Brand that country! 

 

India is a brand, perhaps one of the world’s most underleveraged ones up until 2004. Then ‘India Shining’ happened, which, in many ways, was quite the case of the image being brighter than the object.

China is a brand. And so are the United States, Britain, Japan, Brazil, Australia, France and even obscure nations like Vanuatu, The Gambia and Burundi. And just like consumer and B2B brands, some are more valuable than others.

But why is branding important for countries in the first place? To quote Anholt, “In this era of globalization, people take decisions every day as to where to go on vacations, what music to listen to, what books to read. This impacts the future of countries. In such a situation the country’s reputation is very important, because people make these choices based on prejudices which may have nothing to do with reality.”

I’m fairly certain Italy is the world’s most popular nation. The world loves them…their food, clothes, wine, cars, women and even, men. Quite frankly, it would seem that Mussolini, Fascism, the Mafia and any other not-so-positive stuff couldn’t put a dent in their image. Then there’s the curious case of

Argentina. How is it that in spite of decades of military dictatorship, a random  territorial war against Britain, defaulting on international debt and a recent economic crisis, the world still thinks pretty positively of them? It can’t be thanks to just football and tango.

Switching tracks to the evolution of nation brands…time has a great effect on them. Post-war Japan was considered to be a source of cheap goods- both cars and electronics. By the early eighties most of the world had forgotten that stigma, passing it onto the Koreans, who also managed to shake it off fifteen odd years later. Samsung is now in the same league as Sony, in case you

haven’t noticed. And now China has to do battle with Haier, HTC, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo. Watch that situation change by 2020. Coming back to Japan, even though by 1985, the world was snapping up Hondas, Toyotas and Sony, cars and electronics were it. But by the mid-90s, Issey Miyake, Kenzo and Yohji Yamamoto climbed into the upper echelons of global haute couture. And with

Japanese food taking the world by storm in the past decade, Japan has transcended most categories. Today, I would buy Japanese chocolate, icecream or vodka. And my favorite single malts are Japanese too. The concept would have been laughable thirty years ago.