[KoreaToday] No Logo for South Korea?

Simon Anholt

By Simon Anholt

People tell me that all this hysteria about ``nation branding'' is my fault. Back in 1998, I wrote a paper called Nation Brands of the Twenty-First Century, which was the first to describe how countries need to look after their public images just as much as companies do.

Since then, the idea of nation branding has become so common that almost every week one reads of yet another country launching a branding program to improve its image around the world.

President Lee Myung-bak, as we all know, has identified the task of improving South Korea's rather weak performance in my survey, the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI), as a particularly important challenge for the country's future success and prosperity.

It's true that Korea currently ranks 33rd out of the 50 countries in the Nation Brands Index, but it would be a mistake to develop a strategy on the basis of a simple headline result taken from Internet newsfeeds.

Korea needs to benchmark its international image properly, and this means a close and rigorous analysis of the NBI results with respect to Korea's competitors, its specific overseas audiences, and in individual areas such as culture, tourism, products, education, sport, people, governance or the environment, all of which has yet to take place.

Still, nobody seriously disputes the fact that countries depend on their images, and nobody any longer question my original observation that good governance must include an element of brand management.

But if you look again at that paper I wrote in 1998, you will see that I never spoke about ``nation branding.'' The phrase I used was ``nation brand.'' This is an important distinction. I wrote about how critical a country's brand image can be, but I didn't claim that you could brand a country in the same way you can brand a mobile phone, bank or a corporation like Samsung or Hyundai.

Products and services which are offered for sale to consumers and the companies that make them can certainly be promoted using slogans, logos, advertising and PR campaigns because the products are available for purchase; it is because consumers might be interested in buying them, and marketing helps bring the two together.

Countries, on the other hand, are not for sale, and ``consumers'' in other countries are not usually very interested in them. The reason why Korea has a weak international image (at least outside its own region) is not because it has spent too little on promoting itself but because people simply aren't interested in Korea. And there is, currently, no absolutely compelling reason why they should be. No advertising campaign on Earth can change this simple fact.

Most people in most countries aren't even very interested in their own country, let alone the 200 or so other countries around the world. They are interested in their own lives, their own families and their own neighborhood.

Perhaps they sometimes think about America or China or Iraq or some other country that's regularly in the news. Perhaps they occasionally give a thought to their neighboring countries, another country where friends or relatives live, or another country they would like to visit one day as tourists or migrant workers or students.

But the idea that large numbers of people in Europe, the Americas, South Asia or anywhere else would spend time thinking about South Korea is, at least at the moment, a vain and idle fantasy, and spending taxpayers' money trying to force them to do so is utterly unjustifiable.

Korea could spend 100 billion won on promoting its image, or even a trillion won, and it still wouldn't make itself relevant to the daily lives of most people in Canada or Brazil or India or France.

The cutest logo in the world, the snappiest slogan in history, the most glamorous advertising campaign ever created, simply won't make people admire something that has no relevance or particular appeal to them.

You might as well burn the money. Korea is not a product, and it's not for sale, so spending money on promoting something that isn't for sale, especially in today's tough economic climate, is the height of lunacy.

In all the years I have been working and studying this field, I have never seen one single properly documented case study to prove that it is possible to enhance the international reputation of a country through marketing communications.

There have been plenty of successful tourism campaigns, but that's another matter. With tourism, you're selling a product, and effective marketing undoubtedly helps to sell it more effectively. Korea is already doing this, and must continue to do so.

No, whenever a country's overall image improves, it's because of what the country does, not what the country says. Ireland's foreign investment miracle, South Africa's political miracle, Australia's and New Zealand's tourism miracle, Japan's and Germany's export miracle after the Second World War and Spain's democratic and economic miracle after Franco come to mind. When a nation brand improves, it's always about governance, society, culture, policy, economics, and, more than anything else, timing.

Euh Yoon-dae is absolutely right when he says that Korea's contribution to the international community affects its image.

One of the reasons people don't pay attention to Korea is they don't see it participating in global conversations on the environment, energy, poverty, the financial crisis, disease eradication, or cultural and religious disputes. It's marginal, almost invisible, and not a ``player'' in international affairs.

Korea is perceived as a country which, like most other countries, is the passive recipient of global influences, not an active driver of them; it just isn't one of the handful of ``countries that count.''

So Euh's team should not ask ``What can we say to make Korea famous?'' but ``What can we do to make Korea relevant?'' Instead of asking how they can charm or coerce people into admiring Korea, they should ask themselves why people in other countries should even think about Korea in the first place.

And if there honestly isn't a good reason why they should, and if a good reason can't be created, then the ``nation branding'' project should simply be dropped, and Korea should accept that its destiny, at least for now, is not to be famous or admired outside its own region, just quietly effective. And maybe would be fine, too.

With every government I advise around the world, I always encourage them to start by asking one tough question: What is your country for?

I ask the same question to Korea's leaders. What is Korea for? What is its role in the world? What is its contribution to humanity and its role in the community of nations? Why should people care about Korea, now or in the future? If Korea disappeared off the face of the earth one day, would anybody notice? Would anybody mind? And if so, who would mind, and why?

This has nothing to do with advertising, nothing to do with public relations, nothing to do with design or branding. It has everything to do with good governance and good leadership.

This is not a task that can be delegated to communications agencies: nothing less than a functioning coalition between government, industry and civil society can be trusted to look after Korea's most valuable asset, its international reputation.

Korea is not Samsung, nor is it a fizzy drink or a running shoe. It is a nation, and nations need to earn their reputations, slowly and patiently, through their policies, their investments, their innovations, their people, their culture, their companies, their tourism, and their contribution to humanity.

So please, Mr President Lee, no logos, no slogans and no campaigns. It's time for deeds, not words and pictures.

Who Is Simon Anholt? Simon Anholt is the leading authority on managing and measuring national identity and reputation, and the creator of the field of nation brand and place brand. He is a member of the U.K. Foreign Office's Public Diplomacy Board and has advised the governments of some 30 countries, from Chile to Botswana, Korea to Jamaica, and Bhutan to the Faroe Islands. He is the founding editor of the quarterly journal Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, and author of Another One Bites The Grass, Brand New Justice, Brand America and Competitive Identity ― The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and Regions. He publishes two major annual surveys, the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index and State Brands Index. For further information, please see www.simonanholt.com.

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