Marketing Safari

Nation branding: Icesave, the referendum and the brand Iceland

2010-03-08T23:13:00+00:00

It's been an interesting weekend in Iceland, with the first referendum since Iceland got independence from Denmark in 1944. After heated discussions about the importance, or non-importance of the referendum, and what the people of the world will think of Iceland after all of this Icesave talk, I'm now leaving all that behind heading for new adventures. I'm sitting on a plane with a fantastic view over snow capped mountains, frozen lakes and deep narrow fjords of Norway, heading to the PhocusWright conference at ITB Berlin. But lets wrap up first.

Icesave is a dispute between Iceland on the one hand and UK and the Netherlands on the other about Iceland paying back the money those countries used to bail out depositors in their countries because of the bankruptcy of an Icelandic bank operating there. I'm not going to tire you with arguments about what would be just, Iceland to pay or not, and under what conditions. My focus is on the effect this case has on the brand Iceland.

When the Icelandic president vetoed the law confirming an agreement that those countries had made, it made headlines all around Europe. It was a very unusual act by the president but over 56.000 people, about 23% of registered voters, had signed a petition to the president to do so because they felt Iceland was being forced into a deal it could never withhold, a debt prison where every man, woman and child in the country was being forced to pay back 12.000 Euros per person to UK and NL, plus interest. The veto meant that the law should be put up for a vote by the Icelandic nation.

The referendum was last saturday and the question was simple: should the law confirming the agreement be accepted or denied. The message was clear, 93,2% voted for NO, 1,8% voted for yes and the rest were blank votes, mainly protesting that there was a referendum when a better deal was already in the making. This again got media attention in Europe and the US. Both when the president vetoed the law and after the referendum, the articles and the media coverage was mixed, some saying Iceland would be outcasted because she would not pay, while others said it was the right thing to do because Iceland was getting unfair treatment forced to pay back the debts of a private company abroad - and that anyone could be next.

All the criticism Iceland got abroad, has got many people here in Iceland worried about the brand Iceland. They are worried that it is now ruined. That is based on the incorrect assumption that negative publicity always has a negative effect on a brand. We should all know that those who always try to please everyone usually don't get much respect and usually have an unclear image as they are likely to change their behaviour to please someone else. On the other hand, those who are true to their believes and opinions and are consistent in their behaviour tend to strengthen their brand and image, whether they are pleasing people or not.

Icelanders have been proud of being hard-working, independent and stubborn people who are willing to go along way to protect their newly gained independence and interests. Proud of being the nation that has never had an army of its own but still conquered Britain in three wars in the last century. The veto and the result of the referendum is consistent with the image Iceland earned last century and is only strengthening that. That is a good thing for the Icelandic brand.

In 2009 there was a 5.5% decrease in tourism in Europe. In Iceland the government cut the marketing budget for Iceland as a destination by 20%. Additional to that, Iceland got a lot of negative publicity because of the collapse of the banking sector and grim economic prospects. One could expect this to have a devastating effect on the tourist industry in Iceland. But guess what. Iceland had an increase in tourism in 2009 despite all this. Now, popularity as a tourist destination is NOT the same as a nation brand, though some correlation can be expected. It would be interesting to see what effect all this has on Iceland in Anholt's Nation Brand Index, but my guess is that participation in that research is one of the post that have been cut down. There are three main factors that can be pointed out to explain the increase in tourism in Iceland:

1. Good negative publicity

2. Fall of the Icelandic krona making the country more affordable for foreigners

3. Better use of the marketing budget, shifting focus more to the core markets, cutting down the less efficient marketing channels and the overhead

This of course doesn't mean that ALL negative publicity is positive. But it is a reminder that negative publicity isn't neccesseraly negative for your brand. It can be a reinforcement of it. Besides, the smaller your brand is, the less you have to lose and more you have to gain. Just think Borat. Before Borat noone knew anything about Kazakhstan. Now people know at least that there is a country named Kazakhstan they know nothing about. That's the first step.

The lights on my left are shaped like Copenhagen. That's good. It's getting dark and the trolls are probobaly about to wake up in the Norwegian mountains. Better be out of their way.

See you at ITB Berlin
Hjörtur

Around the World in 80 Commercials - Belgium

2010-03-03T05:42:00+00:00

This one has become a classic. First aired in Dutch, and later in French, it has now got global attention with millions of views on YouTube. And fully deserves it.

Condom ads seem to be very popular for some weird reason. Maybe it just proves that what people tend to feel awkward and shy about has a great potential for a humorous approach.

Hjörtur

ps. Remember some fantastic local or foreign commercials? Please share them with us :)

Social Media Marketing Tips for Travel Companies

2010-03-02T21:47:26+00:00

[This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh. Stacey is from the UK and works in online marketing for Tecmark: SEO London]

Travel is one industry that absolutely epitomises the way that the Internet has changed how we sell to our customers and market to potential customers. Gone are the days of booking holidays in a travel agency in your nearest town. In fact, according to Nielsen/Netratings stats, 55% of holidays are now booked online and another 17% are researched online and then booked by phone. With such a high proportion of the market turning to the web, can any travel company afford not to market online?

Absolutely not.

Social media marketing is just one area of digital marketing but its unprecedented growth and a number of success stories have tempted more and more businesses into Twitter, Facebook and the world of blogging. As anyone who’s tried their hand at social media marketing will tell you, it’s not as simple as just signing up for an account. Here are a few handy hints to get you started however.

Attracting Twitter Followers

While it’s fair to say that some people will follow you on Twitter just because they know your brand name, there are unlikely to be enough of these (unless, perhaps, you’re Google), to build up the large following that you’d like. The main thing to consider when it comes to attracting followers who will stick around is what they get from following you. A fine example here is Virgin Trains, a huge company but one who offers personal customer service through Twitter! You can Tweet to @virgintrains to bring up comments, complaints or even random thoughts and you will get a response too! This is a huge benefit from people and saves customers from waiting in a telephone queue. It’s certainly a good reason for people to follow you. Another option is to make certain promotional codes and discounts available to Twitter followers, again offering a benefit to people following you.

Blogging

A blog is an excellent way to keep your site alive with new content frequently and an even better way to communicate with your customers or potential customers. However, when it comes to business blogging, too many companies fall into the trap of making the blog only about the company. Sorry to say it, but the fact that your secretary’s son’s next door neighbour’s Grandma’s best friend just had a birthday party really is scraping the barrel for blogworthy topics. So extend the blog beyond your company and staff. Certainly, if there’s a big change, new product or development or a promotion within the business, blog it. But open up to industry wide news too. For travel in particular this means you can blog on certain destinations, travel trends etc. Make it a great source of travel related information, therefore giving people a reason to come back and read more!

Networking within your Niche

Find bloggers who write on travel related topic and begin networking. Established blogs often have a regular readership of people interested in that niche, so who are in turn interested in what you do! Offer to share your expertise with these blogger in the form of content for their site. Share your knowledge and importantly, set yourself up as an authority within your area. If you know your stuff and you share your knowledge enough, over time you can establish yourself as the person to ask if someone needs to know something travel related. This is a priceless attribute for marketing.

The hints covered here really only just scratch the surface of the potential for online marketing through social media. The key thing to remember is that the biggest investment is in the form of time rather than money with social media and there’s huge importance placed on being personable. Don’t hide too much behind a logo and branding!

You can follow Stacey on Twitter.

Around the World in 80 Commercials - Poland

2010-02-25T17:29:00+00:00

This one is tricky and you might have to watch it a few times before you see anything interesting in it. So go ahead:

Didn't get it? Try again - and I'll give you a hint "Vision Express"

Hjörtur

ps. if you still don't get it, just say so and I'll give you another hint ;)

Around the World in 80 Commercials - Korea

2010-02-17T03:26:00+00:00

They're going bananas in this Korean banana milk commercial. You can too, because it's a karaoke commercial. So be ready to dance and sing along ;)

Hjortur

Are You Being Censored?

2010-02-11T22:35:01+00:00

Freedom of speech is a privilege that the public has fought for, and given their life for. But I think the public in the west might be taking this privilege too much for granted now.

Connecting with people from different parts of the world and hearing about their fight for freedom of speech is a good reminder of the tremendous importance of these rights and that it is not something we can take for granted. It is something we have to always be aware of and make sure is not taken from us.

When things get tough, when people get desperate, it doesn't take long to lose the rights we take for granted. Hitler was democratically chosen because he offered solutions to a grave economic situation. Within days after he took power, civil rights had been removed, protesters killed and the rest is history. We've seen how US citizens, as well as US visitors have lost much of their rights because of new regulations following 9/11. Driven by fear, people accepted what would have been an outrage only few months earlier.

In January last year a very moving editorial was published in a newspaper in Sri Lanka. A post mortem article from an editor who wrote about the chances of him being killed and why that was. He was killed before the article was published.

We are seeing how people are fighting against oppressing governments in China, Iran and elsewhere in the world, where journalists are jailed and sometimes disapear, where all mainstream media is edited and censored, where access to the internet is restricted and where the government is using all methods they can think of to control access to information. China even tried to control who Barack Obama would meet with and freedom fighters in Iran are filling the streets today in their green revolution. Social media is an extremely powerful tool to fight this oppression of the freedom of the speech. We are seeing how demonstrators and independent minds are trying to get the word out through blogging, through twitter and through other channels of social media.

When China closed access to Twitter on June 4th, they were censoring me. I have twitter friends in China which I talk to and share information with and now what I say can not reach them. Well, until they found a way around it.

The China hacker attack on Gmail, the Iranian gmail censorship, the hacker attack on Norwegian online newspapers that published the drawings of Mohamed just last night are all examples of forces that are trying to suppress the freedom of speech and censor the information flow.

But these are dangers to the freedom of speech we are maybe more aware of. There are threats to freedom of speech much more closer to us than we like to think. Whether in Iceland, the US or Europe, there are forces which maybe don't try to censor information directly, but very strategically try to manipulate the information that gets through, and the way they are portraited. That's maybe something that will never be prevented as people try to get the story out in a form that best benefits them selves, but it's important that we are aware of those efforts and threats and do our own fact checking.

In the last war in Palestine we saw the propaganda war that was being fought in both the traditional media as well as in social media. That was expected. What I did not expect was when I started hearing from people who were posting pro Palestinian videos on YouTube and Facebook that were removed. You see, these websites are extremely important in modern day information sharing and the power of the managers of the site is disturbingly much.

This doesn't only apply to a conflict like the Israeli-Palestine conflict. This also applies to pictures of breastfeeding that were removed from Facebook, false reviews companies are paying people to write, etc. There's a rumor about "The 50 cent army" in China, an army as big as 300.000 people that get paid 50 cents for each comment or forum post that reinforces the views and "truth" of the government and by that distorting and manipulating a healthy critical discussion. That is a kind of manipulation that a political party in the west might easily think of doing.

So let's remember this:

There are two sides to every story. Before aggregating a story, do a fact check and listen to the other side.

Never take the freedom of speech for granted.

Fight for others freedom of speech. Like the German poet Niemöller said:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Hjörtur

ps. if you want to follow the events in Iran today and hear what you can do to help spread the word, follow Negar Chevre on twitter.

pps. The image is from a brilliant photographer on Flickr and an old friend of mine, Timbersmith.

Google Buzz: 5 Reasons You Should Flush the Buzz Out

2010-02-11T16:42:28+00:00

Tried out Google Buzz this morning and my first reaction is 'not impressed'.

1. 'Open' sharing? The most obvious reason is that Google Buzz is for those with gmails and google profiles. As Graham Jones points out on his blog this morning Microsoft live has double the number of visits as gmail has and yahoo has five times the traffic.

2. Innovate - don't imitate. The Buzz brings nothing new to the market. It's pretty much like friendfeed or any other sharing platform out there. It will probably be used by some number of people, but it's very unlikely to attract any crowd. Not even the name is new. Yahoo already has a Buzz.

3. Over promise - under deliver. Google manages to create an enormous hype and attention around a new product that brings nothing new. The next wave? The result is widespread disappointment.

4. Need to know or nice to know? Google automatically picks out people for you to follow based on the ones you communicate the most with via gmail and gchat. It's not a suggestion, they follow them for you. Well, maybe Id like to keep my buzz for my friends only, or collagues only. Or there are people I exchange mny emails with because I have to, not because I want to and would absolutely not want in my buzz stream. That should be my decision but not Google's. Suggesting the people is smart, adding them automatically is not.

5. Privacy violation! Google doesn't only automatically add connections to your profile, but makes them public to the world by default. Google being reckless with our privacy information is a serious matter, considering how much information Google has about most of it's users. You can read more about that on Lifehacker.

And finally, one reason to follow the Buzz - It's got an integrated search engine driven by Google :)

Hjörtur

Around the World in 80 Commercials - Russia

2010-02-10T03:09:00+00:00

This week I'm going to show you a Russian commercial that combines several Russian stereotypes - the spy, the babushka and the vodka:

Hjortur

Around the World in 80 Commercials - The Netherlands

2010-02-03T14:55:00+00:00

It's all about communicating. This commercial is one of the most popular ones on the Internet with over 14 million views, so you've most likely seen it before:

It always helps when we understand each other ;)

Hjörtur

Please, help me find Karen in Denmark

2010-01-21T12:26:40+00:00

Do you remember Karen from Denmark? The one who was looking for the father of her son, August, and then a new home for her fish? Well, she obviously wants to become a big YouTube star.

I'm running a social media marketing workshop in Denmark next week, one in Aarhus on Thursday and one in Copenhagen on Friday. In the workshop I'll be helping people and companies to find their way through the social media jungle, so I though I might help Karen out and invite her to the workshop. But I don't anything about her except that her name is NOT Karen. So if anyone out there knows Karen, please show her this video:

Karen can contact me by sending me an email to workshops@scope.is.

Hjörtur

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