Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Q3 2005 Newsletter

NBI Q3 Report Reveals How Countries See The World

In the last two editions of the Nation Brands Index, our main focus has been on the international brand images of nations, indicating how they are perceived by the majority of consumers in the 10 countries where we carry out our research.

But of course, not everyone sees each country in the same light. So, for the third edition of the NBI, we are taking a closer look at how the nation brands in our list are viewed by different audiences around the world.

The significance of this can be seen on many levels. Using China as an example, we can imagine the global tourism perspective. By the year 2020, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) estimates over 100 million Chinese tourists will travel abroad each year. This means that the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and many other nations will be competing for those Chinese tourists and the estimated millions of dollars they will spend abroad.

For the first time in the Nation Brands Index, we have also revealed how our panelists rank their own country brands. One of the basic rules of branding in the commercial field is that, for a company to build a successful and powerful brand, its employees need to believe in the brand. The same is surely true for countries: the people of a country are important ambassadors of their homeland. Without their faith in the brand, it seems that it would be difficult to gain the trust of others...

The results of the survey confirm that modesty and self-doubt do not go with a powerful national brand image. In fact, all of the people from countries which score well in the Nation Brands Index put their own country at the top of their list of nation brands. In some ways, it is more interesting when countries don’t rank themselves first, since the tendency to buy local goods, hire co-nationals and enjoy one’s own national culture is a common and understandable one.

How countries rate their own brands

The champions of self-esteem in the Nation Brands Index are the US and Canada, who rank their own countries respectively 15.4 and 14.7 points ahead of their next favourite country– an enormous margin of preference.

The people of the US, uniquely, put their own country first in every single category of the Nation Brands Index – first for exports, first for governance, first for culture, first for people, tourism, investment and immigration. This highly positive self-view is in stark contrast to the views of our panelists in many other countries. As we have seen in previous editions of the Nation Brands Index, they tend to rank the United States outside the Top Ten in most categories except the 'hard’ categories of export brands and investment potential.

The Canadians rank their own country first in every category except culture, where they award first place to the US. Second place goes to the French, an interesting result, given that our Canadian panel has a bias towards English-speaking Canadians, and third to themselves. The Canadians’ self-esteem is a more realistic reflection of the way their country is seen by the rest of the world, as Canada regularly gets top-5 rankings in many categories from most other countries.

The French and the Spanish also put a considerable premium on their own brand values, with around 11 and 13 points between them and their second favourite nation brands. The Australians, rated top nation brand in the Quarter 2 Nation Brands Index, are a little more modest, ranking their own country best brand in the world by a margin of just 10 points or so.

If self-confidence is a useful asset for nation brands on the rise, it is an encouraging sign for India and South Korea that their citizens also rank their own countries as the best in the world.

At the other end of the spectrum of national pride lie the Poles, who rank their own country 12th in the world. In fact, the Polish respondents don’t rate Poland as top brand in any category, but they do at least consider themselves to be the second-best people in the world, after the Canadians.

The Russians present a fascinating mixture of national pride and political despair. They rank themselves top in the world for tourism, culture, people, investment and immigration climate. They even ranked themselves fifth in the world for the quality of their branded exports. Yet they rank themselves last- 25th out of 25– for governance. In short, the Russians see their people and their country as being the best in the world, but are held back by their low-ranking government.

Governance is, in fact, the point of the Nation Branding Hexagon where our panelists are least likely to give their own country a high ranking. This is not surprising, since most people feel that government is something over which they have little direct influence, regardless of the love of one’s country. Arguably it’s a healthy sign in a democracy if the majority of citizens do indeed love their countries but despise their governments. Only the US and Canadian panelists rank their governments best in the world. On the other hand, several countries whose governance is highly ranked by many other countries, such as the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, rank themselves lower than others do.

Almost all of our country panels rank their own people as best in the world, and there are only three exceptions to this rule. Most notably, there are the Germans, who rank themselves fourth after the Canadians, then the Swedes and the Australians, and then the Poles and the French who seem to prefer Canadians. It is interesting to note that the Canadian panelists rank France twelfth and Poland seventeenth for their people.

Most respondents also rate their own country as the most valuable brand for tourism. Again, however, the exceptions are few and interesting: the South Koreans prefer Switzerland to their own country, and the Japanese, the Dutch and the Germans all rank Italy higher than their own countries. This is a fact which is supported by the numbers of Japanese, Dutch and German visitors to Italy. In fact, the Dutch, like the Poles, have a very low esteem for their own country as a tourism brand. The Dutch put Holland in seventh place and the Poles put Poland eighth. It is a rare distinction for Italy and Switzerland that they are the only places in the world that other populations actually rank higher than their own countries.

The conclusion can be drawn that a country must believe in its own brand before others will do the same. Perhaps this is one reason why Poland, despite its remarkable economic, social, industrial and political progress since the end of Communism, still lies in the bottom quartile of the Nation Brands Index.

How Nation Branding Helps Your Research

Hear what two NBI customers have to say about how nation branding has helped them gain a global perspective on their country.

VisitBritain

NBI makes "it easier for us to identify strengths, weaknesses and shifting perceptions over time."

We are well aware that although key to OUR business specifically, the tourism element of a nation brand is by no means the whole story and have always worked closely with our Public Diplomacy partners - the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, British Council and UK Trade & Investment - to ensure that Britain benefits from a holistic understanding how the rest of the world sees our nation.

"The NBI was useful for us to gain a global insight into the way in which New Zealand, as a nation brand, is considered."

Perceptions of and attitudes towards nations are a complex blend of experiences developed over long periods of time, and across a number of dimensions - many of which are those surveyed in the NBI. The survey is a cost-effective and timely way of monitoring opinions of UK amongst 17 of VisitBritain's key target markets - making it easier for us to identify strengths, weaknesses and shifting perceptions over time.

Air New Zealand

The NBI was useful for us to gain a global insight into the way in which New Zealand, as a nation brand, is considered. While we have a clear understanding around the way we like to view ourselves, we didn’t previously understand how other nations viewed New Zealand. As the national airline, clearly it is important for us to leverage the nation brand and to align ourselves with the expectations that people have for us as a country. The NBI provided some good knowledge around this.

Founder's Corner: Simon Anholt

Slovenia and the threat from 'Brand Europe’

Countries have always been brands, in the truest sense of the word. Their ability to compete against each other for tourists, for foreign investment, for consumers, for the attention and respect of the media, is significantly determined by the power and quality of their brand image. National leaders have been branding their countries deliberately and systematically for centuries, even if they’ve only recently started to adopt the vocabulary and the techniques of commercial marketing to do it.

When I first proposed the idea of nations as brands around 8 years ago, it was little more than an intellectual curiosity, but in the meantime more and more countries (as well as regions and cities) have decided to 'jump on the brandwagon.’ The notion of brand management, for countries, now seems firmly established as one of the key tools for competitiveness in our modern world. Most rich countries now have branding or public diplomacy initiatives. An increasing number of developing and even very poor countries are working on their own strategies. Much of my own advisory work is now carried out through various United Nations agencies on the brand strategies of poorer states.

Not surprisingly, in such a climate, it’s no longer good enough to venture opinions about which nation brand is stronger than another, which is declining and which is on the rise. It was for this reason that I decided to create the Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index, the first global study of ordinary people’s perceptions of the brand images of countries. (Slovenia isn’t one of the 25 countries which feature in the index, but it would certainly be interesting to include it at some future date).

Nation branding is the term I use to describe the systematic process of aligning the actions, behaviours and communications of a country around a clear strategy for achieving enhanced competitive identity. It can be as modest as linking the promotions of the tourist board and inward investment bureau, or it can be a decades-long policy of coordinating all internal and external national strategies – culture, sport, education, policy, tourism, exports and trade – into a coherent, planned process.

Nation branding can add value to countries in many different ways. For a rich country like the UK, it can be a way of updating people’s perception of the place, to communicate its technological expertise, its creativity and dynamism, alongside its more conventional images of heritage, history and tradition.

And for countries like Slovenia which recently joined the European Union and find themselves moving into a busier and more influential sphere of international relations, place branding is also a critical part of their attempt to establish and retain a distinctive identity within the group.

To request the full article, click here.

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.

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