General

The Brand is Strong

FutureBrand has released this year’s country brand index (CBI), and Canada has done quite well, moving from sixth to second spot overall, behind Australia. Strong brand recognition does not seem to be paying off quite as well as it should in the way of tourism, but as any place-branding expert will tell you, there’s a lot more to nation branding than tourism. The fact that we have strong brand recognition is good, though it appears that to a large extent, the Canadian brand is a bit of an empty shell, waiting to be given a more solid definition. Still, with the Olympics coming up this is a fantastic opportunity for this country to firm up its brand promise and leverage it into something more than hockey, snow, Celine Dion. 

Related: Here’s a transcript of my interview with nation-branding expert Nicolas Papadopoulos of Carleton’s Sprott School of Business.

More related: Check out the Canadian Design Resource

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