it. This can be seen from the failure of Japan’s ‘Yokoso’ to enter mainstream consciousness to anywhere near the same extent as ‘Aloha’.

The obvious problem with the ‘Pilipinas Kay Ganda’ slogan is that it is too long and unfamiliar for the non-Filipino speaking audiences who presumably are the target market for the Philippines tourism campaign. ‘Kay Ganda’ might work as a shortened version, but still there would be a need to energetically promote the phrase itself to foreign audiences. Alternatively, there must be some other words in the Filipino language that could be used for the slogan to give it a cultural authenticity as well as a differentiating impact.

It will be interesting to see what is finally decided upon.

I was contacted a couple of days ago by Roland Kelts, a columnist in Japan’s Daily Yomiuri newspaper, who asked my opinion on whether the Toyota product recall has damaged Japan’s nation brand. You can read my comments on that question in the 19 February 2010 edition of the paper, or view Roland’s article online by clicking this link: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/arts/20100219TDY11003.htm

Keith Dinnie
www.brandhorizons.com

The first initiative I have taken since being appointed as Academic Editor of the Palgrave journal ‘Place Branding and Public Diplomacy’ is to appoint four Regional Editors to assist in the development of the journal. The Regional Editors are Dr Andrea Insch (Australia and New Zealand), Dr You-Kyung Kim (Asia), Dr Edgar Centeno (The Americas and the Caribbean), and Dr Joao Freire (Europe, Middle East and Africa). It is great to have these Regional Editors on board. Brief profiles of each editor can be seen by following this link: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pb/index.html

Keith Dinnie
www.brandhorizons.com

At the invitation of the Korea Economic Institute, in mid-December last year I gave a presentation at their Washington DC office on the subject of repositioning Korea to a global audience. The timing of the event was very fortunate, given that a huge snowstorm hit DC just a few days later and paralysed transport systems for a short while. Attendees at the talk included people from the Department of State, Heritage Foundation, Korea Foundation, East-West Center Washington, Federal Reserve Board, and the National Unification Advisory Council of Korea, George Washington University, World Bank, US-ASEAN Business Council, Brookings Institution, Foreign Service Institute, Radio Free Asia, and the Embassy of the Republic of Korea.

The good thing about such a diverse audience is that you can never predict exactly what is going to get thrown at you in the post-talk Q&A, which makes it a stimulating experience. Nicole Feinemann and her team at KEI did a great job in organizing the event and ensuring that it was well publicised and ran smoothly on the day. The full paper on which my presentation was based can be viewed by following this link: http://www.brandhorizons.com/papers.html#korea

Keith Dinnie
www.brandhorizons.com

As there have now been a few reviews of my book Nation Branding - Concepts Issues Practice, I have summarised some of these reviews on the Brand Horizons website. You can read extracts from those book reviews by following this link: http://www.brandhorizons.com/

Keith Dinnie
www.brandhorizons.com

I have uploaded a few of my papers on nation branding onto the Brand Horizons website, where I have created a new ‘Online Papers’ page which can be accessed by following this link: http://www.brandhorizons.com/papers.html

Keith Dinnie
www.brandhorizons.com

I was recently interviewed by the ICP Forum, an Athens-based organisation who take a keen interest in nation branding. Their questions were interesting and ranged over a wide variety of nation branding-related issues. You can read the complete interview by following this link: http://icp-forum.gr/wp/?p=1048.

Just after that interview was published, I came across an unintentionally hilarious version of the same interview on Le Blogue du Quebec. The interview consists of pure gibberish (granted, some people might think that of the original version) which I can only assume was fed from a Greek translation into machine translation software that rendered it back into English and in doing so spewed out such surreal oddities as the following:

“The goals of polity branding are hellishly multiform and repayment for some of those goals the power of advertising is purposes choose measly.”

(Original version: “The goals of nation branding are extremely diverse and for some of those goals the power of advertising is probably quite limited”)

“Instead, they benefactress face-to-face meetings and fiction networking with what it takes investors into their boondocks.”

(Original version: “Instead, they advocate face-to-face meetings and continual networking with potential investors into their country.”

“As repayment for a fix award, my judge is that it is unattainable to encapsulate the aromatic multiformity of a predominantly polity in a fix award or battle-cry.”

(Original version: “As for a single message, my view is that it is impossible to encapsulate the rich diversity of a whole nation in a single message or slogan.”)

“Could you momentarily dilate on your overtures?”

(Original version: “Could you give us some concrete examples?”)

If you would like to read the complete text of this gibberish in its full glory, follow this link: http://greeceriots.quebecblogue.com/2009/07/04/forum

Much as I would like to dilate on my overtures, that will have to wait for another day. In the meantime, the gloriously surreal mistranslation of the interview has given me food for thought regarding possible titles for a future book on nation branding. Maybe, ‘Nation Branding - Achieving its Hellishly Multiform Goals’, or perhaps ‘Brand the Nation! Battle-cry for the aromatic multiformity of a predominantly polity’. I can hear publishers beating a path to my door already.