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The Future
of Country Marketing
By Michael Alan Hamlin
October 04, 1999
Philip Kotler’s Asian tour this
year involved just three countries: Hong Kong, Japan, and the Philippines.
Hong Kong is notorious for failed public presentations by big-name
speakers, and I was more than a little curious about the reception
Mr. Kotler would receive (Full Disclosure: My firm organized the
Hong Kong, our first there by the way, and Manila presentations.).
Fortunately, I needn’t have worried.
There are just two or three top management
speakers in the world today. In my view, they are Mr. Kotler, Harvard
Business School’s Michael E. Porter, and the legendary Peter
Drucker. The up-and-coming experts, at least for me, are people
like Jerry Porras and James Collins, the authors of Built to
Last, Adrian Slywotzky, author of Profit Migration, Gary
Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, authors of Competing for the Future,
Robert Kaplan of balanced scorecard fame, and Fred Wiersema, author
of Customer Intimacy.
While there are a good many other
substantial gurus, authors, future-casters, and motivational speakers
who have an important impact on the way business is done, organizations
developed, and people inspired, for the moment, these ten —
based on my own views and limited knowledge — are the most
sought-after management speakers today.
And for good reason. Executive director
of the Poon Kam Kai Institute of Management at the University of
Hong Kong Gregg Li explained the new interest in management experts
to me last week by way of comparison with foreign investment in
educational infrastructure in Hong Kong and Singapore. You’ll
recall that the University of Chicago and Insead are both building
business campuses in Singapore. These are not in partnership with
the government or other institutions. They are 100 percent foreign-owned
initiatives. Aside from these two, the Wharton School is helping
Singapore set up Singapore Management University, which is being
developed based on the U.S. b-school model. The National University
of Singapore has its own set of cooperative linkages.
"All those schools came to Hong
Kong first," Mr. Li explained, "but the government wasn’t
interested in providing incentives for their investment here. ‘What
do we need you for?’ they asked." However, when Insead
and the University of Chicago went to Singapore, things were very
different. The Singapore government was not only interested in encouraging
their investment, they were prepared to seduce these institutions
into Singapore, and did.
The reason of course is simple. Mr.
Li says Hong Kong’s attitude evolved from, "the arrogance
of success" that has so dramatically turned global industry
leaders — IBM, Xerox, Kodak, Apple, GM — into jelly before
painfully recreating themselves. Like these companies, Mr. Li suggests,
Hong Kong appeared to think it was so good that it had nothing to
learn from anyone else. And like these companies, it’s increasingly
apparent that wasn’t the case. Hong Kong — as we all do
— has a lot to learn.
Mr. Drucker is fond of telling his
audience that learning is no longer something people do principally
in the first 20 years or so of their lives. The pace of change in
today’s global economy has made learning a lifetime undertaking.
U.S. Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan likewise has taken of
late to reminding the top executives of the world’s most profitable
companies and largest financial institutions that the strength of
the U.S. economy evolves almost entirely from its capacity to turn
new learning into better products and services. And most of that
learning — by a huge margin — takes place in educational
institutions and entrepreneurial firms.
It was no surprise that Mr. Kotler’s
well-attended presentation was characterized as much by the substantive
questions and issues raised by the Hong Kong and Philippine participants
as his own value-packed observations. The most startling impression
that I received was that the participants felt that Hong Kong didn’t
know any more what it was, and therefore is adrift (Sound familiar?).
For Mr. Kotler, a country is a brand.
How well the brand is known depends on at least two things: 1) Does
the brand stand for anything; and, 2) Is it well communicated? Note
that I said "communicated," not advertised. There’s
a big difference according to Mr. Kotler, but that’s another
story. To get back to branding, finding out what the Hong Kong and
the Philippines brands stand for is a matter of first determining
what they are good at, finding out whether that’s valued, and
then promoting the brand.
In the Philippines’ case the
nation’s strengths are pretty apparent. In my view, the Philippines
has the potential to soar, for instance, in engine-of-growth sectors
like technology (hardware and software engineering), Internet-related
services (e-commerce, design, development, hosting, maintaining),
and infocommunications (global call centers and document management).
Other industries that are both high profile and provide promising
prospects for building substantial wealth are entertainment (creative
services, production, distribution), health (world-class health
and medical services at great prices), and publishing (editorial,
production services, distribution).
And in fact, these industries have
most of the components in place required to thrive — save government
support. By government support, I don’t mean talking about
export champions and hiring big-name public relations agencies in
New York and Washington. Government support would come in, for instance,
in these ways: 1) seduce educational and infrastructure investments
that support these industries; 2) charm trophy investors into the
country; and, 3) and most important, communicate consistently and
effectively. "Bring the reporters here," Prof. Kotler
advises, rather than send a trade mission to Europe or America,
to communicate the nation’s strengths. "They’ll write
about you." Credibly.
Sounds pretty simple, and it would
be far cheaper. More importantly, it would work. Prof. Kotler shows
that we don’t need lots of grandiose ideas. One good one will
do.
Copyright © 1999 The Events
& Awards Managers of Asia and
Hamlin-Iturralde Corporation. All rights reserved.
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