Why the Name of a Country Is Its Brand

Swaziland is in the process of becoming Eswatini.

Celebrating a 50th birthday last year (as a nation and it was the king’s 50th too), the Swazi king proclaimed the new name. He said they needed a country name that better reflected their African identity. He also wanted to avoid the confusion between the name of his nation and Switzerland.

Swaziland is located near South Africa:

You can see that the Times of Swaziland has not entirely made the commitment. But the small print under the masthead says, “The National Newspaper of Eswatini”:

But where are we going? To the significance of a brand…for a country and a corporation.

Country Names

Many of us associate a “Made in Germany” sticker with precision and quality. For fashion, “Made in Italy” might make a difference.

Below, marketing researchers were analyzing Canada as a brand. At the same time, they listed the criteria that influence what buyers think about when they connect products and countries. The category they called “Advancement” relates to education and technology. The “People” category embodies traits that range from likability to education. And “Links” just touch on whether people want a closer relationship with the other nation.

You can see that Japan was pretty high for product integrity:

Our Bottom Line: Branding

In blind taste tests, more participants have said they prefer Pepsi. But asked to identify their favorite soda brand, many of the same people say Coke.

When economists explain the contradiction, they say “the brand.” After all, a brand establishes a firm’s individuality. It can create an emotional loyalty that is separate from any of the product’s attributes. Then, having generated that loyalty, the firm hopes for some inertia that makes the cost of switching prohibitively high.

With Amazon #1, the top brands have immense value:

Although Eswatini is very different from Amazon, both care very much about their brand.

My sources and more: Yesterday’s WSJ  alerted me how nations rebrand. From there the path was interesting. The BBC had more on Eswatini while the story of Czechia is here. As for the corporate side of branding, you might enjoy this Accenture branding report.

Please note that the Canadian study I cite is almost 20 years old. But its criteria remain valid. Also, several sentences from today were in a past econlife. And finally, our featured image is the Eswatini flag.