Anholt Nation Brands Index: Brand Canada Powered by People & Government

Canada’s brand valued at 1.1 trillion dollars in new global survey

Vancouver, BC – Feb. 21, 2006 – The most recent Anholt Nation Brands Index (NBI,) created by nation branding expert Simon Anholt and powered by GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.), a global market intelligence solutions provider, shows that global consumers perceive Brand Canada as the most welcoming and hospitable on the globe. The NBI, which surveyed 25,709 consumers in 35 different countries, gauges people’s perceptions across six areas of national competence: Investment and Immigration, Exports, Culture and Heritage, People, Governance and Tourism. Introduced in the second quarter of 2005, the NBI is the first analytical ranking of the world’s nation brands.

In the fourth edition of the NBI, Canada was ranked 3rd overall, beating out 32 other rivals and only falling behind to the United Kingdom and Switzerland, which placed first and second respectively. Canada came first in the Investment, Tourism, and People categories, but ranked only 14th in culture, which was its lowest score.

Since its last edition in Q3 of 2005, the Index has expanded from surveying 11 countries to its current reach of 35 countries. Each of the four Anholt NBI releases utilizes GMI’s global consumer panel of over 5.5 million respondents and is powered by GMI’s Canadian-based technology center located in Vancouver, BC. “The Anholt Nation Brands Index is one of many products that showcase the power provided by GMI’s market intelligence solutions,” explains John Jensen, vice president of technology at GMI and head of the Vancouver facility. “Being able to keep the finger on the pulse of global consumer opinions in real time, at any time, anywhere in the world, in any language is a must-have in today’s competitive economy.”

Brand USA: Still the Envious Neighbor to the South?

In an interesting twist, the results show that for the first time, the U.S. gives itself second place for governance, ranking Canada at first place. American self-esteem appears to have slipped on every aspect of the governance rankings since the last NBI report: the panel scored the United States slightly lower on the question of international environmental and ethical policy, and substantially lower on questions of domestic policy and internal human rights and fairness as well.

Brand Canada Valued at 1.1 Trillion Dollars

For the first time ever, the latest NBI puts a dollar value on each nation brand, with Canada coming in 8th place with a value of USD 1.1 trillion dollars. The U.S. holds the #1 spot with a brand value of USD $18 trillion, surpassing Brand Japan (second place), whose worth totals USD $6 trillion dollars. In third place, Brand Germany weighs in at USD $4.5 trillion dollars and Brand Poland comes last with a value of USD $43 billion. Even with Brand USA’s lower NBI ranking and lower ‘self-confidence’ scores, its brand value and worth is still extremely high.

The financial valuation of the brands was performed using the ‘royalty relief’ approach, which assumes a country does not own its own brand and calculates how much it would need to pay to license it from a third party. The present value of that stream of (hypothetical) brand contribution payments represents the value of the brand.

For more information about the methodology of the NBI and/or the full report, please email http://www.gmi-mr.com/contact/ or visit www.nationbrandindex.com.

About the Anholt Nation Brands Index

The Q4 Anholt Nation Brands Index was conducted November 08-19, 2005 on the GMIPoll platform (www.gmipoll.com), which provides integrated solutions for global market intelligence. A 200-1,000 representative sample based on age, gender, and where applicable, geographical region, race and ethnicity was collected in each of 35 countries. For further information about the Anholt Nation Brands Index methodology, please contact GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) at http://www.gmi-mr.com/contact/ or visit www.nationbrandindex.com.

About Simon Anholt

Anholt developed the concept of the Nation Brands Index in 2005. The first Index was published in May 2005. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on the branding of countries, regions and cities. Anholt advises a number of national governments and United Nations agencies on brand strategy, public diplomacy, cultural relations, investment and export promotion, tourism and economic development. He is the editor of the quarterly journal, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, and the author of Brand New Justice, Brand America and several other books.

About GMI

GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.) is the only company that provides comprehensive integrated solutions for global market intelligence for both market research firms and corporate market research departments at Global 2000 companies. Solutions include Net-MR, a suite of software tools to manage and automate research throughout the project lifecycle, desktop analysis tools, 24/7 service bureau capabilities, and one of the world’s largest, highly profiled, double opt-in managed panels, spanning across 200 countries. In addition, GMI offers high-value, real-time enterprise feedback solutions for customer, partner and employee programs. Founded in 1999 with world headquarters in Seattle, Wash., GMI has operations on five continents. More information is available at www.gmi-mr.com or email us at http://www.gmi-mr.com/contact/.

Media contacts:

Caroline Stokes
Chocolate Communications (Canada)
Tel.: (604) 739-9018
Email: carolines@chocolatecom.co.uk

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