Arts & Ideas: U.S. burned in branding survey
Brand U.S.A. is in trouble. Should we worry?
According to British brand consultant Simon Anholt, we should. As he writes in his most recent book, Brand America, a brand is "nothing more and nothing less than the good name of something that's on offer to the public."
Judged by the first Nation Brands Index, an analytical ranking of the brands of several nations produced by Anholt and the American market research firm Global Market Insite Inc., America's good name could use some help. Rating 11 different nations according to their competence in six areas—tourism, exports, governance, people, culture and heritage, and investment and immigration—consumers from several nations put the world's greatest superpower in fourth place, tied with Germany. The winner was Sweden, followed, respectively, by Britain and Italy, while the bottom six nations in descending order were Japan, China, India, South Korea, Russia, and Turkey.
Anholt, who advises national and city governments on branding matters, plans to produce the NBI on a quarterly basis, adding more nations to the index as well as expanding the pool of nations in which consumers are polled.
Q: What is a national brand, and how is it different from corporate or product brands?
A: A corporate or product brand is the image people have of an organization and its products or services. It determines their attitudes and behaviors toward the organization, so it is critically important—especially because many products and services are virtually identical.
Brand is not messages. It is the context in which messages are received by the audience. Even positive messages are interpreted in a negative way when they are expressed by an organization with a poor brand.
The things the organization does, the things it makes, and the things it says are what build the brand in people's minds. It's complex, difficult to change, and has little to do with slogans and logos. Brand is the key to sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Country brands work in a very similar way. Obviously, countries aren't soap powder. But, just like companies, they depend greatly on their image and must manage it carefully. A strong national brand helps to attract investment, talent, consumers, and tourists, and it enhances the country's cultural and political influence. It's virtually impossible for countries to compete today without one.
Q: Why does a nation's brand matter?
A: Nation brands matter today because in a single global marketplace of instant global communications and increasingly widespread democracy, the opinions of populations count as much as the opinions of elites mattered in the past. Popular opinion drives the political and economic agenda. All countries have to compete with all other countries for their share of the world's tourists, consumers, business visitors, investors, talent, and the respect and attention of the world's media.
Developing countries, in particular, depend more than ever before on building and sustaining positive brand values. Many of them have made significant economic, cultural, social, and industrial progress in recent years—and in fact offer considerable value and attraction to investors, tourists, and consumers—yet their brand image lags behind the reality by decades. Such countries simply don't have time to wait until their reputation catches up with reality. So understanding and managing the nation brand becomes a vital part of their development program. The work I am currently doing with various U.N. agencies reflects the growing understanding that national brand is very much more than "spin," propaganda, or promotion.
Q: Were you surprised by America's brand rating on your index? If so, why?
A: I guessed that America wouldn't come out on top, but I thought it would be in second place, not fourth. (I strongly suspect that it will come in considerably lower now that the NBI has been expanded to cover 25 countries. Several of those additional countries—such as Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, South Africa—carry many of the same basic brand attributes that Sweden, the winner in the first NBI, carries.) Sweden's coming first was more of a surprise. But the NBI is designed to measure what's in people's hearts, and Sweden has a virtually untarnished reputation. I was expecting America's score on "governance" to drag down its ratings—which it did—but I wasn't expecting the dismal showing in culture.
Q: Based on your survey, what should America do to improve its brand rating?
A: Most U.S. public diplomacy appears to be based on two fallacies: one, the "to know us is to love us" fallacy; and two, the fallacy that brand image can be improved through messaging. It is perfectly clear that the world knows a great deal about America and American life and values—and doesn't like what it knows. The problem isn't a shortage of information but a lack of sympathy. Furthermore, it is important to remember that people are generally quite warmly attached to their prejudices and will not abandon them just because the object of those prejudices spends a lot of money telling them that they're wrong. No, if you want somebody to believe new things about you, you have to prove those things. America doesn't concentrate enough on proving things. But first and foremost, it is essential for America to really understand how it is seen in other cultures, and this is one of the hardest things for a country to do: to see itself through the cultural lenses and filters that each country adopts. Only by understanding this can America begin to devise a proper strategy for how it could be, and should be, seen.