How the World Sees the World

How the world sees the world. Introduction How it works When we express a preference for French holidays, The Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index measures the German cars or Italian opera, when we instinctively power and appeal of a nation’s brand image, and tells trust the policies of the Swedish government, comment us how consumers around the world see the character on the ambition of the Japanese, the bluntness of the and personality of the brand. Americans or the courtesy of the British, when we avoid investing in Russia, favour Turkey’s entry into The nation brand is the sum of people’s perceptions Europe or admire the heritage of China and India, we of a country across six areas of national competence. are responding to brand images in exactly the same Together, these areas make the Nation Brand way as when we’re shopping for clothing or food. Hexagon: But these are far bigger brands than Nike or Nestlé. They are the brands of nations. Nation brand is an important concept in today’s world. Globalisation means that countries compete with each other for the attention, respect and trust of investors, tourists, consumers, donors, immigrants, the media, and the governments of other nations: so a powerful and positive nation brand provides a crucial competitive advantage. It is essential for countries to understand how they are seen by publics around the world; how their achievements and failures, their assets and their liabilities, their people and their products are reflected Fig 1: The Nation Brand Hexagon © Simon Anholt 2002 in their brand image. Every country has its brand strengths and weaknesses, The Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index is the first ana- so there is a different ‘winner’ for each point of the lytical ranking of the world’s nation brands. Each quar- hexagon: Italy, for example, has the most powerful ter, we poll our worldwide panel of consumers on their brand of our group in both the ‘Tourism’ and ‘Culture’ perceptions of the cultural, political, commercial and points, but the UK scores highest on ‘People’. human assets, investment potential and tourist appeal of several developed and developing countries. This The overall ‘Top Nation Brand’ is the one with the adds up to a clear index of national brand power, a highest marks across all points of the hexagon. unique barometer of global opinion. 1 And the winner is…. Sweden Another pleasant surprise (at least for me) was to We’ve heard so much recently about the decline of discover that the brand of my own country, the United Brand America , perhaps it should come as no surprise Kingdom, is in very good shape, coming second overall. that the United States doesn’t come out on top of the Clearly, our alliance with the United States during the first Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index. Iraq war hasn’t done as much damage to our international image as we fear (the UK government is But it was still as shock that the USA came fourth, described by our respondents as “trustworthy”, in stark together with Germany, in the league tables of the contrast to the American government which is world’s most powerful nation brands. And who knows, described as “dangerous” and “dishonest”). Although if the list had included countries like France, Canada, the UK still isn’t rated very highly as a producer of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Spain, products, it scores extremely well as a tourist destina- Switzerland or the Netherlands, the United States tion and as a producer of popular culture. The star might have ranked even lower. (More of these coun- asset of Brand Britain, however, is the British people, tries will be included in future editions of the Anholt- as we will see in Section 3. GMI Nation Brands Index, so watch this space). United Kingdom (Q1 2005) Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index Overall Ranking (Q1 2005) Exports Sweden 2.83 United Kingdom 3.00 Italy 3.50 Tourism Governance Germany 4.33 United States 4.33 Japan 4.83 China 7.16 7.66 Investment and India People Immigration South Korea 9.00 Russia 9.16 Turkey 10.16 Culture and Heritage 1 3 5 7 9 11 Average Ranking Among All 11 Countries Italy, of course, is one of the most loved and admired Top of our list came Sweden, with consistently high nation brands around – despite the generally derided scores all around the hexagon. This country is almost figure of Prime Minister Berlusconi and the presence universally admired, and its brand image boasts a rare of many negative elements within the brand: corrup- combination of stable and responsible governance, tion, organised crime and a generally disorganised soci- honest and trustworthy people, successful cultural ety. But because the country is effortlessly and almost exports, a prime location for investment, and yet isn’t universally associated with quality of life, impeccable seen as boring or predictable, but young and dynamic. style and cultural riches, Italy will always score very Few other countries manage to maintain such a healthy high as a nation brand, at least on the ‘leisure’ side of balance between basic reassurance and a touch of things. vibrancy, adventure and youthful spirit. Sweden (Q1 2005) Italy (Q1 2005) Exports Exports Tourism Governance Tourism Governance Investment and Investment and People People Immigration Immigration Culture and Heritage Culture and Heritage 2 For Italian professionals and business people, however, Russia (Q1 2005) the country’s poor image in business and international affairs is an irritation and a handicap. So powerful is the ‘holiday’ element of the national brand, it tends to Exports override and cancel out any attempt to present an image of Italian people and organisations as serious- Tourism Governance minded, hard working, competent or reliable. In business and industry, at least, a more positive image would Investment and People be entirely deserved: but such is the nature of nation Immigration brands. They are essentially clichés, the simple short- Culture and Heritage hand for national identity which all of us adopt, simply in order to navigate more quickly and more efficiently through the complexities of life in a globalised world. Both countries have a long way to go before they can improve their international reputations. Turkey has a The other surprise on the list is that South Korea lot to prove, a process which is likely to be much comes so low on the list (below China and India), helped in the future by EU accession, whereas Russia although this is mainly because respondents in many has a great deal to disprove before it can even start countries appear to confuse it with its Northern neigh- acquiring positive brand attributes. bour, as we shall see later on. Brands and Products The struggling brands in our list are Turkey and The unrequited love affair of poor-country consumers Russia. Turkey’s overall low score, however, is mainly for rich-country brands; America still on top, but for the result of it failing to achieve high scores in any cat- how long? A bleak picture for Russia. egory (and arguably this is partly because so few peo- Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index Brands/Products Ranking ple have any direct experience of the country, its peo- (Q1 2005) ple or products, and spend relatively little time think- ing about it), whereas Russia’s is the result of extreme- United States 4.915 ly low scores in several crucial categories. Looking at Japan 4.874 the data, Turkey appears to be more of a ‘blank can- Germany 4.865 Sweden 4.744 vas’, a country about which most people have few Italy 4.684 opinions; on the other hand, almost everybody has an United Kingdom 4.590 4.469 opinion about Russia, and it is likely to be a poor one. South Korea China 3.826 India 3.822 South Korea (Q1 2005) Russia 3.720 Turkey 3.685 0 1 2 3 4 5 Exports 1-7 Scale: 7 = Best Score Possible In this point of the hexagon, we asked consumers Tourism Governance about their level of satisfaction with products and serv- ices produced in each country, and also about their ten- dency to actively seek out or actively avoid products Investment and from each country. These two questions allow us to People Immigration measure any difference between the appeal of each country’s “Made In….” label and the reality of the Culture and Heritage products produced there. We also asked what kinds of products people would expect to be produced in each country. Of all our respondents, Indian consumers are most strongly motivated by the country of origin of the products they buy, claiming a marked preference for products produced in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, 3 Sweden, Japan and Korea; Chinese consumers are also only associate this country with textiles. Italy, as one powerfully affected by the glamour of first-world pro- would expect, is strongly linked to food and fashion. ducers. But in both cases this affection is sadly unrequited: around a quarter of respondents around the Governance world claim to ‘actively avoid’ Indian-made and Worrying signs for Brand America, and a grave identity Chinese-made products, so clearly both countries have problem for South Korea. Sweden the undoubted brand a long way to go before they can achieve a Japanese- champion; UK’s image apparently unharmed by Iraq. style turnaround in their image as desirable, high-quali- Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index Governance Ranking ty producers of products. (Q1 2005) Despite many surveys reporting ‘protest’ behaviour on Sweden 6.468 Germany 6.184 the part of consumers in various countries (as shown in United Kingdom 6.178 Italy 5.282 the 2004 GMI survey – reference), the US still has the United States 5.003 best image as a producer of products, with Japan a Japan 4.987 India 3.682 close runner-up.

Load more