Nation-branding is big business, but some experts says it’s no substitute for good policies
Egypt has been famous from time immemorial as an exotic place of pyramids and hieroglyphics. But think of modern Egypt, and images of poverty, corruption and an often-repressive military regime are more likely to come up. Last June, the country’s Ministry of Information hired one of the largest public relations agencies in the world in a bid to change that.
London-based Bell Pottinger, who’s been awarded the task of showing the world a new and improved Egypt, said the principal problem is it’s misunderstood. “The country’s moved on,” Abel Hadden, a director of the firm, told The Media Line.
“The point is that the [Egyptian] government feels that it’s taken a number of positive steps in the last few years to encourage economic and political initiatives, and they haven’t been picked up and understood internationally,” said Hadden, whose clients include cereal maker Kellogg’s and McAfee, the computer security company.
Egypt isn’t alone. Israel launched its “Brand Israel” campaign in 2004 Abu Dhabi and Dubai, two emirates belonging to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have stepped into the game as well. So has the Sultanate of Oman. Probably most other Mideast governments have signed on as well, image experts say, although the nature of the business is such that they rarely advertise it.
Actors, politicians and businesses have long understood the value of honing their public image. But for countries, the notion that you can change the way the world looks at you has only taken hold in the past 15 years. Experts say the industry rakes in millions of dollars a year in consulting contracts, offering a melange of logos, media placements and local-cuisine cookbooks. But some insiders, not the least the man who coined the term nation branding, doubt its effectiveness.
“The nations in the Middle East today that are doing nation-branding are just wasting their taxpayers’ money,” foreign policy consultant Simon Anholt told The Media Line.
Although Anholt calls nation branding a “scam,” his name is inextricably tied to the business. He first coined the term in 1996 in an article in a marketing journal proposing that nations market themselves as if they were brands, arguing that a successful brand will help them compete in the global marketplace for tourism, trade and investment.
Today, he puts out the Anholt-Gfk Roper Nation Brands Index, which measures the image and reputation of the world’s nations. It gauges such things as the public’s image of products and services, governance and its attractiveness as a tourist destination.
With its popular image as a hotbed of religious extremism, war, terror and political repression, the countries of the Middle East are perfect clients for branders. Only four of the region’s countries even made the 2010 Anholt-Gfk Roper index and none of them reached the top 25. Egypt, the Bell Pottinger client, was the highest scorer, at 27, the UAE finished 43rd, Saudi Arabia 45th and Iran clocked in at 50.
Haden declined to specify what his firm would be doing to enhance Egypt’s image, nor would he say how much the one-year contract is worth.
While Anholt maintained that every country has a reputation, he opposes countries actively trying to brand themselves, and doesn’t think Egypt’s nascent branding campaign will have much effect. A country’s nation brand only changes—albeit very slowly—when it changes its policies, he said. Polishing its image alone is a “waste of time.”
“If I’m Syria or Egypt, I’m saying, ‘Please change your mind about my country’ and everyone knows that’s propaganda,” Anholt said. “Of course, Egypt’s going to say what a wonderful country it is.”
“You cannot fix a country’s reputation by marketing,” Anholt added. “One thing the index shows is that reputations almost never change—no matter how much money is spent.”
But others disagree. They point out that a country can have a positive reputation in one region, and have a terrible reputation in another. If facts can’t be changed so easily, perceptions can. Peter van Ham, the director of Global Governance Research at the Clingendael Institute in the Hague, used Israel as an example.
“Anything Israel does can be seen as great, wonderful, defending Western civilization; or the same thing can be seen as oppressing Palestinians — depending on your worldview,” van Ham told The Media Line.
The six-year-old Brand Israel Project highlights the country as vibrant, diverse and liberal with a tremendous output in science, technology and culture. But nation-brand indices show the country still suffers from an abysmal ranking. It seldom cracks Anholt’s top-50 brand index
Others say a country like Israel – a focus of world media attention, nearly all of it focused on the country’s perpetual conflict with the Palestinians – has no choice but to actively work to present another face. A small country whose economy relies on exports and tourism, not to mention political support, can’t ignore its public persona.
“Israel, because of what it thinks it has to do, and the policy actions it therefore undertakes, often faces a hostile media and public opinion environment, which it needs to actively counter,” Rajeev Batra, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan who’s studied Israel’s nation branding efforts, told The Media Line in an e-mail. “It also needs to grow its tourism inflow, and its high tech and other exports.”
But nation-branding experts warn that governments run the risk of discrediting the image they are presenting as propaganda among people who are hostile or skeptical.
To combat this, Batra said campaigns target people who are neutral and have yet to form strong opinions. Governments may also discreetly focus their nation branding on media coverage.
“When a magazine reporter or columnist says good things about a country because the nation branding efforts made that happen, it is much less likely to be seen as propaganda,” Batra said.
And this is something nation branders have become sensitive about.
Anholt, for his part, said Israel’s attempts at nation branding wouldn’t bear fruit without a change in the situation on the ground.
“Its reputation is very bad because it’s associated with violence, as is the whole of that region,” he said about the Middle East. “There’s no talk that will remove that association, and I know that’s not completely Israel’s fault.”
One country that has managed to improve its nation brand in recent years is the United Arab Emirates. Once thought of as a remote corner of the Arabian Peninsula ruled by emirs, the UAE has stepped onto the world stage over the past decade as a burgeoning global business center. Abu Dhabi opened an office in late 2007 dedicated to branding the emirate and debuted a logo in Arabic-style calligraphy reminiscent of the Arabian Nights.
Dubai’s image has taken a roller-coaster ride. Its speculation-fueled real estate market created such modern wonders as the world’s tallest skyscraper and an indoor ski slope, only to collapse under tens of billions of dollars of debt.
But Anholt contended that the nation-branding efforts had contributed little to the UAE’s emergence.
“Cute logos and advertising campaigns don’t work,” Anholt said. “The reason why Dubai has risen to prominence is because it’s expanded enormously. It’s made itself into an important place, but has done that by investment and growth. Important places have big reputations.”
Van Ham of the Clingendael Institute said that optimally nation-branding and good policies go hand in hand.
“If you want to sell something and you have a lousy product, you’re wasting your time,” van Ham said. “But it’s something else if you have a wonderful product and people don’t know about it, or they have misconceptions.”