“Change Our National Image, Please!”

Earlier this month, in Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz emphasized the importance of national branding with the introduction of a ‘Brand of the Year Award’ for private businesses.

“Even with 160 million industrious workers and various investment opportunities, the Pakistan brand is not well-known. We urgently need measures to change this,” said the PM.

He delivered his speech out of concern over the plummeting national image due to the declaration of a national emergency, crackdown on anti-government figures by President Pervez Musharraf and large-scale terror attacks. Given that neighboring India is improving its image as an IT powerhouse, Pakistan must feel a sense of urgency and inferiority.

As shown in the business world’s corporate brand strategies, countries around the world are striving to boost their international standings through ‘nation branding.’

“Change our bad image, please” -

According to analytical data from the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, a growing number of countries are turning to private consultancies to upgrade their national image.

Nation brands expert Simon Anholt said, “At least one national government and local government has come to me for advice on a branding campaign. CEO Thomas Cromwell of East West Communications, a full-service consultancy specializing in government communications solutions and in particular the branding of nations, said “The cost of consulting is several million dollars per case.”

China, which will soon be holding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, is the country most concerned about its national image. The Olympics is a rare opportunity for China to enhance its image, but the most populous country in the world is having a hard time upgrading its image because of abuse of the media and human rights, and exports of defective products.

In the Anholt Nation Brands Index released in the second quarter of this year, China saw its brand further downgraded compared to that of the fourth quarter of 2005. Under its Olympics slogan “One World One Dream,” China is trying hard to better its image.

The U.S is struggling to fight anti-American sentiment which has exploded due to the Iraq war. In 2005, President Bush appointed Karen Hughes as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in an attempt to improve the U.S.’s national image.

It doesn’t work without fixing fundamental problems -

Success stories in nation branding include former Yugoslav federation countries, which dispelled their negative communist image by promoting tourism products, and Germany, which did away with residual Nazism. Belgium, on the other hand, is regarded as a failure because it gave up its nation branding projects along the way.

Experts on the subject say that without fixing the fundamental problems that degrade a country, any nation can’t be successful, depending on shallow tactics. Similarly, in an open contest for an official national slogan in the U.K. this month, many people came up with “Britain: erstwhile great nation.”

lightee@donga.com