How do we do a brand for the corporation called Romania?

We all have a business. The simple fact that we receive a salary that we work for, that we spend on necessities, that we invest in houses or cars, we go on vacations or we pay taxes, all these make us a part of the business called Romania. Since our interest is to do well, we must reach to a certain degree of internal cohesion, to an idea to rely our life on, we must clean the yard and paint the fence and transmit one message. In order to sell something we must build our brand in two stages.

The first stage is to cancel the negative perceptions that already exist about us. It is very important and rather easy to start out in this way because we have known them for a long time. Then, ‘clean’ from all the ballast, we start to build the real Romania brand, a new stage of ‘public diplomacy’ that should position us on the map in some way. Which way? Ideally we should have one proposal to make to the world and not just one product or range of products to offer. We need something easy to pass the borders and act like real impact in the minds of the nations, even if they don’t speak or think like us. Our process to re(discover) shall follow several mandatory steps.

Cooperation and involvement of official structures, of the business environment, of the education system, media and arts. This is such a new and highly important project for the nation that every action shall be carefully investigated. The media is very important in this stage and shall be very incisive in asking questions. One shall not ignore neither the transparency if fund spending.

Revealing internal and external perceptions about us by quantitative and qualitative methods. I would also add ‘intuitive’, more like discussions with various social classes that shall reveal a certain ‘perfume’ that is not easy to catch by studies. We shall find out who we are, why we are and how we want to be. We will find out what ‘other’ people think about us. We will find out what buttons to push to determine a certain course of events.

Consulting opinion leaders. Compare their ideas with the results of research is very important; the opinion leaders are those that influence the public arena on different segments. Correct identification of opinion leaders is essential.

Four. Strategy. Clear design of the brand model. We will know who we are for to be able to create and place messages correctly. It is important to remember that these shall only be based on previously created strategy, oriented and adapted to various target groups.

Implementation program. This makes the strategy tangible. It takes checking and programmed, periodical adjustments, complementary programs, assessment systems, because a brand is a living organism, it is evolving, adapting, growing. We must not expect short term results, it is rather impossible. A few key words for success are: strategy, time, consistency, construction, resources, quality.