Is linking your brand to your country's image always a good idea?

Standfirst: Can labelling companies “Brand Singapore” or “Brand Malaysia” actually hurt their growth in other markets?Imagine the ideal Singapore girl in her dark blue kebaya and long silky hair – how much of that image is truly Singaporean?While Singapore Airlines is clearly one of the brands that has leveraged the ideals of “brand Singapore”, using things such as safety, hospitality and reliability as part of its communication strategy to make a mark on the global platform, having a national branding may not work for many smaller firms, especially if they are looking for an international audience.Jacob Ostberg, professor of Advertising and PR at Stockholm Business School, pointed out the perception of the home country might differ from market to market, and could have a completely different effect from the intended purpose.“It might not always be good to use the national image to market all its products when looking to go global because we don’t know what ‘brand Singapore’ or ‘brand Malaysia’ might mean for a specific country across the world. The home country’s image will also most likely differ region to region,” he said.While no doubt thorough research of the country’s image needs to be done before the launch of any new product or ad campaign, it is also important to remember that any country’s image is volatile and can shift very quickly.Hence, sometimes it might be better for brands to completely stay away from tying up with the homeland image, he said.Using examples of Swedish brands, he said while brands such as IKEA and Volvo clearly push the “Swedishness” agenda strongly in their communications campaigns, other brands such as H&M and Spotify take on more of a global image. He explained that brands loosely use four different verticals when devising a communication strategy.These four categories are provincial, national, pseudo international and cosmopolitan.He explained that when brands take a provincial market position, they usually use local insider knowledge on names, locations, traditions and inside jokes. Meanwhile, when looking to use a national brand image, brands play up their connections to their Swedish heritage. One brand that plays up the national image really well is Volvo which uses its engineering and design heritage and also the “blatant use of Swedish imagery and mythology” in its ad campaigns.To take on what is known as a “pseudo international market” position, some brands also try to project “coolness” that is founded elsewhere.“Some brands originating in Sweden disguise their heritage and claim lineage to some vague notion of being international. One such example could be H&M which doesn’t boldly portray its Swedish heritage, but rather comes across to many markets as an international brand,” he said.Lastly, when brands wish to be perceived as more cosmopolitan in the international market they are more open about their connections to Sweden. But they also refuse to be reduced to just a “Swedish brand”. One such Swedish brand that did so was Spotify, he said.He explained that several Swedish apparel brands also would rather hold their fashion shows in Paris and London rather than Stockholm to come across more cosmopolitan in their communication and branding strategies.Creating a national brandBut nonetheless, it is vital for any country to create its own brand image before brands can use that image to springboard into different countries.So how can we shape up a national brand image?Sergio Guimaraes, communications strategist for the Events Unit at Swedish Institute, said the first step was a simple one. Like any other consumer-facing brand, the nation in question needs to come up with how the country wants to be perceived.Giving the example of the award-winning Swedish campaign “Curators of Sweden”, he said that for Sweden, the country wanted to be known as open, innovating, caring and authentic, and ultimately, culminating to the idea of “progressive”.“We want the world to come to the conclusion itself. We didn’t want to just shout about it. When we have our communication strategy we want to be perceived in some of these values, if not all,” he said.In 2011, the government body launched the “Curators of Sweden” campaign where the country handed over its Twitter handle to the public to show what life in Sweden was like. Each member of the public had a week to use the handle to paint a “fair picture” of Sweden for the rest of the world before passing on the torch to someone else.Members of the public had to nominate their peers and the Swedish Institute would then vet through the nominations to hand over the handle to these nominees.“The idea was simple – there was no hidden agenda and the people were not titled brand ambassadors. They had the power to tweet about whatever that was interesting to them. They just had to abide by Swedish rules and not sell products, incite hate or publish harmful material,” Guimaraes said.While the initiative was a great one, he admitted it was also no doubt a high-risk initiative to let the collective Swedish public create a national brand image for the world to see. However, since it was in line with Sweden’s freedom of speech agenda, the institute decided to go ahead with the move anyway.As expected, it was not all smooth sailing with the campaign.Several “curators” were very candid with their tweets. When the first curator took over the account, he decided to let the world know that he dealt with the Swedish winter with a bit of self-love – masturbation. While not exactly what the institute had banked on, the tweets no doubt got a fair bit of traction.Meanwhile, another curator decided to voice the opinion that he was unhappy with how the Swedish government handled several political issues and criticised the Swedish foreign minister.“When the minister was criticised, everyone was expecting us to pull the plug on the project, but since no rule was broken, we didn’t do it. Even the minister who was criticised voiced his opinion on the matter and backed us on the fact that we live in a free country with freedom of speech,” he said.However, just a few days later, the real crisis hit when Sonya Abrahamson, a local Swedish comedian, tweeted on religious issues and questioned the sexual identification of Jews. This gained international media traction.https://twitter.com/sweden/status/212525137046667265“This caused a great hoopla and everyone expected our campaign to be pulled. However, when we calmly analysed the tweet, we decided to take a stand on freedom of speech and fight the media calls. We stood by the tweet because she technically did not break any of the rules,” he said.He explained that following what was a harrowing 24 hours of crisis management, the team managed to turn the negative association into a positive one to portray Sweden’s freedom of speech values.Meanwhile, the attention also helped the project gain a big number of followers with the highest peak happening after Abrahamson’s tweet. In about six months, the campaign gained more than US$40 million in PR value and had over 65,000 followers from 126 countries.“The campaign was not an expensive one to create and launch, but the brand value and PR value we had was great,” he said.So what can “Brand Singapore and Malaysia” learn from this?Guimaraes said that when creating such a project, brands needed to remember that they had to launch a campaign that actually worked for their overall objectives. If the campaign objectives don’t fit with the brand objectives then there is no point in doing it.“Give people what they want, but also give them something they are curious about. Give something which will incite them to learn more on their own,” he said.Also, brands need to be vulnerable enough to show they are not perfect and are also learning. This will leave room for dialogue and the brand won’t just be preaching, but there will be peer-to-peer learning.“It took us years to develop this and such a campaign doesn’t work over night. It requires a long-term commitment and strategy. But ultimately, this campaign showed us that if you give responsibility to people, they will live up to it. Sure some of them have made us sweat, but it has also made the project grow and mature.”The Embassy of Sweden in Singapore and the Swedish Institute paid for this journalist’s accommodation and trip to the event.