Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Q2 2005 Newsletter

Comments from Simon Anholt

There are some striking changes in the Second Edition of the Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index. Australia, a new entry in the NBI, has replaced Sweden as the strongest nation brand in the world. America has moved from fourth to eleventh place, and Sweden has moved down to fifth place.

However, these changes are not the result of any dramatic shifts in global public opinion during the last three months; it's mainly because the list of countries tested is more complete. The NBI now covers 25 countries, and some important gaps have been filled: France, Canada, Spain, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and New Zealand. (We have also included several more developing countries with interesting brand profiles, like Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Poland and South Africa). The main reason why the US and Sweden have fallen lower in the list is as a result of several additional countries being ranked higher. The bar has been raised.

I'm not expecting too many dramatic changes at the top end of the ranking from now on, although predicting public feeling is a notoriously risky business. But unlike the majority of attitude surveys and opinion polls, the NBI isn't calibrated to track people's responses to short-term events; it is designed to measure the real, underlying brand power of each country, its fundamental attractiveness as a 'consumer proposition.' This is a dimension where significant change tends to take place gradually over years and decades rather than weeks or months. Catastrophic events may cause a momentary 'shudder' in the brand, but it isn't usually very long before people's basic beliefs about the country return to normal.

What does seem to have a profound and lasting impact on people's perceptions of a nation brand is direct personal experience. If something happens to the nation as a whole or if its communications change, this usually has little effect on the people's opinions. The effect is far stronger if the nation, itself, is at fault for causing the problem.

In our analysis of the data produced by the Nation Brands Index, we have already found a statistically significant correlation between a positive experience of visiting a country and positive feelings about its products, its government, its culture, and its people. The reverse is also true: a negative vacation experience will tend to bias the consumer against trusting the government and the people of that country, choosing its products, engaging with its culture and investing in its companies. Our research in this area continues, but a likely hypothesis at this point would be that any positive experience of a country, its people or its productions tends to create a positive bias toward some or all aspects of the country.

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Founder's Corner Article: Simon Anholt

The Significance of Place Branding

Since the most commonly held understanding of branding outside sophisticated marketing departments tends to be the popular or, at best, the simple, it is hardly surprising that policy makers are reluctant to accept that this approach can have anything of truly central importance to their work.

Yet there is undoubtedly a growing acceptance in public affairs that a familiarity with the techniques of commercial marketing is increasingly relevant. The fact that ministries of foreign affairs and their foreign services must practice something called 'public diplomacy' is now commonplace. Likewise the fact that public affairs have become international affairs, and that investment promotion and tourist promotion must be as sophisticated as the most sophisticated commercial marketing, since both are competing for consumer mindshare in the same space.

But the debate never seems to go beyond the not-very-challenging truism that some knowledge from the private sector can provide benefit to the way in which places are marketed. A bit of PR or media training can sharpen up diplomacy in the 'media age'; a knowledge of internet marketing and online media planning can make tourist boards more competitive; some attractive design can help investment promotion agencies in their work; and so forth. If the usefulness of modern commercial practice and theory to statecraft really did amount to this and nothing more, it would be difficult to justify the existence of this journal, or indeed to explain the excitement around the emergence of a field called place branding.

No, the reason why the convergence of advanced brand theory and statecraft is truly epoch-making is because branding is, potentially, a new paradigm for how places should be run in the future. A globalised world is a marketplace where country has to compete with country — and region with region, city with city — for its share of attention, reputation, spend, goodwill, and trust. The fact that places should look to the disciplines of the marketplace for inspiration about how to prosper in this world is entirely logical.

The objection that the commercial model is mainly associated with profits rather than people does not stand up to scrutiny. Branding, in its advanced form, is primarily about people, purpose and reputation,. It's not about money, although there is little question that organizations which are clear about their brand values and brand strategies ultimately stand a better chance of sustainable profitability than those which are not.

Flexibility is the essence of modern brand theory; it has a unique ability to equate 'soft' human issues with 'hard' financial and organisational ones and resolve them humanely and intelligently into a functioning and compassionate whole. It reconciles the needs of the organisation and the forces of the marketplace with the 'human capital,' which is the raw material of both. In the commercial sector, enlightened brand strategy embraces creativity and human resources with administration and finance; so, in the public sector, it comfortably embraces culture and society with economics and politics.

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Dr. Mitchell Eggers Appointed Advisor to Business for Diplomatic Action

Dr. Mitchell Eggers, COO of GMI, has been appointed Senior Advisor to the board for Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA). BDA is a private-sector task force directed by preeminent communications, marketing, political science, global development and media professionals. The task force steers a collective of multinational companies in the development, sharing, and warehousing of ideas, insights, and guidance on communication and perception issues that U.S. businesses are uniquely positioned to address.

"We are pleased Dr. Eggers has agreed to join our Senior Advisory Council. His knowledge, expertise and passion for public diplomacy will be a great asset to Business for Diplomatic Action."
-Cari L. Eggspuehler - Executive Director of BDA

For more information about BDA, please visit www.businessfordiplomaticaction.org.

About Simon Anholt

Simon Anholt advises governments, ministries, civil services and NGOs on the branding aspects of public diplomacy, economic development, public affairs, cultural relations and trade, tourism and export promotion.

He has written numerous books, papers and articles on the branding of places and is a well-known public speaker, editor and broadcaster on these and many related topics.

For further information about his work and writing, please click here.

About Global Market Insite, Inc.

Founded in 1999, GMI provides e-Business solutions for global market research offering a range of software applications and database services which enable MR firms to conduct global research, either on an ASP basis or via stand-alone Enterprise systems.

Net-MR, our main software product, integrates panel management, project management, mixed-mode data collection, data processing, analysis and reporting into a single solution, enabling our clients to more efficiently conduct market research.

Net-MR runs entirely over the Internet using patent-pending technologies for surveying in any combination of 35 languages. The Net-MR tools are enhanced by direct access to GMI's online consumer panel, which is active in over 200 countries.

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