Marketing Safari

Nation branding: Icesave, the referendum and the brand Iceland

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

Are You Being Censored?

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.

Social Media's Role in Iranian Protests

News from Iran are constantly coming in, in all traditional media. A lot of the information is from twitter streams and Facebook profiles that are believed to be authentic Iranian accounts reporting live to the world.

While the Iranian government has tried to shut down communication the students have managed to find ways to get the message out. And everything that happens is well recorded and video taped and we have to make sure that all authentic message is heard by the world.

Here are the latest updates from today:

WARNING: Contains graphic and disturbing images.

A young girl died today when she got hit by a bullet. Her name was Neda:

When street protests were banned and people told to be quiet they went up to the roof tops and shouted Allah akbar - God is great.

According to Twitter streams, injured people are being arrested in hospitals, tanks are entering the streets and the violence seems to be escalating. There are misleading news though. Here's a list of twitter accounts that are considered fake. Some to follow are news reporters @anncurry from NBC and @andersoncooper from CNN, and people on the ground @change_for_iran, @persiankiwi and @randomhuman.

There isn't much we can do to help, other then show support and make sure their stories get heard. To show support, you can change into a green avartar and retweet the word from trusted sources.

Hjörtur

War 2.0: Digital Fronts in The Georgian Conflict

Russia invaded Georgia last Friday. The Russian army has been moving fast getting control of South-Ossetia and Abkhasia and is moving further in direction to the capital, Tblisi. Now, let's look at a few facts:

Georgia is a European country in the South-East corner of Europe. It used to belong to the Soviet Union but is independent now. It has a democratically elected government and president, Sakashvili and has applied for membership in NATO.

South-Ossetia is populated by 90% Russian ethnic people. They want independence from Georgia which is what Georgia was trying to prevent. The Russians say the same is happening here, as was happening in Kosovo, and therefore the West is being hypo critic supporting Georgia on this one and Kosovo in the other.

Russia's military force is by far superior to the Georgian military force. Russia has about 1200 fighter jets but Georgia has only 7. Russia has about 7.000 tanks while Georgia has 82.

So does Georgia have a chance? In direct military conflict - No. That would just be an unnecessary bloodshed. But they can still "win the war". Iceland won the Cod wars in the fifties and the seventies against the UK, and Iceland doesn't even have an army! Georgia can apply the same strategy, referring to International laws, not obeying to the superior force even though they can not fight back, and that is what they are doing. By offering ceasefire from day one, withdrawing the army from the conflict and calling for international diplomatic assistance they put strong diplomatic pressure on Russia. By continuing Russia is not just dealing with Georgia, it is risking their diplomatic relationship with the European Union, the US and the former Soviet Republics surrounding it. This is where the PR war is fought and on this front Georgia is doing a lot better. Internationally at least. Domestically Russia seems to be doing an excellent PR job proofing that Russia is still a superpower, proofing that if the west supports unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia, Russia can support unilaterally the separation of South Ossetia from Georgia.

In the PR fight, authenticity matters, just as in social media marketing. Here Russia also seems to be doing a worse job, saying they are withdrawing when they are advancing, saying they want the regime removed and that they don't. Georgia has had some problems here to, as on what they were doing to the Russians in South-Ossetia before the invasion, but less discrepancies have been proved there.

Another front in the war is the digital front. Mashable published an interesting article earlier today where they tell about hacker attacks on Georgian institutions that seem to be coming from Russian hackers. Estonia experienced similar attacks in 2005 when they had a "dispute" with Russia. Having good military defense seems to be not only on the physical borders, but on the digital front as well, guaranteeing information security and continuous uptime of their databases, computer systems and protecting their information assets. Therefore, the foreign ministry has moved their hosting to Estonia and civil.ge, the national news site, has moved their site to a Google Blogspot domain. Georgia has even got Estonian cyberdefense advisors to help fight the hacker attacks.

We haven't seen the war spreading into social media yet, but the next move in the war 2.0 might be a blogger or a twitter account reporting directly from the life within the conflict zone and getting sympathy for your cause. Let's hope it wont be long enough for that to develop.

Hjörtur

The Iranian Marketing Plan

I was thinking if I should write anything about the "Iran-Gulf incident" last sunday where Iranian speedboats were swarming around US warships in the Persian Gulf. I was going to write about it from a marketing point of view of course. But after further consideration, I have decided not to. So ignore the title, I just forgot to change it before I posted the article.

Instead I am just going to talk about movies this time. Since this is a marketing blog I can't write about movies, unless the movies are about marketing. So, if you're interested in movies about political marketing, there is a movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro that I can recommend, called Wag the Dog!

Have a wonderful weekend :)
Hjörtur