DOES NATIONAL IMAGE MATTER?
DOES NATIONAL IMAGE MATTER?
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 02:06
Brandscape Content Team
Reading the Anholt Nation Brand Index 2006 Q4 report yields few surprises, if any, for developing countries. The report asks the question, does national image matter… and answers with an emphatic yes. Then goes into detail about how and why… it is no surprise for many countries in Africa that as the report states: “Places with a reputation for being poor, backward, dangerous or corrupt will find that everything they or their citizens try to achieve outside their own neighbourhood is harder, and the burden of proof is always on their side to prove that, as an individual or as an organisation, they don’t conform to the national stereotype.”
How’s that for a huge disadvantage before you even open your mouth? The report does acknowledge that nation brands are ‘virtually the same thing as stereotypes or clichés’, admitting that this kind of classification is unfair.
So, is our collective African nation brand goose cooked, seeing as how most of our countries do fall into the category so aptly put above? Are we doomed to a life of living on the defensive? Perhaps this is one reason why we have not been able to build successful African brands and take on the world at its own game. We’re so busy apologising that we exist and trying to prove ourselves against a global standard that is already skewed against us that we do not stand a chance.
Let’s move things to a less self-piteous, miserable line of thinking for a minute. The report also asks whether these reputations can be changed. They suggest that this is possible to some extent; ‘that the challenge is that countries are not like commercial entities, which have full control over the entire customer experience with the product, and the way it is presented in the media’. Even though it doesn’t look like it, this does actually mean that there is hope. You just have to look closely at the words… ‘control over the entire customer experience’ and ‘the way it is presented in the media’.
We put it to you that changing the image of an African nation brand though admittedly difficult is actually manageable, and possible. WHAT? Impossible, muttered the skeptics. Please note, we didn’t say it is easy. It is just possible. Shedding off of negative headlines on CNN, and our local newspapers is entirely possible. How? Collective effort, mobilized from the top down.
Sounds insanely utopian, doesn’t it? That is the beauty of it. Imagine a society that is so harmoniously pulling together for the common good of saving its image by doing the right thing. South Africa has gotten itself together after a horrible heritage of apartheid, and are pulling off the ‘rainbow nation’ positioning quite effortlessly… was it easy? No. Are there still challenges? You can bet your entire property that there are, point is, the South Africa of today is not the same South Africa of yesteryear.
You can summarize this amazing transformation in one word: commitment.
We’ll let you digest that for now.
