Brand South Africa- Yours. Mine. Ours.

When I first heard about Brand South Africa, I asked myself, what brand? Is South Africa a brand? Whose brand is it- who is responsible for this brand?

With an excellent speaker, Leo Makgamathe, who is a Program manager of Civil Society of Brand South Africa, the 2012 SAWIP Team yesterday had a dialogue about South Africa as a brand. And through the questions above, I will share my thoughts on the dialogue. But before I do so, let me tell a bit about Brand South Africa: Brand South Africa is an organisation established in 2002 and one whose sole purpose is to create a positive and compelling brand image of South Africa. Two key focus areas of the organization are tourism and investment, which are two of the key drivers of gross domestic product of the country.

As tradition, before any SAWIP dialogue or workshop, us SAWIPers have to do some readings on the topic of the day in order to have deeper knowledge about the topic and to participate effectively in the talks. With great love for reading and knowledge, I dug deep into the web to find as much information about Brand South Africa as i possibly could.  While reading through many websites and reports, I was surprised and embarrassed at the same time, when I realized how little I know about the great things about South Africa. At the dialogue, I was even more surprised to hear other great successes of our country, such as that we are rated 36 by Anholt-GFK Roper Nation Brand Index and that we are rated 1st in the world for regulation of securities exchanges. The reason for my surprise was that many times we only hear about the negative stories about South Africa and we tend to think of it as not being a great country.

In sharing my thoughts about the brand South Africa, I would like to first look at the meaning of a brand. According to Phillip Kotler, a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these that distinguishes and differentiates a product or service from other sellers. In South Africa’s case, our brand that differentiates us from other countries is our beautiful flag, which by the way is the third most recognised flag in the world! And also Brand South Africa’s (new) slogan “South Africa: Inspiring New Ways”. Also significant to a brand are the people that represent it i.e. the citizens of the country.

On the question now of whether South Africa is a brand? I know that the answer is a straight “yes”. But a concern I have is that I wonder how many people in our country know and perceive South Africa as a brand? For Brand South Africa to effectively promote our country internationally and to promote it with full confidence, we as South Africans need to perceive our country as a valuable brand, be patriots and be aware that our individual actions make up the image that international markets have of our country. Brand South Africa cannot sell our country to other people, if we South Africans do not ‘buy-in’ to our own story. And in my opinion, a brand can never achieve great success, unless the people who represent it perceive it as valuable.

As mentioned before, Brand South Africa is responsible for strategically marketing our country to the international market. But quite importantly, we as the people of South Africa need to fully recognize our responsibility in promoting our country. Representing a population of more than 50 million, Brand South Africa cannot do the job of promoting our country all on its own. We as the people need to take some responsibility in promoting a positive and honest South African image to the rest of the world. This may sound like a difficult task, but it actually is not. Each of us, whether from rural or urban area, have a beautiful story to tell about our country, and at every chance, we should share this beautiful story with visitors who come to South Africa.

In thinking that every one of us has a role to play in marketing our country, I am also aware of some of the great challenges of poverty, unemployment, inequality and crime facing the country. A person who is unemployed, living in poverty and who perceive the country to have great inequality might have very little motivation to speak about South Africa in a positive light. Crime on the other hand contributes negatively to promoting a good South Africa image, and this may be a difficult hurdle to overcome, for both Brand South Africa and ordinary people, when promoting and sharing the South African story.

Also, what we as the people should all be aware of is that in promoting South Africa, we are not only contributing to an international positive image of our country, but we are also contributing to attracting investment, which in turn can help overcome some of the country’s key challenges.

Let us all contribute to marketing South Africa to the international market by sharing our positive and honest South African story. No one can tell the South African story better than its people. By doing a simple but yet powerful thing such as sharing our story, we will be taking an active role in promoting our country to the rest of the world. Having spoken about the South African story, now I would like to end with a question, what is your positive and honest South African story?