Problem #1: Greece is perceived to be backward.

Solution: Make programming a compulsory subject in schools.

In the digital age, programming is a basic skill as much as knowing English is. Furthermore, in the future it’ll a fundamental tool for personal freedom as it grants the ability to achieve things in full independence. All Greeks should know ancient Greek, modern Greek, English (they already do all of these things by now) but also some programmming language as well. This would signal Greece’s intention to finally leave the past behind and conquer the future in a very expressive way.

Problem #2: Greece is perceived to be a haven for tax fraudsters.

Solution: Forbid cash.

Illegal funding, robbery, money laundering, bribery, the informal economy and of course income-based tax fraud would be much harder or would entirely miss their point if cash were forbidden. And Greece needs to offsite all of these plagues. This would signal that Greece bets on being fraud-free, business-friendly and yes, also very modern and digital.

By the way, Greece is now in the limelight, and incidents of all sorts happening in the country often hit headlines across the world – headlines unimaginable just three years ago. Even relatively small stories get great coverage, from a pensioner’s suicide hitting the BBC’s frontpage to the rise of the Greek neo-Nazis deserving a video-report on the New York Times.

Most likely, the two examples mentioned above would also hit global headlines. And a large number of initiatives of this sort, provided that they are real of course, would eventually prompt people to change their minds about Greece. The trick is in providing an overwhelming number of evidences about a Greece in permanent and deep change from the ground up so that even the most reluctant type would eventually change his mind about the country.

It’s all about proving, proving, proving. By fact, by fact, by fact. And, rest assured, this is the only nation-branding that really works.

One of them is Reinventing Greece, which comprises some youthful Greek-Americans who have travelled to Greece to conduct a media project to report on how Greeks are addressing the many challenges they face today. In their own words,

At the early stages of their careers in journalism, communications and different aspects of public affairs, these young people are here to launch an ambitious experiment —  first to ask questions, and listen to the voices of those individuals in government, in business, and throughout society who are offering solutions and proposing new ideas — and then invite a global audience into a continuing discussion about these efforts to “reinvent Greece.”

Another one, sponsored by some of the biggest Greek companies, is called Greece Is Changing (www.greeceischanging.com). It is supported by large Greek corporations such as Aegean Airlines, Cosmote, Costa Navarino, Fourlis, Gregory’s, Titan among others.

According to their own definition, it’s a network of like-minded businesspeople, colleagues and friends who invite foreigners to see through the stereotypes and realize that there is another Greece which believes in modernity, in the stability that being part of Europe brings, that is fighting a battle for change that can be won. They want to attract attention to the progress Greece and its people have accomplished and the societal sacrifices made in employment, wages, labor relations and even growth.

Yet another one is GoodNews.gr, a website broadcasting only good news from Greece.

In this interview with the Athens News, he is asked this,

At a time when some, like Greek-born Eurodeputy Yiorgos Chatzimarkakis, suggest that Greece should change its foreign name into “Hellas” to restore its image, you insist that the country has got a “brand-DNA” linked to its name that should be respected at home and abroad. Could you explain?

And Peter Economides says,

Absolutely! It’s only a couple of extreme people who have that point of view that would let the country’s identity perish for the sake of something totally new or very old. To change our name at this point would be the most ridiculous thing on earth.

Some good common sense.

By the way, it’s not that I’m against changing the name of our country to Hellas (or to any other name). In fact I wrote a short essay about it back in November 2004 (read it here: Naming Brand Greece) about this issue. And it is a fact that many other countries have done it, or considered it (like the Netherlands, Lithuania or Slovenia) before. Moreover, Hellas is certainly a great name, and is in fact the name of Greece in some languages, like Greek, where we call it Hellás, and Norwegian, where Greece is also called Hellas.

What I am against is the perfidious, misleading and deceitful idea that such a name change would make any difference or that it would improve our country’s image abroad. That’s complete rubbish. A scam, in one word.

Antenna, one of Greece’s private nationwide TV channels, has reacted to Chatzimarkakis’ proposal by providing some sarcastic alternatives:

No doubt, Greece is undergoing one of the most dramatic declines reputation that any country has ever experienced. Whether deservedly or not, the fact remains that Greece is suffering a horrific damage to its image and international standing.

With such an image crisis, it’s no strange that some voices are rising with concerns regarding Greece’s image. One of theose is that of Jorgos Chatzimarkakis, a Greek-German member of the European Parliament who has recently suggested Greece to change its name to Hellas.

In this interview with the German tabloid newspaper Bild, Mr. Chatzimarkakis says that a namechange could help the country have a new beginning with a new image. The old Greece, famous for corruption and sleaze, badly needed a better image and a new name might help, the politician argued. “The name ‘Greece’ stands for a defunct political system – for nepotism and clientelism – in the minds of many in Europe,” Chatzimarkakis told Bild.

“In the course of an honest new beginning, the Greek constitution should be written from scratch and the country should be consistently known in all languages as ‘Hellas’ because the country needs a new image,” the Eurodeputy added.

Of course, Chatzimarkakis is not the first to bring up the topic of Greece’s namechange. I myself wrote an essay in November 2004 called Naming Brand Greece where I tried to ignite a debate on the issue and laid the pros and contras of such a namechange for Greece.

Since Chatzimarkakis is famous for his plagiarism (he lost his doctorate as a result of the plagiarism, and he isn’t the only German deputy to have been under such an embarrasing situation, see Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg), it wouldn’t surprise me if he first read it here while doing a Google search about Greece’s image.

All these petty things aside, all that counts here is that I did not suggest Greece to change its name – I only flew about it. And no, a namechange is a ridiculous medicine. The wrong diagnostic. Because Greece has no image crisis, it has a reality crisis. Greece’s main problems are not image-related, but reality-related. Enhance the country, improve it, rethink it, refresh it, recast it, renew it. And Greece’s image will improve accordingly after some time. A name changes almost nothing.

Greece does not need to change its name. It needs to change itself and correct the wrong sides of it just like many other countries have done before.

One of the congress’ main topics was ‘Re-Branding Greece’. Here are three of the keynote speakers:

Andreas Andreadis:

Dinos Adrianopoulos:

Martin Knapp:

We can only wait now for the Country Brands Index, another celebrated nation branding index, where Greece is considered. I hope it’s released soon. Anyhow, for those interested in the results of this year’s edition of the NBI, you can read the results of the Nation Brands Index 2009 or an analysis of the Nation Brands Index 2009 at Nation-Branding.info.

The interview is as follows:

Professor Papadopoulos, as a renowned country branding scholar in Canada, which do you consider the primary factors for the success of Canada as a leading country brand (2nd place in Country Brands – Index 2008)?

Essentially there are two reasons. One has to do with quality of life, perceptions of people about the general level of development of the country. The other one is the perception of Canada as a peaceful country in international affairs. These two perceptions evolved partly because we are next to the United States, which makes it easy to think of us as a developed country with a very high standard of living. But the U.S. is also a very powerful country, so every time someone gets angry at them, by comparison they look of Canada as a friendlier country. Canada is like a bigger Sweden or Switzerland. It has no negatives, really. It has never done anything wrong: the peace-keeping efforts, the contribution of Canada to the solution of the Suez crisis and so on. All these things developed an image of a peaceful country that doesn’t bother anybody. The interesting thing about Canada, which is in some ways shared by Greece, is that the image of Canada doesn’t have so much content. In our research, every time we go and ask people ‘what do you think about Canada?’, the ratings are always very high. But when we ask them to tell us ‘why’, they just answer ‘nice country’. We ask ‘why is it nice?’, the answer is ‘well, I don’t know’. Yet Canada, much as Greece, has a lot of successes. Canadians have invented everything from basketball to insulin, the telephone and so on. But people don’t know that, they just like the country in a general sense. A very similar thing or even worse happens with Australia. Everybody loves Australia. There are three countries that everyone loves around the world: Australia, New Zealand, Canada. But try to ask people ‘why’… Australia has sheep, we’ve got bears, they are hot, we are cold and that’s it!

Do you think that the reputation of a country could influence the promotion of its products? Could you please elaborate on the Country of Origin Effect on Consumer Behavior?

Definitely there is an effect. Many times the effect is not direct. There are not many people who think that when consumers buy a product, they may buy it because of where it comes from. In another branch of international business, research in investment studies, there is actually a thing called the ‘liability of foreigners’. Foreigners have a disadvantage. Why? One reason is that they don’t know the local customs. However, in the case of imported products, there may be an advantage of foreigners in most countries, in that there is something exotic about them. We are doing some research at the moment where we compare how different companies present their products in advertising in different countries. We have collected about three thousand magazine advertisements from Canada and the United States, and about the same from Italy, Britain and Greece. Among other things, we find that many Greek companies advertise in Greek magazines, for Greeks, using the English language or the Italian language or French or whatever. Because there is an advantage in portraying yourself to be from somewhere else, which brings me to the country of origin. I prefer to use the term ‘country of association’. Take Wind, for example – this is a mobile network here in Greece, but the brand name is English and the country of association is Anglo-Saxon: it is English, it is American, it is British. It’s not German, it’s not Italian, it’s not French. Look, on the other hand, at L’ Oréal or any French brand of cosmetics, or Italian brands for shoes or suits for men. There are these associations between certain countries that are thought to be (and very often are) especially strong in certain product categories. So, companies try to find these perceptions and use them, even if their origin is different, by borrowing an association. So you have Greek wines that have French names. Country of association has a huge impact. Its effect doesn’t necessarily work at a conscious level. It may work subconsciously as well. You go to someone and you ask ‘why did you buy this?’ and he or she might tell you ‘oh, because it’s cheap’ or ‘because it’s the best quality’. They will give you rational reasons. But this is not the way we actually think and behave. People don’t necessarily behave rationally. Most of the time there is a combination of reason and emotion that makes us behave in a particular way, and very often the emotional side is the deciding factor.

You have supported that the key element of a successful nation-branding strategy is to provide an image of trustworthiness regarding both the country and its people at an international level. In your opinion, has Greece managed to develop such an image? Which actions should be implemented in order to enhance its trustworthiness towards public opinion?

The word ’trustworthiness’ doesn’t come up for every country. It comes up as a great strength of countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand. People in some countries don’t trust the Americans, for example, and the ratings for France are quite low in some areas. I don’t remember where Greece might score, and I would not know to tell you because I cannot remember of any study that has used this measure for Greece. But I would not guess that this may be a characteristic of Greece.  That may not be a negative thing necessarily – or it actually could be, based on anecdotal evidence. There is an international saying, ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’, because of the Trojan Horse. That’s actually a very widespread feeling. Is trustworthiness important in general? Yes, it is. Because it affects tourists, it affects a lot of individual parts of behavior, if you consider things in technical terms. For example, it is very important in business-to-business relationships. Trustworthiness may at times be more important than the price charged for a product or its other characteristics. Trustworthiness translates into things like reliability, the relative value of a product. An interesting case in point is Canada. Among consumers, Canada always scores very high on trustworthiness. Yet, among business people, it does not score as highly. Canadian business exporters to business have a reputation, which they deserve to some extent, of not following through. At the first difficulty some of them give up and run back home. This kind of thing hurts trust enormously. And there are a lot of examples like this. In Canada, we have a foundation called Asia-Pacific Foundation. They did a big study in six or seven countries along the Pacific and the levels of trust they found for Canadian business people were quite low. Independent of country of origin, trust has emerged as a major issue in marketing. Domestically and internationally, it is one of the hottest topics that people study. Trust in everything: trust when you decide what product to buy, trust when you decide to buy that skirt over the other one, from one dealer over another. Trust seems to be a very central theme in human relations, particularly in our time when things are getting busier, and it’s harder to cope with the world around us. That’s why branding has become so important, since a brand is a ‘promise’ that consumers can trust that it will deliver what it says in terms of quality, satisfaction, or its other characteristics.

Which specific nation branding strategies do you believe that Greece should adopt in order to build a competitive image and streamline a clear brand name abroad? Should Greece continue to lay emphasis on its traditional competitive advantages or should it re-orientate its nation-branding policy?

Here is where I will disappoint you because I don’t know, at least not on the basis of research. I don’t think anyone has done the research to find out. I participated in a conference organized by the Athens Institute for Education and Research just after the Olympics, and someone there was presenting the results of the Olympics and what might happen to the image of Greece – and yes, there was a positive image. We also had done some research here in Greece in the mid-90s, which is quite old by now – but I don’t see why anything might have changed – about investments. What we found is that even though there were a few investors who had the usual complaints (bureaucracy or whatever), there were a lot of very positive comments by current investors, by managers of companies that had already invested in Greece. I don’t know what people who are outside of Greece think. Lots of people would see Greece as what it really is in some sense, which is a point for distribution and accessing the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the European Union, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and so on. There might be other countries but Greece seems to have predominance, at least for the Balkans. The last thing I would say about Greece is that even the image about the antiquities and tourism is not necessarily the right image. How many times in Canada people come to me and say, ‘we are going to Greece, tell us where to go. Of course, we want to go to Santorini and Mykonos, we don’t want to stay in Athens at all, maybe one day to see the Acropolis and that’s it’. And I keep telling them ‘don’t even bother going to the Acropolis, you are going to be just another stupid tourist who goes and looks at just some more stupid marbles and columns which would mean nothing to you and you will leave. This way you gain nothing. If you want to enjoy the Acropolis go to Athens and stay for a week. The marbles and columns are important but to appreciate them you must ‘feel’ them. You must walk around, to more than just the Acropolis. You go, you know, to Plateia Kotzia. You look at how the antiquities are all over the place. You try to imagine how the city was, you go to the various museums’. It’s the same with tourism. Everybody goes to Santorini – ok, that’s interesting – and Mykonos – ok, I love Mykonos too – but there are so many other things. And they are not being promoted.  So as not to accuse just the Greeks, there is no country that anybody knows of, anywhere in the world, that has managed to have an overall strategy. All countries have exactly the same problem: they have a Ministry of Tourism that does one thing, there is another Ministry which does something else and so on. I was speaking, two months ago, with the Ambassador of Sweden in Canada, who participated in the development of an amazing new Swedish campaign for country branding. When I asked her ‘how do you coordinate all that’, she said ‘no way to coordinate’.  The only thing you can hope for is that the images presented by various ministries for various purposes would not be conflicting with one another. In Greece you don’t have such a problem. Because the existing images with the antiquities and tourism don’t really conflict with each other. They do hurt Greece, however, in that nobody thinks of the country as modern, industrialized, developed, which it is. In my view, Athens is one of the most beautiful capitals. I’m not saying this because I am an Athenian by birth. Everyone says that Athens is ‘lots of concrete’ and nothing else. Well, go to any city, go to New York – it doesn’t have the avenues we have, the trees in every neighborhood, and yet no says “lots of concrete” about it. Of course, London has Hyde Park and New York has Central Park – but we have the National Gardens and right next is Lykavitos and right above is Alsos Pagratiou and right below is Pedion Areos. So the city has as much green space as many others – but we let this kind of “all concrete” image persist.

Do you think that nation branding can be influenced by negative incidents of current affairs or it is something more “steady” with long term effects?

There can be a great negative effect, but how long will it last, and how bad it is going to be, depends on the nature of the event and which is the country, among other things. For example, we did a study with a colleague in Australia in 1992 and in 1995. Between those years the image of  France declined significantly because the French sank that ship of Greenpeace which was protesting against the French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. I don’t have more recent evidence of my own, but a colleague of mine did a new study in 2005 and the image of France was back to where it used to be. It took about ten years but they fixed it up. Why? Because France has a generally good image. It is a big, stable and important country. Greece is not. It starts from a negative point, partly because it is thought of as part of the Balkans, a region with quite a negative image abroad. If a country starts with such an image, it has to be running twice as fast to stay in the same place. On the other hand, for every negative aspect, there are a lot of positives that can be used to balance them. In the case of Greece, there was some positive image created because of the Olympics but it has to be capitalized on to prevent losing it.

In the future, will nation branding last or is it just a temporary trend?

I don’t think it is a temporary trend. l think it is a huge, permanent development. It is very early and a lot of the problems we just talked about occur exactly because it’s too early. It takes time for people to think things through. Nation branding has not existed for more than about 10-15 years. Marketing has been around since antiquity and still most people don’t understand it. We need to get away from the word nation branding, because ‘branding’ is only part of marketing. The correct term is ‘nation marketing’. But since many people still don’t understand what ‘marketing’ is all about, it will take us a long, long time to achieve a correct understanding of ‘nation marketing’. I will give you an example. In Canada there is a TV channel, CPAC, dealing with public affairs. They have a show called ‘The World Today” or something like this and a few years ago they invited me to participate in a discussion about Greece. They had the Greek ambassador, myself, and a lady of Greek origin, a member of the parliament in Ottawa. I said something like ‘we need to promote our country and country branding is important’ and the ambassador became really upset and said something like ‘you cannot promote a country like a detergent or soap, a country is an important sacred thing’. The journalist was a bit surprised at the level of vehemence of the ambassador, but l have had this reaction before. Half an hour later the journalist asked the ambassador what does the embassy in Canada do to attract more investment to Greece. And the ambassador replied that ‘we do a lot of promotion, a lot of advertising’ and the journalist was smiling. At the end he asked how this differs from what the professor had said before and the ambassador graciously accepted that he had been wrong. This is a typical image from people who have grown up to believe that marketing is something bad. We need another ten or twenty years to get away from that logic.

You are a member of the Greek Marketing Academy. How do Greek Marketers stand internationally?

On the practitioner side, I don’t think that there is anybody internationally who knows much about Greek marketers because Greece doesn’t export anything world-known except for a few agricultural products and some processed product brands, like Metaxa brandy. But there are many success stories on the academic side. We have a rather large number of very well-known Greek professors internationally. George Avlonitis, the president of the Greek Marketing Academy, ‘Father George’ of Greek marketing, is well known abroad. Internationally, there is myself, Adamantios Diamantopoulos, who is extremely famous and he works at the University of Vienna. There is another fellow by the name of Konstantinos Katsikeas at the University of Leeds, UK, also very, very well known, and also Antonis Simintiras, who is now in at least part of the time in Thessaloniki but he used to be full time in Britain. There are a disproportionate large number of Greek names in international marketing and international business research in general, which is good.

Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding: Is there difference between the two terms or do they mean exactly the same thing?

They are a little bit overlapping but I wouldn’t say that they are the same. I would imagine that public diplomacy would include some activities and concepts that normally one would not classify as marketing. But that depends on how one can understand public diplomacy. What is public diplomacy? l worked together with Simon Anholt when he launched a journal called Place Branding and Public Diplomacy and we had a lot of discussions about this at that time. One of our big arguments was that if you say public diplomacy and place branding, it means two different things. My view was, why don’t you leave it as ‘place branding’ and let it include everything. Many people call it ‘nation branding’, but as I said before I prefer the term ‘nation marketing’ – and the fully accurate term is ‘place marketing’, because it is not only nations, but also cities and other geographic areas that are relevant to it. Place marketing, since it is marketing, includes a lot of things that go very much beyond diplomacy and communication. Marketing includes pricing, distribution, packaging, corporate design, and so on. Therefore, I see public diplomacy as one manifestation of place marketing. Traditionally, whenever there was an attempt to apply marketing to a non-commercial field, the people in that field didn’t like it. They are always trying to find some nicer way to refer to it. In Ottawa, we have a National Arts Centre and many years ago they established a marketing department to market it – and do you know what they called it? ‘Audience development’ department. Similarly with ‘public diplomacy’, it seems to be a more agreeable term. There is an overlap if you define public diplomacy very very strictly. There would be some differences, there are some activities that diplomats would do that marketers would normally not do but that’s about it.

My compliments to the ICP Forum for another great interview! It seems Greece is finally grasping the need and importance of managing its country brand!

You are the editor of “Nation Branding – Concepts, Issues, Practice” (2008). What is actually NB, besides a logo and a smart, moto-driven advertising campaign?
Nation Branding (NB) does not always require an advertising campaign. The goals of nation branding are extremely diverse and for some of those goals the power of advertising is probably quite limited. For example, when I have conducted research with inward investment agencies, the people working in such organisations do not appear to believe strongly in the power of advertising. Instead, they advocate face-to-face meetings and continual networking with potential investors into their country. On the other hand, the power of advertising is probably much greater in the domain of tourism promotion, where consumer perceptions are perhaps more malleable than those of business investors. Other important techniques of nation branding include diaspora mobilization and public diplomacy, neither of which are advertising-based.

Sophisticated NB theories have started to emerge only recently. Do you believe that NB could at some point constitute a distinct academic field or discipline?
I hope that NB will soon constitute a distinct academic discipline, but the academic world can sometimes be slow to identify phenomena that do not easily fit into pre-existing disciplines. A challenge in establishing NB as a distinct academic field is to bridge the gap between business on the one hand and international relations on the other. This dichotomy is apparent in the gap that separates Nation Branding from Public Diplomacy (PD). Frequently, NB and PD focus on the same issues but there is very little overlap between the business scholars who write about nation branding and the international relations scholars who write about public diplomacy. NB and PD resemble ships passing in the night.

Simon Anholt identifies NB with almost all of a country’s important policy areas. Is NB a technique? Or, is it a political concept?
A conceptual problem with NB is that it is so wide-ranging that it defies easy categorisation. In the terms of your question, the answer would be ‘yes’ to both points – yes it is a technique, and yes it is a political concept. It may not appear to be a very sophisticated definition, but one government official working on nation branding in Asia told me that “nation branding is a big elephant”. In some ways that is an apt metaphor.

Is it possible to influence the way the mass media present and comment on a specific country? Could there be a national strategy to this end?
We need to draw a distinction between ‘influence’ and ‘control’. It is possible for national governments (just like corporations) to exercise a certain degree of influence over the media coverage of their country through the hiring of PR consultancies and the cultivation of positive relationships with media organisations. However, it is not possible for governments to control the mass media, apart from domestically in the case of dictatorships. Governments should worry less about damage limitation and concentrate more on getting a wider range of positive news stories about their country out into the international media.

NB emphasizes on coordination and a single message. Yet, modern democracies are often based on argument, differences and even distinct national identities. How can this issue be strategically managed by the country itself?
The benefits of coordination are often speculated about but there are few concrete examples of successful coordination for other countries to follow. More research is required into this area. As for a single message, my view is that it is impossible to encapsulate the rich diversity of a whole nation in a single message or slogan. There should be different messages according to which objectives are being pursued and which audiences are being targeted. I believe the trend in the coming years will be away from a monolithic approach and instead towards a more segmented strategy.

You have recently participated in the Conference ‘Images ?f Nations: Strategic Communication, Soft Power and the Media’ by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (January 2009). In the past, you stayed in Greece for quite some time (1989-90). Is Greece changing?  How do landmarks such as  December 2009 Riots or The Museum of Acropolis 2009 affect Brand Greece ?
I think there is a huge difference in perceptions regarding the December 2009 Riots. On the on the one hand, Greek politicians and media are extremely concerned about the negative effects of those riots on foreign perceptions of Greece. But on the other hand, I have not seen any evidence that Greece’s image in terms of foreign perceptions has suffered anything other than very short term damage. When I was at the ‘Images of Nations’ conference in February, one of the other foreign delegates told me that in his opinion, the film ‘Mamma Mia’ has had a much more powerful effect on Greece’s image than the December riots. I think he was right. ‘Mamma Mia’ is an appalling film but it has probably been wonderful for Greece’s image, and will be remembered by most people long after the memories of the December riots have faded.

Are there any countries, which are considered models vis-à-vis NB policies? Could you give us some concrete examples?
I don’t believe that any country has yet mastered the full range of techniques that constitute nation branding strategy. But two countries that are often presented as examples of best practice are Spain and New Zealand. Both countries appear to have established strong nation brands (but not across the full range of nation branding dimensions), although there is debate about just how much – if any – contribution that conscious nation branding strategy made to the successes enjoyed by those countries.

More and more diplomats, academics and marketeers, imbued with distinct cultural identities, are actively involved in NB policies. What is the place to be reserved for each category within the overall NB strategic planning?
It would be wrong to propose a standardised template which categorises the roles of different stakeholders within NB strategy. Every country needs to develop its own, unique solutions. While it is true that more people are taking an interest in nation branding, for many people nation branding is still a new and unfamiliar concept. I have been conducting numerous interviews at Embassies in Tokyo, where I currently live, and I often have to explain to my interviewees what nation branding is before I commence the interview. Also, in many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is deeply conservative and actively hostile to the concept of nation branding because the concept of nation branding does not fit with the traditional professional training of career diplomats. It is obviously extremely difficult to develop a coherent and comprehensive nation branding strategy if a country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no interest in it. This situation will probably change as a new generation of more communication-minded diplomats assumes responsibility within their respective Ministries of Foreign Affairs, but that process could take several years.

Your presentation in the upcoming (6-9 July 2009) Conference of the Athens Institute for Education and Research (?????R) is entitled ‘Cyprus - A Stakeholder Identification Perspective’. Could you briefly elaborate on your approach?
My ATINER paper represents an application of stakeholder identification and prioritisation principles commonly applied in the corporate world but rarely applied in the domain of nation branding. This approach involves stakeholder mapping, that is, an attempt to identify the full range of stakeholders that could contribute to a country’s nation branding strategy. The next step – which is politically sensitive – then involves prioritising those stakeholders in terms of their power, influence, potential contribution and so on. It may be that the term ‘prioritisation’ is inappropriate and that it would be better not to ‘prioritise’ stakeholders, but rather to develop ways in which every stakeholder can make a positive contribution, no matter how large or small, to the overall nation branding effort. In the case of Cyprus, it was interesting to explore possible ways in which Cyprus can extend its nation brand beyond the twin pillars of tourism and shipping towards a more multifaceted nation brand.

Interview by Nikos Nenedakis and Athina Rossoglou, first published here.