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Branding a nation: What says “Vietnam” to the world?
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VietNamNet Bridge – Building up Vietnam’s image abroad has become a hot topic among patriotic personalities and intellectuals in recent days. Experts met recently to consider the question of national ‘branding.’


Pho? the ao dai? national pride?

Participants at a workshop on building Vietnamese brand names all agreed that building a ‘brand’ for a nation requires sustained attention to creating and managing the images of the nation. First of all, there needs to be a consensus on what materials and what images are most evocative of Vietnam.

The workshop was convened in HCM City by Tri Viet Research and Education Development Centre and the Saigon Media Company

Ly Quy Trung, General Director of the An Nam Group, argued that Vietnam now has every favourable condition to become the ‘kitchen of the world.’ Vietnamese cuisines are unique and fit current fashions in cuisine. “I think that Vietnam should choose food and beverage (F&B) as a vehicle to build up our ‘brand recognition,’” Trung said.

Trung said that becoming an F&B power is within Vietnam’s reach, and proposed that a committee be formed to study the idea.

Meanwhile, Professor Tran Van Khe supports relying on F&B culture, clothes and music as the building blocks for recognition of Vietnam. Khe said that in some English dictionaries, the Vietnamese words ‘nem’, ‘pho’ and ‘ao dai’ now appear, untranslated into other languages, because these are the iconic food and national dress of Vietnam. “These are things that Vietnam can be proud of,” Professor Khe said.

Phan Chanh Duong, a lecturer at the Fulbright programme, said that national branding should arise from the people’s pride in their country. The national brands of developed countries in the world now have also been built on pride about the quality of their consumer products -- footwear, watches, or clothes. Their products have been recognized by the world and the images of the products’ brands are associated with their countries of origin.



The world lacks a post-war vision of Vietnam

Foreign experts stressed that the world still knows little about Vietnam.

Morvarid Kaykha from Singaporean Design Bridge said that when ‘Vietnam’ is typed on Google, most of the pages displayed most prominently contain articles about wars. Foreign media most often reports images of floods, national calamity and cheap labour costs. These are clearly disadvantagious for Vietnam when it tries to persuade foreign investors to the country.

To change the image, Kahkya says, it is necessary to choose materials which show a vibrant daily life to build the national brands. “Vietnam may use its slogan ‘Independence – Freedom – Happiness’ to arouse the pride of the nation during the process of building national brands,” she suggested.

David Keen, Director of Keen Media, which successfully advised Bhutan on national branding, agreed that foreigners do not have much knowledge about Vietnam. In his view, the construction of a national ‘brand’ must be approached in a professional way. Vietnam should make a long term and methodical investment in building national brands, Keen said. There are many things that need to be done, from building up the legal framework and establishing preferential policies, to providing information and supporting enterprises.

Ton Nu Thi Ninh, the well known former diplomat who is now Chair of the founding committee of Tri Viet University, said that misconception about our ‘national brand’ remains common. Some people think that a national brand means the brands of companies that have national stature. In fact, such brands cannot represent the whole country.

Nguyen The Thanh, the General Director of Saigon Media Company commented that for a long time, Vietnam has assigned its trade management agency the task of building up and managing the national brands. It seems, therefore, that in the eyes of foreigners, Vietnam is associated with the export of seafood, rice, coffee, shoes or garments.

In the eyes of other foreigners, ‘Vietnam’ today evokes a safe country with no bombing or war, with delicious food, with beautiful landscapes and friendly people, and… nothing more. There is nothing which is really special that impresses people.

National branding, Thanh continued, should not be exclusively economic. It should evoke history, landscape and culture. Thus it is essential that the task not be left to Vietnam’s trade management agency. The nation ought to form up an organization which has sufficient power to develop and manage ‘national brands.’ And the state should be the conductor.

Source: Doanh nhan Saigon