How to Brand a Country

While this article is directed towards tourism, a good brand for a city, region, state or country must address both tourism AND economic development audiences. So, the lessons here are applicable to the economic development field. Enjoy!


By Christian Caryl
Newsweek International

May 14-21, 2007 issue - Japan may be an export powerhouse, but it has a serious problem when it comes to importing tourists. Most travelers in the world, it seems, would rather go somewhere else. In 2005, the most recent year on record, Japanese visitors to other places outnumbered inbound tourists by 60 percent. So the government decided to launch a full-barreled advertising campaign to promote the delights of Japan to an international audience. There was just one problem: the approved slogan, "Yokoso Japan!"—a perfectly nice sentiment—requires translation before the people it's aimed at understand that "yokoso" means "welcome."

Creating an effective brand identity for a company is difficult. Doing the same for a country is practically impossible, and yet countries from Australia to Israel have mounted image-makeover campaigns in recent years. Israel has been promoting bikini-clad beachgoers and Tel Aviv nightlife, rather than its contested holy sites. Uganda prefers to advertise the fact that it is "gifted by nature" instead of plagued by a brutal past.

Simon Anholt, founder of the National Brands Index, argues that a country's "brand" is nothing less than the sum of its politics, culture, religious traditions, business practices, landscape features and natural resources. Building an image dependent on so many variables—and subject to the stereotypes of faraway audiences—is a long and painful process. "The reality is that most governments never really have an opportunity to think in a strategic kind of way, and branding offers a good opportunity to discuss this," says Anholt, whose clients include Botswana, Iceland, Bhutan and Latvia. The best way for a country to generate a good image, he argues, is not by conducting clever ad campaigns, but by implementing good policies. "The most important thing is to tell the truth," he says. Read more here.