Nation Branding-Best Practices Through Sports, Laws and Science
Sports:
Another factor of substantial importance which plays an active role in nation branding is how the country portrays itself in various sports. Before we look in to the aspects of this, excerpts from the recent interview with Mr Simon Anholt, the brilliantly caustic, not conventions driven and outspoken nation branding (or as he prefers, ‘policy advisor’) expert, by Germany’s Deutschland Magazine about the relationship between sports and nation branding and sportsmen and nation brands only weeks ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa is given below in brief. This presents an insight in to the nation branding as a whole and in to the Sports domain as a measure of enhancing the brand nation.
Mr. Anholt, you are recognized the world over as the leading expert on a concept referred to as “nation branding”. In the world of marketing, the Nation Brands Index (NBI) is equally loved and feared. Why has nation branding become so important in the age of globalization?
I hope that the “Nation Brands Index” isn’t loved or feared in the world of marketing, since it has almost nothing to do with the world of marketing! The index is produced for the benefit of national governments that wish to track their national standing and profile. As I have explained many, many times in my books and articles, this is not a marketing discipline: there is absolutely no evidence that countries can alter their international images through marketing communications, and many of them continue to waste enormous sums of their taxpayers’ money every year in futile propaganda campaigns in press and television, without any indication whatsoever that this can succed in changing anybody’s mind. Countries are judged by what they do and what they make, not by what they say.
I don’t, therefore, believe in nation branding: it’s a false and dangerous idea. Nations have brands – in the sense that they have images – and those images are absolutely important to their progress and prosperity
Another factor of substantial importance which plays an active role in nation branding is how the country portrays itself in various sports. Before we look in to the aspects of this, excerpts from the recent interview with Mr Simon Anholt, the brilliantly caustic, not conventions driven and outspoken nation branding (or as he prefers, ‘policy advisor’) expert, by Germany’s Deutschland Magazine about the relationship between sports and nation branding and sportsmen and nation brands only weeks ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa is given below in brief. This presents an insight in to the nation branding as a whole and in to the Sports domain as a measure of enhancing the brand nation.
Mr. Anholt, you are recognized the world over as the leading expert on a concept referred to as “nation branding”. In the world of marketing, the Nation Brands Index (NBI) is equally loved and feared. Why has nation branding become so important in the age of globalization?
I hope that the “Nation Brands Index” isn’t loved or feared in the world of marketing, since it has almost nothing to do with the world of marketing! The index is produced for the benefit of national governments that wish to track their national standing and profile. As I have explained many, many times in my books and articles, this is not a marketing discipline: there is absolutely no evidence that countries can alter their international images through marketing communications, and many of them continue to waste enormous sums of their taxpayers’ money every year in futile propaganda campaigns in press and television, without any indication whatsoever that this can succed in changing anybody’s mind. Countries are judged by what they do and what they make, not by what they say.
I don’t, therefore, believe in nation branding: it’s a false and dangerous idea. Nations have brands – in the sense that they have images – and those images are absolutely important to their progress and prosperity