Tag: Country Branding

Country Brand Index 2008

This is the fourth year that FutureBrand, a leading global brand consultancy, has issued its Country Brand Index. After conducting substantial qualitative and quantitative research, this year’s Index includes rankings and trends as well as country brand analytics, travel motivations and insights into the challenges and opportunities within the world of travel, tourism and country branding. With polling expanded to almost 2,700 international travelers on even more criteria, this year’s Country Brand Index is more comprehensive, extensive and insightful than ever.

This year, Australia earns the first spot as the world’s top country brand for the third consecutive year. Not among the top 10 two years ago and rising from its sixth place ranking last year, Canada is recognized second and the United States rounds out the top three country brands in the 2008 study. Other countries making the top 10 include Italy, Switzerland and France. This is the Country Brands Index 2008 top-ten country brands:

  1. Australia
  2. Canada
  3. United States
  4. Italy
  5. Switzerland
  6. France
  7. New Zealand
  8. United Kingdom
  9. Japan
  10. Sweden

This year’s CBI touches on a variety of topics relevant to travelers and tourism professionals including: intergenerational travel (represented by countries such as the U.S., Canada and Japan), medical tourism, mainstream luxury (represented by countries like Japan and Spain), ‘stay’cations and a rise in the off-the-beaten-track trips. Other notable trends this year focus on niche travel opportunities and the changing destination landscape.

The Country Brands Index 2008 rankings for specific dimensions of the brand and here are some examples and the top performers: Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel 1

Destination Branding

Although the concept of branding has been applied extensively to products and services, tourism destination branding is a relatively recent phenomenon. In particular, destination branding remains narrowly defined to many practitioners in destination management organizations and is not well represented neither in branding or the tourism literature.

Communities, cities, and states all compete in the world of everything — commerce, tax bases, cultural riches, hometown intellects, the creative class, and happy folks using it all. It’s the fuel to keep geographic areas going and growing.

It also brews healthy combat zones, the seduction of buyers to destinations. For business or pleasure, the game is called branding. As in, regional branding.

For decades, this practice has existed, but more recently it’s become in business vogue — and a powerful economic advantage.

As people and companies decide where to plop down their roots and cash, just like with any other buying decision, they need to feel the emotional connection to their needs and the earned trust to reduce their fears.

Destination branding is about:

  • clearly defining a purpose
  • distinct
  • consistently communicating a persona
  • delivering on a promise

Here is an interesting reading material on the subject from the online edition of Business Week magazine giving an overview on How States Project a Come-Hither Look, listing some of the strategies US states approached the subject, from logos, slogans, flags all the way to the licence plates.

Posted on by Daniel 0