Ear­lier today, I came across a post from the Insti­tute of Welsh Affairs blog by Rhys David (as linked by Quixotic Quis­ling) that dis­cussed Wales’ image or ‘brand per­cep­tion’ among world travelers.

The post out­lines the 2007 sur­vey con­ducted by Simon Anholt and oth­ers, as well as the find­ings of this year’s sur­vey in which Wales did not par­tic­i­pate. Per­haps it is just my inner brand geek (have you met my alter-ego Abranda, yet?) but arti­cles and dis­cus­sions of this nature absolutely get my tail wag­ging. It is an oppor­tu­nity to bet­ter explore and artic­u­late the pos­si­bil­ity of brands as more than just mar­ket­ing. A brand can be a pow­er­ful thing for bet­ter and for worse.. and at its best, a brand can affect pos­i­tive change.

What struck me in read­ing the IWA post was the con­cern raised over the peo­ple in Wales being “off mes­sage” when trav­el­ing and por­tray­ing their nation to oth­ers. An inter­est­ing dilemma that makes me won­der about the prob­lem from which it stems– is it the agent car­ry­ing the mes­sage who is get­ting it wrong, or was the mes­sage off-base to begin with? A brand mes­sage can not be suc­cess­ful with­out a basis in real­ity– want to kill your brand? Make a promise you can’t or won’t keep. It is one thing to weave aspi­ra­tional tones or goals into brand mes­sag­ing, but to build your cas­tle upon a foun­da­tion of fic­ti­tious clouds is ill advised– make a brand promise that is unre­lated to the audience’s expe­ri­ence and your brand will no doubt fail. But I don’t know that that is the prob­lem at hand– it sounds as though the Welsh peo­ple just need a boost with regards to national pride or esteem.

David raises a good point about the dif­fer­ence in brand­ing a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion ver­sus an entity as broad as a nation and the dif­fi­cul­ties of such diver­sity or breadth. Not sur­pris­ingly, the post alludes to Wales’ lack of brand-conveying inter­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions or busi­ness like Ire­land’s Guin­ness , and the result­ing depen­dence on the arts or sports for inter­na­tional con­veyance of the national iden­tity. An inter­est­ing point, but not one worth lament­ing too much– so Wales does not have a con­sum­able touch point like Guin­ness, so what. While the Guin­ness brand serves Ire­land well as a national brand ambas­sador there is more to the nation than stout. So the Welsh brand yet to be artic­u­lated accu­rately is rooted in an abstract or com­plex tapes­try of things– I would hope some­one charged with the task would embrace these ambi­gu­i­ties and sub­tleties and explore them in a final brand iden­tity for the nation.

For those inter­ested in brand­ing, I would rec­om­mend read­ing the IWA post, but I also rec­om­mend it to those who cringe at the word ‘brand.’ Brand­ing does not have to be a four let­ter word, peo­ple; brand­ing does not have to be about mar­ket­ing alone.