Something which caught my eye via Yabia, but which doesn't seem to have received a great deal of media pick up, is this study looking at what countries have the strongest 'brand.'
Fronted by country branding expert Simon Anholt, the Nations Brands Index by GFK Research involved 20,000 participants in 20 countries ranking 50 countries according to their perceived strengths in "exports, governance, culture, people, tourism and immigration / investment."
Or I guess in plain English: Would you buy their stuff? What do you think of their policies? What do you think of their TV and music? Would you want to share a long plane journey with one of them? Would you pay money to visit the place? Would you want to go and live there?
It's an interesting study as it actually asks people to consider what they do and don't like about a country, rather than just give a gut answer sometimes based on stereotypes or whatever's been in the news that day.
That for example would allow for the fact that many people around the world are deeply opposed to current US Government policies...but yet would go and live there in an instant.
In the survey, Germany came out top, something that no doubt will delight Germans given the (understandable) agonising that sometimes goes on about how they are perceived. France came second and it's good to see that even given our reputation for stuff like this, the UK still came third in the global poll.
The United States came seventh out of 50, including 2nd on "investment / immigration", but 22nd / 50 on "governance" (apparently the lowest out of any of the democracies included in the survey).
Obviously GFK is trying to sell the full report for a large wad of cash and the short excerpts that have been published raise a lot of questions.
For example, in addition to the United Kingdon, Scotland was included as a separate 'brand'. Were England and Wales similarly included? Also, never mind who scored top...who scored bottom?
Claudia Schiffer image from the Germany Land of Ideas campaign
Postscript: Thanks to the anonymous reader who has pointed me to a Wikipedia entry with the full top 50 listing. At the bottom are Estonia (though I'm puzzled why - maybe because people just don't know enough about the 'brand?'), UAE, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and perhaps not surprisingly in last place - Iran.
Link to original postLink to original post
Link to original post