|
Image
Management
By Michael Alan Hamlin
May 14, 2001
Hong Kong's chief executive Tung Chee-hwa unveiled
the special autonomous region's new branding initiative, replete
with an "elegant, wonderful dragon," last week. The logo
will be accompanied by the slogan, "Asia's World City."
Explaining the rationale for the initiative, Mr. Tung said, "When
we see the maple leaf we know that it's Canada. When we see the
kangaroo we know that it's Australia. So we hope that when people
see this dragon with the letters HK on it, people will know that
it represents Hong Kong."
The branding initiative doesn't come cheap. Research
and design for the symbol and the logo required an investment of
close to US$1.2 million. That's money well spent, Mr. Tung argues,
because "Our brand is as important to us as the 'swoosh' is
to Nike and the 'golden arches' are to McDonald's. I believe this
is a good symbol for Hong Kong; it's a lively one, symbolizing our
strengths, our elegance, our flexibility, and our heritage."
Legislators seemed to agree. "If we don't promote
our strengths, foreign business will never know what we have,"
democrat Sin Chung-kai said. "They would all go to places like
Singapore, which started to do some serious promotion a long time
ago." Some support was qualified, however, especially when
it came to the promotional literature accompanying the logo and
slogan.
Promotional literature counted among Hong Kong's positive
qualities freedom of assembly, religion, and rule of law, according
to a report in the South China Morning Post. But reports that members
of the pseudo-sect Falun Gong from the United States, Australia,
and Canada had been barred entry to Hong Kong during last week's
visit by Chinese president Jiang Zemin raised eyebrows and doubts
locally and internationally about such freedoms. Mr. Jiang is widely
considered responsible for the crackdown on the Falun Gong on the
mainland, and members were in town to protest the perceived repression.
Mr. Tung's government also strictly limited areas where Falun Gong
were allowed to assemble and demonstrate.
Since Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control in 1997,
a series of legal controversies have likewise undermined the rule
of law as well, due to perceptions of interference by Beijing. Despite
these criticisms, however, Hong Kong is thriving. Addressing a Fortune
magazine-sponsored conference last week, which Mr. Jiang opened,
Antony Leung Kam-chung, Hong Kong's new financial secretary, noted
that in 1995 Fortune ran a cover story entitled, "The Death
of Hong Kong."
But, Mr. Leung noted, "Hong Kong is not dead.
Hong Kong will continue to be the number one city, the number one
financial center and business hub in Asia." The Fortune story
had argued that Beijing interference in Hong Kong's governance was
likely to cause the qualities that made the former colony a model
Asian success story.
China's relative restraint in Hong Kong is, however,
not the only reason it has continued to thrive. Mr. Tung's government,
despite some obvious failings, has worked very hard to sustain and
reinforce Hong Kong's image as a business, financial, and tourist
hub. Two years after the handover, Hong Kong announced that Asia's
second Disneyland would be built on Lantau Island. Government economists
at the time of the announcement said the project would generate
US$20 billion in economic benefits, and 36,000 jobs.
Last year the bureaucrat who put that deal together,
Michael JT Rowse, was named director-general of Invest Hong Kong,
a new agency setup to promote the SAR to investors and provide aftercare
service to them. One early initiative of Mr. Rowse was the commissioning
of a luxury yaht emblazoned with the InvestHK logo. The yaht sails
into financial and business centers the world over to entertain
potential investors ¾ even in Singapore.
The bottom line: by just about every measure Hong Kong
has done a superb job marketing itself, and developing an effective
brand image. The investment is paying off big time. Arrivals are
up. Investment is up. Trade is up.
Now, stop to think for a minute about the Philippines'
brand. It doesn't take more than a minute to do this for a pretty
simple reason: the Philippines doesn't have a brand, other than
the one international publications have given it, especially in
the past couple of weeks, as a wobbly, corrupt, somewhat democratic-minded
country that seems to be falling into the habit of changing leaders
undemocratically by whim. While that may not be your perception,
or even the reality, for most of the world, perception is reality.
One of the reasons that this negative perception is
so easily conveyed and accepted, however, is that the Philippines
has never developed the capacity to speak effectively and consistently
for itself. One of the principal reasons has to do with that US$1.2
billion Mr. Tung invested in Hong Kong's new logo, and the low interest
loans government is providing Hong Kong Disneyland, in which it
is also a medium-term equity partner (for which it has been criticized).
Unlike Hong Kong ¾ and Singapore, Malaysia,
and Thailand ¾ the Philippines is unwilling to invest in
marketing and communicating its attributes to investors, tourists,
and rainmakers. So when the Philippines gets a bad shake from the
foreign media, investment analysts, and international business,
in large part it's because no one else is talking.
Because no one is doing the talking, the Philippines
has a zero balance in what I call the goodwill bank: residual, favorable
perceptions among key constituencies that are important to the Philippines'
future.
Sure, the Philippines is a poor country, and it's a lot harder to
invest several million dollars in branding programs (imagine if
former president Joseph Estrada had spent just 15 percent of the
US$80 million or so he is alleged to have plundered to promote the
Philippines) than it is for Hong Kong or its other neighbors. But
that doesn't mean that the investment shouldn't be made.
If the Philippines doesn't make the investment, it
will never enjoy the leverage required to shape opinions. And that
means that other locations are going to continue to look a lot more
attractive to just about everybody.
(Mr. Hamlin is managing director of the consultancy
TeamAsia and the author of two books on Asian economies and managing
in Asia. His latest book is The New Asian Corporation: Managing
for the Future in Post-Crisis Asia. His e-mail address is mahamlin@teamasia.com.ph.)
|
