Nation-brands

of the twenty-firstcentury
Simon Anholt
WorldWriters,
162-170
Wardour
Address:
Street,LondonWlV 3AT.
Tel: +44 171 287 4877; Fax: +44 171 287 6159; E-mail: simon@worldwriters.com

Received(in revisedform):21st May, 1998

Simon Anholt read Modern Languages at Oxford, and worked as copywriter and international
co-ordinator at McCann-Erickson and various
other agencies around the world before founding
World Writers in 1989. World Writers is the
world's only global creative audit, brand naming,
multicultural brand thinktank, foreign copywriting
hnd creative consultancy service. lts many
cfients include Microsoft, Nike, Coca-Cola,
American Express, Sony, lBM, Adidas, Visa,
Shell, Levi's, British Airways, Nestl6, HdagenDazs, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, P&G, Unilever,
Mercedes-Benz and Benetton.

marketssuch as Brazil, in preferenceto 'frstworld' nationslike USA.

The paper arguesthat exporting brands, as distinctfrom commodities,is part of a packageof development which, together, ean signifcantly
accelerate
the processoJ emergence
from the third
world. It alsoproposesthat countrieslike Brazil
hauea real ehanceto join the frst world 'club' of
global brandproducersin the twenty-frst century.

THE IMPORTANCE
OF PROVENANCE
AS A BRANDATTRIBUTE

Few things in marketing are harder to define

than the personality of a brand, and seldom
Throughoutthe twentiethcentuq!,nrostof the reis this task more complex than when the
ally successJul
international brands haue come brand is sold in many different countries. A
brandsin their
brand is always a complex rnixture of attribfrom countriesthat are successJul
ou,night, and substantialtransferof imageryand
utes: packaging and visual identity form its
brandequity can often be seento oecurbetween face, and advertising createsits voice: but its
lhc two.
actual personality really only exists in the
This paperproposesthat a numberof 'amerg- mind of the consumer.
ing' markets,and especiallyBrazil, hauethepoOne attribute which is often of fundatentialto produceglobal brands, the
mental
importance in the complex makeup
for
following
reasoils:
of international brands is the influence
rvhich the brandt provenance- or its per- because
thereis alreadyhigh recognitionof the
ceived provenance - has on the consumer's
brand-printof the countryitselJ uhich will
perception of the brand.
eonsequently
sllpport the 'rightness'and acA quick poll of successfulinternational
ceptabilityoJ relevantcommenialbrands
consunrer brands revealsthat the vast majorfront
thatcountry;
ity of them come frorn countries rvhich
- because
the economicenuironmentis increas- have a strong and consistent international
inglyJauouringan export rnentality
'brand image' of their orvn. In lnany cases,
;
- because
certaingrotrysoJ consumers
in other the inragery used by the cornmercial brands
enrergingmarketsntight eventually
is closely linked rvith the attributes of therr
fauour
brands
frim emergingor 'recently-enrerged' provenance.

Aestnlcr

ThcJoumrl ofBrand
IUanxgcmcnt Vol 5 No 6
1998, pp 395-406
O Hrnn Stervan Publicarions,
1350-231X

At i ts s i m p l e s t l e v e l , th i s associ ati onbetween commercial and national brand is

rnerely a caseof positiueassocialions
wit]t national produce:a country is famous for producing certain items, and brands in related
product categoriesprofit by association.Italy
is famous for producing pasta and pizza, so
Italian pasta and pizza brands enjoy more
irnnrediate and positive associations than
n o n -l ta l i a n
b ra n d s ; th e French are
renowned for their skill in perfumery, so it is
natural that French perfume brands play on
their French heritage; the best whisky traditionally conles from Scotland, so stressing
the Scottishnessof whisky brands is almost
mandatory.

PLAYINGWITHPROVENANCE
At a more sophisticated level, manufacturers
of products that are not traditional national
products can make highly positive and valuable associationswith perceived qualities in
their national brand, in a precisely analogous
way to the practice of brand extensions,
where the owner of an establishedbrand can
use that equity to leverage acceptance of a
new product or sub-brand. For example,
Japan is associatedin the minds of Europeans with high-stressurban existence, but
also with ancient wisdom and mystic healing
powers: so marketing K3, a soft drink associated with stressrelief, to ABC1 urbanites
in Britain, is a highly intelligent 'brand extension', drawing on and extending existing
perceptions of brand Japan.
These associationsof qualiry or appropriatenessare powerful enough attributes to
make it worthwhile for a manufacturer to
claim a fictitious provenance if it appears to
lend more credibility than their real provenance. It is, in effect, a shortcut to well-established brand values for emerging brands:
by attaching the emerging brand to an area
of establishedcultural reference within the
consumert experience,it can quickly obtain
a halo of recognition, maturity and respect.

These ' cuckoo brands' , as the aut hor of

this paper calls them, which borrow brand
equiry from more establishedcultural icons,
are surprisingly common and have been
around for many years, as Wally Olins observedin a recent seminar.l
The Italian confectioner, Perfetti, for example, owns a successful chewing-gum
brand cal l ed ' B rookl yn' , a product which
bears an image of the Brooklyn Bridge on
its packaging, and is manufactured in Tirrin.
This bogus provenance no doubt made perfect sensewhen the brand was launched chewing-gum was an US import, and its
novelty and glamour derived principally
from its provenance. Even today, many Italians still refer to chewing-gurr'
gomma
^s
americanaor even in sorne dialects as gingomma, a corruption of the English word. In
such a cultural climate. a domestic brand
would clearly have taken many more years
to attain any kind of recognition or brand
share.
Likewise, Dixon's, the UK white goods
retailer, launched its own consumer electronics brand in 1982 under the mockJapanese name Saisho, because it rightly
believed that a British electronics brand
would carry little credibiliry. By a similar set
of associations,it has been suggestedthat the
US laser/fax supplies and photofinishing
company, Nashua, has prospered abroad
partly as a result of the mistaken belief that it
is a Japanesecompany (Nashua is, in fact,
the name of the New Hampshire town in
which the company is located, and the word
is, I guess,Algonquin, notJapanese).
The provenance ofcertain brands can also
switch with a change of brand owner: characters like Winnie-the-Pooh, Mary Poppins
and Alice in Wonderland, once perceived as
being quintessentiallyBritish, are now perceived by children around the world as
being quintessentially American; likewise,
through the power of Walt Disney's branding, Quasimodo, Anastasia, Snow White
and Hercules are no longer French, Russian,

German or Greek, but all come from the

same global-American culture stable as
Mi ck ey M ous e an d D o n a l d D u c k . T h i s
phenomenon is the converse of the cuckoo
brand effect: here, the cuckoo steals eggs
from other birds' nestsand hacchesthem in
lts Own.
Indeed, if a c ou n try b e g i n s to p ro d u c e
and market enough powerful brands in a
product category that was previously associated with another nation, the perceived
provenance of the entire category is liable to
switch: for example, outside Europe, pizza is
now generally associated with the USA,
simply because so nlany of the global pizza
brands are known to be American, even
though pizza was a national product of ltaly.
Interestingly, this processhas not occurred
wich pasta, perhaps because dry packaged
goods have been in commerce, and hence
branded for very much longer. Consequently, Italian brands had time to become
establishedlong before the product became
adopted as a 'world food'. Branded pizzahas
really only existed for as long as people have
had freezers, and most of the 'Iralian' pizza
brands on the market are cuckoo brands.
claiming phoney Italian provenance.

EXPECTATIONS
OF PROVENANCE
There are, in reality, two kinds of brands at
work here: private domain brands and public domain brands. Private domain brands
are owned by conrpanies; public domain
brands are items of popular or traditional
culture which, at least in the strict commercial sense,are nobody's property. They incl u d e c ount r ies , c i ti e s a n d re g i o n s , ra c e s ,
demographic groups, even individual people. It is a measure of the power and value
of thesepublic brands that iheir 'owners' or
guardians sometimes attempt to exert the
samekind of restrictionson their use as the
owners of commercial brands: the Italian regton of Tuscany,for example, after decades
of unwittingly lending its visual identiry (cy-

presstrees, rvinding roads, red-ochre villas)

to add glamour by associationto autolnobile
rnanuFacturers,
is now attempting to protect
itself by copyright law againstunauthorised
use.The trusteesof P ri ncessD i ana' s estate
are attempting a similar exercise,in order to
prevent the unwanted association of brand
Diana with a whole host of newspapers,gift
crockery and charities. Since association
with a powerful brand effectively borrows
equiry from that brand and thus enables the
marketer to increase margin on the sale, it is
indeed a kind of theft.
Certain products tend to use provenance
within their brand character rnore overtlx
than others. Fashion labels and cars, for example, are very often provenance-linked;
perhaps because the concept of nati onal
dresshas all but disappeared,the provenance
of one's clothes assurnes a significance
which, at times, threatens to eclipse the
power of the label itself. It is alrnost as important for a suit or a pair of shoes to corne
from Italy as it is for them to be made by
Arrnani or Ferragamo. Style is expected
from Italian clothes, chic frorn French
clothes, bold anti-fashion statements from
British clothes, street credibiliry from American clothes, and the expectancy of weatherproofness from Gernran or Scandinavian
clothes is so powerful that the ManchesterbasedBerghalrs colnpany saw fit to adopt an
ersatzGennan name for their brand.
Indeed, the link between certain brands
and thei r country of ori gi n can become so
powerful, through consistent and high-profile marketing, that it is difficult to decide
rvhether the perception of a particular quality derives rnore from the brand or from its
provenance: in other rvords, brands can create or enhance the perception of a country
as much as the reverse. Arguably, the effect
of technology-led international advertising
carnpaignson the part of Mercedes, BMW
Audi and Volkswagen over the decades is
now a significant part of the reason rvhy
people associateGerrnany with technologi-

TneLe 1 Txe TNFLUENcE

oF rrALrANrNTHEcAR rNDUsrRy
Manufacturer

Country of origin

Name

Italian rneaning

Datsun
Nissan
Nissan
Mazda
Mitsubishi
Daihatsu
Suzuki
Suzuki
Hyundai
Daewoo
Ford
Chrysler
Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Mercedes
Porsche
Porsche
Opel
Aston Martin
Renault

Japan
Japan
Japan
Japan
Japan
Japan
Japan
Japan
Korea
Korea
USA
USA
Germany
German
Gerrnany
Germany
Germany
Gennany
Germany
Germany
Germany
UK
France

Stanza
Serena
Figaro
Piazza
Carisma
Cuore
Alto
Baleno
Sonata
Leganza
Mondeo
Pronto
Palio
Vento
Lupo
Corrado
Scirocco
Vito
Targa
Carrera
Corsa
Volante
Laguna

Room (in a house)

Serene
Opera title
Square(in a torvn)
Charisma
Heart
High
Lightning
Ringing
(Eleganza)Elegance
(Mondo)'World
Ready (or Spanish:soon)
Contest, Siennesefestival
Wind
Wolf
Conrad (man'sname)
Sirocco (wind)
Man's name
Plate (nameof motor race)
Name of race-track
Race
Steering wheel
Lagoon

cal excellence: the belief that Italians are

stylish and romantic is perpetuated in the
way that Italian cars and other products are
marketed around the world (and not always
by Italian companies): in effect, brand owners are helping to perpetuate or create global
cultural myths in their own right.
C o n s e q u e n tl y , c o n s umers around the
w o rl d c o n ti n u e to e x p ect engi neeri ng excellence from German cars, safety and
ecology from Swedish cars, chic design
from French cars, wood and leather from
British cars, economy and efficiency from
Japanesecars: but the almost universal habit
o f c o i n i n g Ita l i a n a n d Ital i anate names for
cars, irrespective of their real provenance,
i n d i c a te s th a t a me a s u re of sporty styl e or
panache is considered an indispensablein-

gredi ent i n the brand mi x of any car ; t he

habit appeared to take root in this country
i n the 1960s and 1970s w i th the Aust in
Maestro (master), Austin Allegro (merry),
the Ford Capri and Ford Cortina, but has
since become a truly global trend (see
Table 1).
It was recently reported that as many as
50 per cent of all new brands in Japan are
now named after Italian towns and rivers,
although this has probably more to do with
the glamour of European-sounding names,
the fact that Italian words are not too hard
for Japaneseconsumers to pronounce (like
Japanesewords, Italian words almost invariably end with vowels) and the musical sound
ofthe language, rather than any strict association with Italian brand values.

.i
I

tl

But, despite the evident attractivenessof

Italian attributes, and, indeed, the disproportionately large number of global brands
which come from Italy, it cannot begin to
challenge the dominance of brand America.

BRANDSFROMAMERICA
More than any other country, America appears to be blessed with a huge range of
positive brand attributes: one only has to
observe its more successfulexport brands to
see the expressivepower of these attributes.
America is associated with the definitive
youth lifestyle (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, MTV
Levi's, Wrangler); with sporting prowess
(Nike, O'Neill, Rockport, Reebok, NBA,
Timberland, Nautilus), with technological
supremacy (lBM, Compaq, Dell, HewlettPackard,AT&T Motorola, Intel, Microsoft);
America is well-travelled (BoeinB, Hertz,
Marriott, Avis, NASA, Holiday Inn, Shera(CNN,
ton);
well-informed
Time,
Newsweek, National Geographic, NBC,
Il.euters); and, naturally, wealthy and powerful (American Express, Forbes, Citibank,
Diner's Club, Western lJnion). Coming
from America even lends authoriry in areas
that were once considered quintessentially
European, such as fashion (Calvin Klein,
Donna Karan, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, The Gap), beauty (Elizabeth Arden,
Revlon, Max Factor) and even food, albeit
of the convenience variety (McDonalds,
PizzaHut, KFC, Thco Bell etc).
These and many other attributes make
America. without doubt. the worldt most
powerful public domain brand. This may be
merely one of the privileges of being a
powerful and productive nation, but it is
undoubtedly also the result of the fact that
American has branded itself so conpetently
as a country. Brand America enjoys the servtces of the rvorldt best advertising agency
- Hollywood - rvhich for nearly a century has been pumping our two-and-a-halfhour
cinema
which
commercials.

E_

consurners around the world have enthusiastically paid to watch. Brand America also
employs such high-powered salespromotion agenciesas NASA, which periodically
launches a rocket into space, in order to
communicate the superiority of American
technology and industry.
Consequently, American brands can simply hitch themselves onto this powerful national brand. and a cultural and commercial
trail is instantly blazed for then around the
world. Little wonder that so many brands
from other countries are keen to borrow
American attributes.
There are only a limited nurnber of other
countries and regions in the world with
clear, consistent, and universally understood
brand prints, of which a large proportion are
European (England, Scotland, Ireland,
Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland).
Naturally, they are best understood by their
near neighbours, but just like successfulprivate-domain brands, the key attributes of
these brands are known by consumers more
or less throughout the world. Whether one
asks the question in Australia, China or
C hi l e, the sarne basi c associ ati onsexi st:
Switzerland and wealth, Italy and style,
Scandinavia and cleanliness, England and
tradition.
It is equally clear that other countries are
not brands, and have decidedly few internationally-understood attributes beyond their
immediate neighbourhood: ask a Mexican,
an American or a Sri Lankan what qualities
they associatewith Belgium, or Portugal, or
Liberia, or Greenland, and their answer will
be neither long nor fluent.

THE IMPORTANCE
OF SWISSNESS
Switzerland is in many respectsthe classic
wel l -establ i shed E uropean brand, and i t
seems that no matter rvhom one asks
around the rvorld, the same set of Swiss attributes always comes up. These attributes
can be expressed in many different ways,

Taele 2 Txe Swrss: AccoRDrNG

To MYTH
(1)

Srvitzerlandis boring. The Srvissare never lively or exuberant.

()\

The Swissare methodical. They are never in a hurry.

11\

Switzerland is rich. There is no poverry in Switzerland.

(4)

Switzerlandis efiicient. Everything in Srvitzerlandruns like clockwork.

(s)

The Swissare diplomatic. They play a key role in international affairsbecause

they are alwaysneutral.

(6)

The Swissare secretive.Swissbanks are legendaryfor their discretion.

(7)

Switzerland is conservative.The Swissare verv attachedto traditional values.

(8)

The Swissare internationalists.They all speakmany languages.

(e)

The Swissare dependable.They are solid and trustworthy.

(10)

The Swissare arrogant.They think that all thesequalitiesmake them superior to

other nations.

ranging from the insulting to the adulatory,

but the basic ideas are always remarkably
similar. As might be expected, they are neither particularly profound nor necessarily
accurate, and are commonplaces or clich6s
rather than observations based on understanding or familiarity.
The principal Swiss myths, as expressed
by small groups of mixed age and mixed inc o m e g ro u p re s p o n d e n tsi n vari ous countries, appear to be those listed in Thble 2.
As is often the case in international relations, familiarity breeds contempt: the
nearer people are, physically, to Switzerland,
the more likely these myths are to be expressedin cynical or chauvinistic ways. People often argue with their neighbours over
the garden fence.
The French, Germans, Austrians and ltalians seem most likely to turn these 'brand
attributes' into insults, but moving further

and further away, it is found that although

they change remarkably litde in substance,
they are expressed in more and more re'
spectful ways. Once in North America
Switzerland seemsto embody a very full sei
of virtues; in Asia, the Swiss 'brand' appears
to be fainter with distance. but the kev values are still there.
It is most striking how central the image
of the impenetrable Swiss bank is to most
peoplet view of Swissness:it appearsto be
as durable and widespread an icon as
cuckoo clocks, yodelling and fondue, and is
perceived as being the principal 'national
produce'of Switzerland. Switzerland, of all
the European countries, certainly enjoys
one of the clearestimages in other parts of
the world, and in the context of selling financial services, certainly the most appropriate, as the following informal survey
suggestS.

cHARAcrERrslcs
Tnele 3 AH rnronMAL suRvEy oF pERcErvEDNATToNAL
60 ABC1 respondents,aged25-39,10 each fror.nHong Kong, Colombo, London, Copenhagen,
Sio Paulo andBoston rvere each e-mailed a list of 14 possiblenational characteristics*and asked
to match two of them to each of a list of 12 countnes.
Very mixed resultsor a preponderanceof 'Don't Knows' are marked as 'I.Jnclear'in the table; the
listed are those which were selectedby at least30% of the total group, and are in
characteristics
order ofpreference:

"Ar.ogrn..,

France

(Unclear)

Germany

Arrogance,order

Sweden

Efficiency,moderniry

Britain

Arrogance, tradition

BraztI

Sryle,squalor

Italy

Style, laziness

Spain

Inefficiency, laziness

Switzeiland

Wealth, orilet

Belgium

(Unclear)

Netherlands**

Moderniry arrogance

Portugal

Poverry backwardness

Denmark

Cleanliness,moderniry

humiliry, efficiency, inefiiciency, er.rergy,laziness,wealth, povercy, cleanliness,squalor, order,

Inoderniry, tradition, sryle.

t* Perhaps
predictably, clear results were only obtainable for the Netherlands rvhen it was (incorrectly) referred
to as 'Holland'.

It sbould be srressedthat Table 3 is a

highly unscientific and informal survey, and
it is debatablervherher rhere is any point in
doing it more thoroughly, bur it does tend
to confirm the feeling that if any one country has a clear head start rvhen it comes to

credentials for banking services,that country

is Switzerland.
Clearly, horvever, there is no great chalIenge in developing 'national produce'
brands - such as Swiss financial services
companies into international brands

since the correct brand associationsare already in place. Predictably, most of the international brands from Srvitzerland come
under the category of national produce
(chocolate,banking and rvatches),but there
a re i n d i c a ti o n s th a t e xtensi ons to the national brand are beginning to develop
through the activities of S'uvatch.
Swatch, as a basic watch brand, is not really a country-brand exercise at all, just an
update of the national-produce paradigm
'lvatches come frorn Switzerland': but the
company does appear to be starting to blaze
a trail for a genuine development of Swissness, through brand extensions such as
pagers or the Swatch/Mercedes-Benz
'Smart Car' concept, as well as the global
acceptance of Swatch as a credible youth
brand con:ring from Switzerland. A vista of
possible Swiss brand extensions opens up,
ranging from Swatch-branded snowboarding
equipment to Swiss Army-branded worldwide adventure holidays.
The branding equation runs something
like this:
Switzerland : watches
-Swatch : Swiss watch
-Swatch : youth brand
->Switzerland = youth brand.

BRANDSFROMBRAZIL
By contrast to Switzerland and its various
successfulinternational brands, Brazil, one
of the most 'strongly branded' countries in
the world, produces no international commercial brands whatsoever. This is surprising, not least because the brand print of
Brazil is unusually compact: it is associated
with a fairly homogeneous and coherent set
of values. Brand Brazil is strongly biased towards youth markets: samba, carnival, music,
dancing, gaie\, ecology, sex, beaches, sport
and adventure could be the brand print of
almost any successfulyouth product on the
market todav.

Certainly, these clich6s may be depressing, even insulting, to the averageBrazilian,

but they are undeniably a fine platform on
which to build a believable global brand. It
is one of the tasksof advertising and marketing to manipulate these clich6s into something more creative, more substantial, more
fair, nore true.
The fact that there are negati ve associations - pollution, overpopulation, poverfy,
drugs, lawlessness- rvithin the brand print
of Brazil is not necessarilya causefor great
concern, at least from the branding point of
view. After all, a strong brand is a rich brand
,as the writer of this paper has observed in a
previous issue of this journal.2, and richness
implies a complex and satisfying rnix of
many different elements. The brand equiry
of the USA would appear to contain a significant proportion of negative elements. but
this does little to diminish its attraction: especially when one is dealing with younger
consumers, the suggestion of risk is highly
attractive. These are consumers, after all,
who wish to challenge and be challenged.
Certainly, there are good reasons why so
few Brazilian brands have 'u'entured onto the
world marketplace. lJntil recently, economic
problems have meant that merely surviving
in the domestic market has been the main
concern. Now, the environment is changing, and the Brazilian government is actively
encouraging an export mentality in its industries.
The global surge in interest in ecology
also presents a major opportunity for Brazil
at this moment. Brazil, becauseof its 'natural' image, and w-orldwide awarenessof the
importance of the Amazon rainforest to
global ecology, combined with the rvorld
ecology summit being held in Rio de
Janeiro, has begun to push Brazil into the
ecological limelight. Brazil is u'idely perceived as being a natural ecological centre
for planet earth: expressionslike 'the lungs
of the planet' are commonly used around
the world when speaking of the Amazon.

Combine this r'vith the fact that young consumers everywhere are ever more attracted
by products with a 'green' story, and a picture begins to emerge of a growing opportunity for a wide range of Brazrlian brands
- especially in the food, cosmetics, fashion,
music. and even automotive and industrial
fields.
The growing acceptance of 'Brazilianstyle' attributes within establishedinternational brands appearsto confirm the point:
guarani has all but replacedjojoba and ginseng as a 'must-have' ingredient in ecologyo ri e n t ed f ood and c o s m e ti c s , a n d o th e r
Rrazllian themes and ingredients feature in
the Body Shop's current range, in Ben &
Jerry's ice creams,even in video games.
It appears, however, that many younger
consumers around the world are still unclear
about the exact role of the Brazilian government and population when it comes to apportioning blame for the deforestation and
pollution which goes on in their country:
are they the perpetrators, or are they are
simply the exploited victims of first-world
greed?
This uncertainry spells out an additional
opportuniry for Brazil's international public
irnage - perhaps the most urgent one of
all. The global brand-owners club is an exclusive one, and membership is neither free
nor automatic for any country. Quite aside
from the major investment which individual
companiesneed to make in creating, distributing and marketing international brands,
the country itself needs to make an investment in its image as an acceptableproducer
of ecologically-themed brands.
There can be little doubt that Brazil norv
L^
nasa hne opportuniry to buy iself a place in
th e hear t s and m in d s o f th e rv o rl d ' s c o n sulners- and mosr especiallythe all-powerful younger consumers simply by
taking a visible and effective srance on these
pressingecological issues.Ifsuch a gesture
was major, real, and lasting (young consumerscannot
easily be fooled by dogma or

rhetoric), and properly managed in PR

terms, it could pave the way for a real renaissanceof Brazil itself and Brazilian brands
around the world.
Currently, almost all of Brazilt export income derives frorn the sale of raw commodities (such as soya beans, tobacco, iron
ore and coffee), semi-processedgoods (such
as cellulose, steel, soya oil and sugar) and
largely unbranded manufactured goods
(such as shoes, orange juice, sheet steel and
automobile tyres); and many of these exports contribute directly or indirectly to the
depletion of the country's natural resources.
There is no question that if these bulk
exports were to be enhanced or, indeed, replaced by the sale ofbranded goods directly
to overseasconsumers, profits would rise
dramatically, and the level of profit generated by the successof these brands might
soon overtake the income created by the export of commodities. After all, much of the
real wealth of 'first-world' nations comes
not from the sale of their natural resources
(many first-world countries have precious
few to export), but from the export of manufactured items developed into brands by
the added value of intelligent marketing. An
economy which depends on income generated by bulk export is caught in the classic
third-world poverty trap, and learning to
develop successful domestic brands into
global brands is certainly one way out of it.

BRANDEXPORTAS A STRATEGY
FOREMERGING
ECONOMIES
One of the great advantagesof brands over
commodities is that they are an infinitely
sustainableresource (as long as their equity
is maintained through careful marketing),
becausethey are made of air, and are thus, at
Ieast in theory, the ultimate ecological export.
Clearly, the notion of exporting brands
rather than produce is a compelling one for
manv countries other than Brazil. Almost

any 'energing' nation could benefit from a

movement torvards global brand export, and
ultimately escape from the third-world
poverry cycle in this rvay. Not all emerging
countries have Brazil's natural advantages:a
strong nation-brand, cornbined with an increasingly healthy economy, a government
which actively encouragesthe export rnentaliry not to mention considerable domestic
experience in brand-building. After all, even
though it only emerged from military rule
and hyperinflation a few short years ago,
Brazil has a democratic tradition, and this
has enabled the creation of many highly successful entrepreneurs, domestic conrpanies
and domestic brands (not to mention one of
the best advertising industries in the world).
Even so, without stretching the imagination too far, one can see how the principle
could apply in the case of other countries:
Russia, China, India, and many African
countries have the potential to build srrong
brand associations,as they are richly embedded in global culture and history.
David Tang, owner of the Hong Kong
department store Shanghai Tang, has recently opened a branch in New York, and is
quoted as saying, 'I've always wanted to create a Chinese brand. In Hong Kong our
shopping malls are overrun with rnore and
more 'Western brands, yet no-one else has
applied their minds to evolve the Chinese
style'.
Perhaps some smaller countries could,
with care. be built into valuable 'niche
b ra n d s '
S ri L a n k a, P eru, V i etnam,
Poland, Tibet - the list is a long one, and
matching potential private-domain brands
to these public-domain brands is a fascinating and thought-provoking exercise. The
key is simply to be relevant yet imaginatiue,
becausea too literal-minded approach to the
problem will merely result in endlessvariations on the theme of national produce.
In today's global village, where geography
colrnts for so little, countries become like
factories, competing for the same broad

groups of consumers. Naturally, each factory

becomes associatedwith certain strengths
and attributes: in the same way that consumers would probably not buy Toshiba
shampoo or Mercedes soup, they are unIikely to rush out and buy Dutch perfunre
or a Brazilian CD player. But Brazil might
be the perfect provenance for surf gear or
football boots or cocktails, and a stylish
Russian raincoat, upmarket Chinese stationery or Indian accountancy software
might one day seem as natural and appropriate as a Korean television or a Malaysian car
do today and both of these seemed
strange enough twenry years ago.

GLOBALBRANDSAND THE
CHANGINGCONSUMEF
During the long years of the American and
European domination of global brands, consumers around the world have become
rapidly more discerning, more sophisticated
in their tastes, wealthier, better informed
and generally exercise more power than ever
before over manufactLrrers.By and large,
these brands have not been marketed with
any great degree of sensitivity to local cultural conditions - in the recent past, their
superior qualiry and glarnorous provenance
have been sufficient to ensure their instant
acceptance over poor-quality domestic
equivalents.
But those domestic brands which have
survived have done so by quickly learning to
cornpete on price, qualiry and sophistication
of marketing, packaging and presentation.
Consequently, the playing-field is becoming
gradually more and more level.
It seemslikely then that consumers, especially in poorer countries, will begin to look
for a more sophisticated combination of import-style quality and domestic-style relevance in their imported brands. In some of
the emerging markets of Europe, for example, there is already evidence of a consumer
backlash against the insufficiently sensitive

marketing techniques practised by some foreign brand-owners: the sight of the Latvian
Minister for Culture symbolically tearing up
a package offoreign coffee on the national
television news (because of the 'cultural
vandalisri' performed on the Latvian language by the unhappy company's advertising
carnpaign)is one of many such indicators.
It may well turn out that Brazilian and
other third world brands have a distinct advantage over American and European
brands when it comes to making friends
among consumers in some of the worldt
key growth markets - Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and one day Central
Asia and South Asia because of their
humbler provenance and because of their
status as non-imperialist, non-colonial
power. These are 'colleague countries',
which may well find that their provenance is
not merely an important characteristic of
their brand personality, but a fundamental
preliminary to consumer acceptance.

BRANDBRITAIN:NO EXCEPTIONTO
THERULE
There is no question that the longer-established nation brands will need to modernise
themselvesto match the new order, and it is
no accident that the UK's new government
often speaks of the need to 'rebrand
Britain'. The associationsof Brand Britain
are by no means entirely negative, but since
they appear to be intimately and ahnost exclusively associatedrvith the country's past,
they are decidedly limiting for British
brands which wish to be perceived as
nrould-breaking, forward-looking, technologically comperenr. This is at least part of
the reason why both Brirish Ainvays and the
British Tourist Authority (BTA) have recently replaced the national flag with logos
of their
to the disgust of many.
However, the good intention must be
married to actual knowledge and understanding of the cultures to which the nerv

face is to be presented: in branding terms,

the consurner mllst be understood before
considering how to rebrand. There is nothing wrong with the new logo chosen for the
BTA - except, of course, that it is based on
the word Britain, spelt out in Roman letters, which, of course, is a meaningless
squiggle to the vast majoriry of visitors from
countries who do not use the same writing
system as ns. It would be precisely the same
thing if the JapaneseTourist Authority decided to rebrand itselfas

E
- hardly the action of a deterrnined multinationalist.
The need to present B ri tai n as bei ng
more European, more global, is certainly a
primary need. There is undoubtedly a lingering acceptanceof the British as internationalists, but it can only derive from our
l ong hi story of determi ned, i f not brutacolonisation of large portions of the globe.
What is now necessaryis for that internationalness to be underpinned by a more
modern value-set: wisdom, open-mindedness,cultural sensitivity, and willingness to
listen and to learn from other coutrtries.
Indeed, what appears to many to be a
mere production detail - speaking other
languages- may well prove to be a fundamental first stage in the rebranding of
Britain. One of the aspectswhich best characterised our aggressiveinternationalism in
past centuries was our refusalor inabiliry to

speak other people's languages, which is

why Tony Blair's recent address to the
French Chamber of Deputies in French was
received with far more delight and surprise
than his moderate A-level French would
lead one to expect: he sau'the need to make
the effort.
The writer has commented elsewhereon
the remarkable fact that 'ethnic' marketing
has never been seriously practised in the
uK, despite the evidence of decadesof experience in the USA and Australia to prove
that it contributes significantly to brand loyalry and despite the fact that a good ten per
cent of the UK population does not speak
English as its first language: this is further
evidence of the lack of importance which
the British, as a nation, have tended to place
on language as a culturally significant tool
and behavioural motivator.
The immense good fortune of having a
global lingua franca as our native language
can make the British dangerously indolent.
Of course, many people around the world
speak English, but when trying to interest
them in products, the key issue is hardly
whether they can understand what the
British are saying or not. The more important question is: should they be making the
effort to understand the British, or should
the British making the effort to make themselvesunderstood by other nationalities?
As with any brand print, the solution will
never be simple or pure. Successfulbrands,
especially successfulinternational brands, are
often characterised by their richness and
complexiry and provenance, just like any
other brand characteristic, can exist in degrees, and can appear to be multiple. British

Airways noted that Britishness is a valuable

attribute for certainaspects
of an airline brand
- those parts connected with seryice and reliability - but an airline needs many more
attributes for which Britishness can never be
adequate shorthand. Retaining the rvord
British in the brand name is enough; for the
rest, airlines need to be global travel brands
rather than national carriers, so the graphic
elements celebrate the company's multicultural rather than monocultural aspects.In
other words, the brand becomes the best
kind ofBritish: a Briton who has travelled.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that
the global brands of the twenry-first century
need to acquire a new talent: sensitivity to
culture. For decades,high product quality,
competitive pricing, a glamorous provenance and effective distribution have been
sufficient to ensure international marketing
success- but this is export marketing, not
global brand-building. More than ever before, brand management must be informed
by deep understanding of the culture of the
marketplace as much as by understanding of
the culture of the brand itsele and success
will be determined by the abiliry to exploit,
skilfuIly and intelligently, such complex cultural mysteries as provenance in the service
of brand imase.

RereneHces
(1) (1997)D&AD CourseTutors'
Seminar,London, September.
(2) Anholt, Simon (1996)'Makinga
Travel', TheJournaloJBrand
Management,
Volume 3, Number 6, pp.
357-364.