It’s time to move the Australian Story forward
By Wayde Bull, Planning Director at Principals.
Simon Crean and his crew at Austrade are clocking up even more air miles than usual, as they scramble to unveil the new Australia Unlimited nation brand at an array of international business expos and sporting events.
There’s really nothing new about a nation’s politicians, trade commissioners and have-a-go exporters talking up their own little corner of the world, trading upon a mixture of facts, convenient cultural stereotypes and Chardonnay fumes. But, of late, the art of branding nations has taken on a much more theoretical, even scientific bent, given the rise of global studies that measure the relative reputation and image of nations on an array of societal, cultural and lifestyle factors. There’s nothing quite like a top-of-the-pops listing of a nation’s strengths and failings to stir its pollies and business patriots to action.
The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index is the study that Austrade most often cites as its benchmark. It’s an annual study of 20,000 adults in 20 countries, exploring what it calls ’six dimensions of national competence’. So what’s the problem that this study uncovers about Australia’s current reputation and image that needs fixing?
On the surface, there isn’t much of one. For the past two years, Australia has ranked a creditable 9th on the Anholt index, which, when compared to our current IMF ranking as the 14th largest economy, suggests our global reputation is healthier than your average nation. Australia’s relative overperformance on the index is explained by three factors : the perceived quality of our governance, the relatable and easy-going character of our people and the timeless pull of our land as a tourism destination. No riveting surprises there. But given a deep national discomfort with coming ninth at anything, what can Australia do to lift its reputation further?
According to the Anholt study, we are marked down on two important reputational drivers, both relating to the national culture. The first is a poor international grasp of Australia’s cultural heritage in both past and present tenses. For many people internationally Australia is a “don’t know” when it comes to questions of a cultural pulse, let alone a lifeblood (with precious little help from Tourism Australia’s recent efforts to set the record straight there). The second problem is a shallow understanding of Australia’s business culture, its worldliness or its contribution to innovation through science and technology. In particular, the nation lacks obvious ‘global pin ups’ that evidence our ability to deliver breakthrough thinking that’s worthy of investing in.
Unsurprisingly, it’s this vacuum of knowledge around Australia’s business culture and capability that’s the centrepiece of the Austrade effort. The launch video for Australia Unlimited seeks to link the boundless nature of the Australian landmass to an attitude inherent in its people, to be unfettered in their thinking; to be bold, creative, driven. It’s encouraging that these poetic claims are beginning to be backed up by concrete examples of home-grown inventiveness capable of surprising even most locals. To our store of familiar homeland firsts, like the invention of the bionic ear, the black box flight recorder and spray-on skin, we now learn that Australians have had a big hand in wi-fi, Google Maps and wave energy capture.
These concrete examples of national ingenuity put into practice what Henry Ford once said; that “you can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do”. To move its business reputation forward, Australia needs to challenge, rather than lean upon, easy cultural stereotypes. It needs to tell new and deeper stories – and to create new kinds of heroes in business, the arts, science and technology, who are doing something incredibly worthy of the world’s attention.
While the debate around Australia Unlimited to date has focused upon logos and endlines, its long term success depends upon a growing number of Australian organisations, in the private and public sector, connecting with the initiative to lend it credibility and authentic meaning. A fascinating role model in community engagement and national storytelling is South Korea, that has committed to a 10 point plan for developing its international reputation and image, just one small element of which is its brand identity. For instance, it has committed to dispatching 3,000 volunteers abroad each year to help promote the nation, to invest in taekwondo as Korea’s signature global sport, to actively assist neighbouring nations to learn how to build fast-growing broadband-enabled economies like their own and to create home-and-away scholarship programs to engender deeper cultural exchange.
It’s this bias for action, dialogue and enthusiastic engagement with the world that will help change a nation’s stereotypical image more profoundly than all the logos in the world.
First published on AFR (www.afr.com) - 10th June 2010
