Country Branding
Executed well, the brand of a city, a region or a country captures the true essence and soul of a nation and its people. A brand will provide a window onto the world and, at its best, will mirror the values of a city, a society and its people.
The benefits of a well-executed country branding campaign are manifold. They include:
- Promoting national tourism
- Promoting inward investment / foreign direct investment (FDI)
- Political positioning on the regional and world stage
Our approach, as with any other brand assignment, is to undertake a perception audit among key stakeholders and audiences in order to understand where we need to start. With a fully developed picture, we then create a strategy with a brand model which aligns audiences, attributes and expectations. We will then work with you to devise a programme which brings the brand to life and identifies the most appropriate channels for communication. A significant challenge in any city or country branding assignment is ensuring that the Government endorses and promotes the brand and that the proposed values are meaningful and consistent with the experience in-country. Our campaign planning will help provide both the mechanism and the means to achieve that.
Typically, country branding requires integration work as it is positioned as the platform for the creation and delivery of other related promotional programmes. We have considerable experience of ensuring that brand alignment is fostered and implemented across all the key touch points of a brand in a city or a country.
In developing a brand for a country, we have ensured that its key services, such as transportation, and infrastructure such as airports, are not only brand compliant, but also support the overarching brand and its values.
We have been privileged in recent years to work for the Office of the Brand of Abu Dhabi.