Brand Singapore. How nation branding built Asia’s leading global city

Simon Anholt, the British policy advisor and author, is credited as the pioneer of this field, and he first used the term “nation branding” in 1996 and published it in 1998 in an article titled “Nation brands of the twenty-first century” in the Journal of Brand Management. In December 2009, Anholt was awarded the Nobels Colloquia Prize for Leadership in Economics and Management – judged by a committee of ten Nobel Laureates in Economics – “for his pioneering work on understanding and managing the identity and image of nations, cities and regions; and the impact of reputation on their prosperity and competitiveness.”

third-party endorsement, then, is the holy grail of branding.

The most successful branding and rebranding efforts manage to tap into the subconscious.

hearts, then minds. You must win over the first before you can affect the second.

This Google trick – of influencing what is said about your brand on a Google search, or what comes up top in such searches – is even harder to pull off when it comes to nation branding.

countries, unlike corporations, it is more difficult to change names and start all over again

nation branding, time can heal almost all wounds.

Branding is the sum total of actions taken to shape perceptions, so as to achieve top-of-mind awareness.

In the global nation branding game, there is no such thing as “job done”, only an unending effort of branding, brand management and rebranding. In Singapore’s case, the city state – politically conditioned over the years to keep running an endless marathon of self-improvement – has already achieved a remarkable amount in what has often been called its ability to “punch above its weight”.

What governments actually do, instead of what they say, is the key to a successful nation branding effort.