KF뉴스레터-Korea’s Strategy for Promoting National Brand

Korea’s Strategy for Promoting National Brand

The 13th Korea Foundation Forum was held on Thursday, April 29 at the New Millennium Hall of Yonsei University. Professor Keith Dinnie, a Scot currently teaching at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, and an expert on nation branding management, gave a lecture entitled “Korea’s National Strategy for Promoting Its National Brand: Comparative and Theoretical Perspective”. This edition of the KF Forum was special, because it marked the first time that it was held jointly with another institution. The Underwood International College of Yonsei University, where the language of instruction is English and the student body is highly international, has become a leader among Korean universities in their pursuit of internationalizing their campuses. The Korea Foundation is planning to reach out more to the younger audiences, and this KF Forum marked a good start in that direction. “Nation branding” is a relatively new idea, borrowed from the product branding principle of marketing. It is an idea that countries, and not just business products, have “brand” qualities that are known throughout the world and work either for or against the particular countries in the international stage, be it in the areas of business, culture, or politics. It is a big challenge for any country to develop a coherent nation branding strategy, given the complexity involved and the large number of stakeholders who have a direct interest in the nation brand.

Professor Dinnie talked about the current interest by Korean government and inst i tut ions on promoting the national brand. The Korean context is characterized by a perceived gap between the well-developed Korean economy but a relatively weak nation brand. This relative weakness of the Korean nation brand is important because
it may limit the ability of Korea to attract inward investment, promote its branded exports, and attract international tourists. It is ironic that there are globally successful Korean brands such as technologies, Korea will improve its attractiveness both to the international commercial sector and also to the international higher education sector in terms of attracting high quality young researchers.
The promotion of the culture and tourism industries is a key dimension of any country’s nation branding strategy. Culture can be a highly effective way to establish a positive image for a country in the eyes of foreign audiences. The United Kingdom, for example, invests considerable resources into the British Council. The British Council plays an essential role in promoting British soft power, primarily through the provision of English language education. The Chinese government is also investing heavily in the promotion of culture through establishing an international network of Confucius Institutes.
For Korea, it may be necessary to consider what is the correct balance between promoting Korean culture through Korean language education or alternatively through the funding of translations of Korean l i terature. Dinnie ment ioned the “niche” within nation branding, the field of “book diplomacy.” This refers to the power of literature to shape perceptions of a nation. It is an element of nation branding that Korea may benefit from investigating.
In the context of nation branding, two of the most powerful forms of culture are food and music. Every country has its own unique food and music, yet few countries have developed a coherent strategy for maximizing the potential contribution of food and music to their nation brand. As an example of best practice, Thailand has developed a well organized strategy for using food to promote its overall nation brand through the “Thai Select” accreditation program. Another example is the government of Malaysia, which has opened “authentic” Malay restaurants abroad, to provide foreign publics with an authentic, high quality dining experience that will stimulate interest in the country of Malaysia. There is an opportunity for Korea to establish best practice, given the existing number of Korean restaurants around the world and the increasing willingness of cosmopolitan consumers to sample different national cuisines.
Dinnie also emphasized the impor tance of developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for the nation branding strategy, so that it is possible to evaluate the impact of the strategy. Each country is unique in its nation branding situation, so Korea should develop its own unique KPIs. There are four key dimensions for which these KPIs are required: investment, export promotion, tourism, and public diplomacy. Many countries fail to evaluate properly because they do not understand both the quantitative and qualitative indicators of performance. This weakness is particularly notable in the area of public diplomacy, where many countries have no measurement system in place to track the effectiveness of their public diplomacy activities.
And lastly, Dinnie discussed that the biggest challenge in nation branding may be encouraging cooperation within and between the public and private sectors. Continual efforts must be made to maximize the zone of collaboration between not only the public and private sectors but also between different public sector agencies and different private sector agencies. This also represents an opportunity for Korea to develop innovative collaborative models that the rest of the world will look upon as best practice. Also, Korea’s success in nation branding strategy will depend much on keeping the current enthusiasm for the concept, keeping the strategy flexible enough to respond to new opportunities, and develop a range of relevant KPIs.

한국국제교류재단

Korea’s Strategy for Promoting National Brand

SEARCH

Korea’s Strategy for Promoting National Brand

SEARCH

전체메뉴