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06.10.2010
With Ireland?s reputation taking somewhat of a roasting in recent times, Mary Lambkin argues that now could be just the time for the creation of a more coherent nation brand.
Countries throughout the world are now conscious of the importance of their image or reputation abroad, and are investing time and money in trying to manage this in a positive way to enhance their economic performance. Ireland might do well to follow their lead. A reimagined, re-designed Brand Ireland could play a part in leading the renewal of the Irish economy, after several crisis years.
The idea of treating countries or nations as brands is not new but has been gaining currency in recent years as competition for tourism and foreign direct investment (FDI) has intensified among the developed nations and, even more so, as emerging nations such as India and China have become serious challengers in the global market.
The fact is that every nation has an international image, whether it manages it or not, based on a mixture of perceptions and experiences among the viewing public. There is no doubt either that having a positive image can make a world of difference to a country, city orregion, just as it does for companies and their products. An imprimatur like “German engineering” or “Made in the USA” can boost exports, investment and tourism.
According to FutureBrand, which publishes an annual ranking of nation brands, the best country brands are those that have the most attractive perception through a whole mix of economic, political and social activity. FutureBrand proposes that countries have the potential to become some of the world’s strongest brands, rivalling Nike, Sony and IBM.
Historically, nation brands have tended to develop spontaneously without any intervention from State or other sources, based on the ebb and flow of news and events, and in its external transactions. We need only look at India. It has emerged in the last five years in terms of perceptions in a very different way to 10 or 15 years ago. It was once spirituality and poverty. Now it’s software; it’s highly educated people. None of this is managed. It’s all spontaneous.
Nowadays, however, most countries are trying to manage their brands in a planned, deliberate way with varying degrees of success. I would suggest it is time for Ireland to do as much.
The first step in brand building is to establish where the product currently stands and this baseline information can then be used to identify key attributes upon which to focus – strengths to build upon, weaknesses to be corrected and knowledge gaps to be filled. This stage should also help to set objectives to be pursued and metrics that can be used to gauge achievements over time.
There are several well-regarded annual surveys of country or nation brands of which the FutureBrand Country Brand Index (CBI) is just one. Ireland has never featured in its overall top 10 countries, which has tended to be dominated by the very large countries. The
US topped the list in 2009 with Germany entering the top 10 for the first time. Ireland hasfeatured, however, in the top 10 for about a quarter of the individual variables measured in this survey.
Ireland features, for example, in the top 10 for six out of 16 variables under the tourism heading. Unsurprisingly the highest ranking is for the friendliness of our people, where we rank 2nd, but we also rank 6th on ‘natural beauty’ and ‘desire to visit or visit again’. In terms of business, we feature in the top 10 for four out of 12 variables, scoring highest in being ‘easy to do business with’ and ‘a good place to extend a business trip’ where we rank fifth.
Sadly, we rank just 10th when it comes to ‘a new country with which to do business’, and we do not feature at all when it comes to ‘advanced technology’ or ‘high-quality products’. This finding tallies with the European Innovation Scoreboard in which we ranked just ninth among the EU27 countries in 2008 and 2009. There may remain much work to be done if we are to build our brand as an ‘Innovation Island’.
These rankings are merely a small illustration of the kind of data that is available to inform our thinking about where Ireland is currently positioned relative to our competitor countries and relative to those against which we may wish to benchmark ourselves for the future.
For example, there seems to be an obvious complementarity between our rankings as friendly people and as being easy to do business with. Also, the desire to visit here seems positively related with attending conferences and extending business trips. That could be just one strong and unique platform upon which Brand Ireland could be built.
In marketing terms, a brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service or business. A brand‘s visual identity is the overall look of its communications and at the core of every brand identity is a brand mark, or logo. An effective brand visual identity is achieved by the use of a strong, attractive design appropriate to the particular product, and consistent application of that design through elements such as colours, typefaces and graphic elements.
In principle, branding a country or nation should be the same or similar to a product or service. It’s all about identifying, developing and communicating the parts of the identity that are favourable to specified target audiences. Of course, a nation brand must accommodate sectors as diverse as government, culture and heritage, international trade, tourism, capital investment, and people (public opinion and migration) – no mean task given the number of diverse audiences that must be reached.
It would be easy to conclude that it is impossible for one single brand to capture all of this diversity. On the contrary, however, a strong umbrella brand for the country can actually play a very useful role in communicating a higher-level vision and in uniting diverse activities towards a common goal. There can also be economies of scale in a common branding strategy, eliminating duplication of effort and leveraging benefits from marketing across sectors.
Because nation or country brands are necessarily multifaceted, the concept of a ‘brand architecture’ can represent a useful organising framework for mapping and evaluating the levels and connections among the constituent elements of a country’s brand. However, the brand architecture of the Irish state sector demonstrates an astonishing diversity of brand identities, with little or no consistency or synergy.
A particular problem is the flagrant disregard for the importance or value of core symbols – particularly the harp and the shamrock. These are both central to our sense of nationhood as well as being official state symbols. Yet the evidence suggests that individuals and organisations can use these symbols when and how they like, and the result is a sorry collection of topics and applications.
At the top of the hierarchy for Brand Ireland currently is the Presidential Standard, a gold harp on a blue background. This is the image that was registered with the Chief Herald as the official coat of arms of the State in November 1945. It is even protected internationally as a state emblem under the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property 1883.
For some reason, this official version has been changed in recent times and a new interpretation now appears on the Presidential website. There may be good reason for this, but visually it is a far weaker representation than the original and is introducing colours that do not have any particular connection to Ireland.
The Oireachtas introduced a new corporate identity in 2008. This new identity was presented as an update of the traditional symbol of the State - the harp - with a more stylised version set within concentric circles. The first thing to observe about this new identity is that it bears no relationship to the national standard, either in colour or form.
It is also curious to observe that this new identity does not seem to have been carried through on the official Government website which has the harp, but uses a different style and colour scheme. And Government departments are where the brand architecture really breaks down. Each department has a different visual identity, varying in colour, style and every other aspect, and collectively. The harp features in the identities of some departments but has disappeared from others. Those that have kept the harp have re-interpreted it in all sorts of ways, adopting their own colour schemes. It is chaos. This same looseness has carried forward into the various state and semi-state agencies, which have played fast and loose with the harp and shamrock in evolving their own individual identities.
This in my view, should be corrected as a matter of urgency. No self-respecting commercial organisation would allow its visual identity to be used and abused in the way the Irish State has allowed its core identity to be applied. It is easy to say what should happen but less easy to know how it might be done. One possibility is to hold a major international competition to come up with a new visual identity for the Irish nation.
Brand Ireland is necessarily a national concern so the initiative and leadership must come from Government. Responsibility for implementation can rest with a taskforce or steering group, as long as it has a clear mandate and a reasonable level of resources. Ideally, such a group should draw from the artistic and business communities and should include marketing and branding expertise.
The best-case scenario would be the creation of an entirely new, visually strong and confident identity that would symbolise a major renewal of the Irish nation, both economically and culturally. This highly organised visual impression would ideally be mirrored in practice by integrated service delivery – reflecting the joined-up thinking that we so often hear called for.
This article first appeared in Irish Director magazine.
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