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When a nation becomes a commodity: The Country Brand Index 2008
We live in an era of global brands. McDonald's, Starbucks, H&M, Coca Cola, Australia... Wait, what???You read correctly, Australia recently won the top spot of the 2008 Country Brand Index. Nation branding, as it's officially referred to, is the theory and practice of measuring and building the reputations of countries; basically applying standard commercial brand management that you'd find with commodities and using it to analyzing everywhere from Austria to Zimbabwe.
The 2008 study conducted by Future Brand, a global brand consulting firm, used rankings from 30 different categories to come up with the final index. Among the categories were History, Standard of Living, Friendly Locals and Environmentalism. It's like a beauty pageant for countries, with the most well-rounded coming out on top. Here are the top ten:
- Australia
- Canada
- USA
- Italy
- Switzerland
- France
- New Zealand
- United Kingdom
- Japan
- Sweden
When you look at that list, referring to countries as specific brands starts to make a little sense. Don't we all have pretty concrete associations with France for example? Wine, croissants and cheese. And what about Sweden? Meatballs, moose and blondes. Looks like what we once referred to as stereotypes has a new name.
Filed under: Arts and Culture, Europe, North America, Oceania, Japan, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
William Davies Nov 14th 2008 7:54AM
The first thing that struck me when reading your list was that every country is in a group considered to be a developed country, all members of a sort of G7 club.
Where are all those exotic, emerging nations with fascinating culture and history, such as Brazil, China and India, to name but three.
The fact that distinguishes a commodity from a country which is a rich source of aesthetic, cultural and intellectual experiences is that the former is fungible.
That is, a piece of copper or a grain of rice or a barrel of crude oil is just that, wherever in the world you happen to be.
We should never allow the idea of experiencing a country, whether it be the cuisine, the art and music or natural environment, to be compared to physical commodities.
The world of commodity trading is a very differnet one to the world of our hedonistic, intellectual and aesthetic experience.
http://www.commodity-trading-today.com/trade-crude-oil.html
Anna Brones Nov 14th 2008 1:32PM
"The fact that distinguishes a commodity from a country which is a rich source of aesthetic, cultural and intellectual experiences is that the former is fungible."
I fully agree with you William, I just thought that it was quite interesting that some people would equate countries to a brand. Thank you for your comments.