Britain’s brand is being damaged by the ongoing BA strike and threatened action from civil servants and the rail unions, a leading brand guru warned today.
“Countries don’t have ’brands’ in the same sense as companies and products, but they do have ’brand reputations’ which have a huge impact on their economic status, their political weight in the world, their tourism industry, inward investment and so on,” explained Simon Middleton, who has consulted to British Airways, Barclays, Aviva, Prêt A Manger and The Broads national park.
“It is imperative that whoever wins the election repairs Britain’s brand as part of the package that stimulates the economy back into growth.”
The well-respected global survey of nation brand reputation (the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index) shows that, generally speaking, nation brands only change very slowly. Ever since the survey began the United Kingdom has been in the top ten of the world’s most-admired nation brands.
“The new Government can’t afford to be complacent,” said Middleton, author of Build a Brand in 30 Days (Capstone, released April 2010). “Through the boom years, with a charismatic Tony Blair symbolising the nation, and with the industrial strife of the 1970s and 1980s apparently behind us, brand-UK was extremely successful.
“The current situation is very different: years of economic meltdown, lack of sparkling leadership, and the gathering of the Unions to bring back strike culture are all damaging the brand of the country.”
“Whether you are a potential tourist from abroad, or an investor, or a high-achieving professional from another country wanting to live, work and do business in the UK, it has to be said that the national ’brand’ is not desperately appealing right now,” said Mr Middleton.
“Britain is suffering from the perceived indications of a ’broken society’. MPs have been caught with their trotters in the trough, teenage boys are murdered by gangs in school uniform, planes don’t fly reliably and there is a threatened nationwide rail strike for the first time since 1994.”
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