Nation Branding

NATION BRANDING

Nike!Coca Cola!Google!Apple! Brands prevail in the market making their presence felt all the time and creating resonating relationships with customers.Brands can be products,places,services,etc.Nation branding is a niche subset of place branding.

Globalization has led nations to become more integrated and competing with each other for tourists,business,foreign investments or merely for the attention of the media.100% pure New Zealand,Malaysia-Truly Asia,etc are remarkable examples of nations attempting to brand themeselves.However some nations need not explicitly brand themselves due to their popularity like America for power and money,Japan for technology,etc.

Why would a nation brand itself?

1. A nation could brand itself if it has been targeting the wrong audiences.For example targeting a segment with low spending power for tourism.

2. A nation could brand itself if wants to correct a wrongly built image.For instance.India is still known to the world as a land of culture but nothing beyond.It is important to make the people aware of the technological breakthroughs the country has gone through and also that India is the land of spirituality,youth and corporate leaders.

3. A nation could also want to correct a negatively developed image due to wars,etcSimon Anholt describes the nation brand as the sum of the perceptions of a country and itspeople across six dimensions of national assets, characteristics and competence.