Nation Branding: 5 things Greece should do

Dear “Olympia”,Greece’s nation brand image is suffering badly from the Greek government’s debt crisis, and the country has to do something about it urgently.Greece has no positive brand in the modern sense of the word and it needs to improve it. The image of Greece at the moment is negatively inspiring. In today’s world, Greece needs to expose its profile in a clear and consistent way.But, how should that profile be? Which values should it be based on? What’s the “Greek” identity? What should “Made in Greece” mean?

Principles of branding apply in equal measure to countries as they do to businesses and corporations.
Creating a branding program for a country demands an integration policy that most countries do not possess the ability to act and speak in a coordinated and repetitive way about themes that are the most motivating and differentiating a country can make.

In the coming weeks, Dot Kite will analyze Nation Brand Images. Why? Because we believe that the benefits of a consistent and professional country branding can be observed in every region. They include the ability to win more investment business because the country image says the right things about taxation, labor skills, safety, the environment, political stability plus the chance to apply a ‘made in’ label because it will positively aid the sale of a product in an overseas market.

As first case study, we will analyze the brand “Greece”.
(For the avoidance of any inconvenience, I would like to state in advance that what I describe – both in textual and visuals – bellow, is just in conceptual level and there is no single connection to reality)

Greece’s nation brand image is suffering badly from the Greek government’s debt crisis, and the country has to do something about it urgently. Greece has no positive brand in the modern sense of the word and it needs to improve it. The image of Greece at the moment is negatively inspiring. In today’s world, Greece needs to expose its profile in a clear and consistent way. But, how should that profile be? Which values should it be based on? What’s the “Greek” identity? What should “Made in Greece” mean?

To improve its nation brand, Greece could and should do some of these 5 things:

Naming: Before re-creating a brand for Greece, we should start from the most important element, the name. The Hellenic Republic (official name of Greece) is most commonly known as Greece and less commonly known as Hellas. This might be the perfect moment to leave back the “bankrupted” brand “Greece” (which is more associated with the country’s history since the times of the Roman invasion) and move forward with the brand name Hellas which is more associated with the ancient times and the Hellenistic period.Transparency: With the recent financial crisis in Hellas and having received money from other european countries and the IMF, the Hellenic government should bring strict transparency to the received funds. Online and live tools shou