OPINION:Cultivating perception of 'Brand Ireland' offers real opportunities but some careful treading is required, writes JOHN FANNING
A WISE OLD commentator on branding once remarked that brands are “fiendishly complicated, slippery, half real-half virtual things: when CEOs try to think about brands their brains hurt”.
If business chief executives find the subject of branding difficult, think of how frazzled Government ministers’ brains must be now that they regularly invoke “Brand Ireland” as the latest answer to all our woes.
One indication of the slipperiness of the subject is a recent backlash from the artistic community rejecting the iniquity of being conscripted into service on behalf of some managerial monstrosity.
The backlash was presumably inspired by the increasing level of comment about “Brand Ireland”, sometimes in conjunction with newly coined cliches like “monetising our culture” and often emanating from the latest fount of all wisdom: Farmleigh.
I want to start by clearly distinguishing between Brand Ireland and Ireland Inc. The latter is a revolting and meaningless expression.
Ireland isn’t an Inc; it’s a country – end of story. Ireland is however, for better or worse, a brand, given that for all its elusive slipperiness a brand can be defined as the sum total of the impressions, associations, opinions and images that people have about anything.
Under that definition we simply have no choice in the matter; Ireland is a brand. Where we do have a choice is whether we want to manage the brand.
There are obvious advantages in better management. A small open economy like ours is very dependent on our ability to export and to attract tourists, inward investment, overseas students and managerial and scientific talent. The impressions, opinions, associations and images that people overseas have of Ireland play a significant role in our ability to achieve those objectives. Better management of the overall image of the country would therefore seem to be a good idea but there are two potential pitfalls that must be taken into account.
The first is linguistic; once you start talking of management you unfortunately encounter what has been referred to as “the ghastly lexicon of managerialism”, a lexicon which is never neutral and which can lead the unwary down the slippery slope towards what can be measured as opposed to what actually counts.
The second is the necessity to distinguish between the management of commercial brands and managing a country’s brand image. It was always impossible to control the myriad of messages that contribute to the overall perception of a nation in the minds of overseas audiences. Nevertheless countries, and before that empires, have throughout the ages staged pageants, parades and performances of all kinds designed to draw attention to themselves and enhance their prestige, which constitutes an exercise in branding. Throughout history, smaller countries have tended to concentrate their “branding” on making themselves as distinct as possible from more powerful neighbours.
The reason for the current interest in branding and culture is threefold. Globalisation weakens the capacity of small nations to control their own destiny – eg, monetary policy in our case – and therefore strengthens the need for a more active strategic approach to capitalise on areas of competitive advantage rooted in Irish experience.
Secondly Ireland’s creative and, particularly, literary reputation is recognised around the world and constitutes an important element in the overall impression people have about us.
The third reason is that a creative reputation has become increasingly important in terms of attracting overseas investment and tourists and in enabling exports. In the 20th century businesses wanted to invest in countries with a well-trained workforce who would faithfully adhere to head office instructions. In today’s conceptual age they want people who are creative, imaginative and can think counter-intuitively. Cultural tourism is the fastest growing sector in this market and as more consumers around the world seek to define their identity through the goods they purchase, “made in Ireland” becomes an attractive badge of self-definition.
Although difficult to quantify, Ireland’s creative reputation has already been a factor in encouraging overseas investment, tourists and exports without any co-ordinated management. The question now being asked is whether a more systematic approach would make a difference.
Such an approach would obviously be in addition to the work of managing the nation brand to specific audiences within selected overseas countries by State agencies such as the IDA, Tourism Ireland and Bord Bia. I believe it would be beneficial but given the difficulties in managing a nation brand already alluded to we would need to tread warily. In fact the word “manage” is probably inappropriate: we should instead seek to guide, nudge and prod gently, being continually aware of how valuable an asset we possess and seeking to enhance that value.
If the task of guiding, nudging and prodding was the responsibility of a government department it would mean arguing for an increase rather than a reduction in the budgets of the Arts Council and Culture Ireland in spite of the straightened economic times. As a parallel exercise it would mean communication to the population at large of the importance of Ireland’s artistic reputation.
We need to put our creativity where our mouth is; small imaginative initiatives can often work better than costly extravaganzas. A good example would be this year’s South African initiative of a gift of their national scarf to all delegates at the conference of world business and political leaders at Davos.
A similar Irish initiative might involve putting a slim volume of new Irish poetry under the hotel doors of delegates next year.
John Fanning lectures in branding and marketing communications at Smurfit Business School. He is a member of the board of The Irish Times Ltd