Revisiting Brand Australia

The Australian Government recently announced it will spend AUD$20 million over the next four years to improve the international brand message of the Lucky Country. To use a well worn Aussie exclamation, "It's about bloody time!!!!"

I wrote last year about my beloved homeland topping Futureband's Country Brand Index 3 years running. But I am truly glad that the Rudd Government is not resting on its laurels in building our brand overseas. To most Americans I have spoken to, the Australian brand is much more convoluted than the magnificent "100 percent pure New Zealand" message of our Kiwi neighbours.

Fingers crossed the best agencies from Down Under can come up with something more compelling than the much maligned "Where the Bloody Hell Are You?" campaign of 2006. We deserve better! Thoughts?

The Best Country In The World?

For the third year in a row, Australia is the number 1 country brand in the world according to Futurebrand's 2008 Country Brand Index.

Avoiding time-honored stereotypes, the study ranked countries across 30 individual categories, providing a painstaking, holistic analysis of the brand strengths and weaknesses of each nation. This year's study featured several new categories including "standard of living," "political freedom" and "advanced technology".

As a proud Australian, I would like to say I'm not surprised with the results, but I truly am. This is the third consecutive year that Australia has topped the polls and it begs the question - Why?

I have always felt that New Zealand did a better job of communicating its brand to the outside world. Helped in part by the Lord of The Rings trilogy, the primordial snow cap peaks and remote adventurousness of Aotearoa has captured the imagination of tourists far and wide. The long running 100% Pure New Zealand campaign focuses almost solely on this physical beauty. When it comes to tourism the Kiwis seem to have realized, sure, New Zealand is a one trick pony, but it's one hell of a trick.

On the other hand, Australia has struggled to define its brand for years. The much maligned "Where the bloody hell are you?" campaign of 2006 was highly criticized for lacking focus or a clear strategy. When you've got world-class cities, natural beauty, friendly locals, a modern but culturally rich history, not to mention the world's best weather, what exactly do you focus on?

But assessing a country's overall brand desirability is not limited to tourism. Categories like standard of living, ease of doing business, conduciveness to family life, and my personal favorite - love for outdoor activities and sports, are all critical components in determining a country's brand strength.

In this regard, country brands are one of those "warts and all" categories - a country brand is only as strong as its ugliest aspects. After all, the best marketer in the world could not have sold the physical beauty of South Africa during the long and ugly period of apartheid. With apartheid now a distant memory, the Rainbow Nation has reinvented itself as a tourist mecca and as the continent's biggest engine of economic growth.

So while Australia has its fair share of faults, being called the #1 country brand in the world after a pretty exhaustive study is no mean feat. Doing it 3 years in a row is a truly gargantuan one. An Aussie could almost be forgiven for getting a little choked up...

Australians all let us rejoice...

Did England Cheat To Win The 2005 Ashes Series?

It is hard to describe the cricketing rivalry between Australia and England to an American. My best stab at it usually involves imagining the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry on steroids. But imagine if this juiced up rivalry engaged the whole country and not just those famous two cities. And instead of several times a year, imagine if a Test Series is played only biennially and dates back to 1882. Then imagine if was not just the English and Australians watching but the whole of the cricketing world with over a billion people in countries diverse as India, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and several Caribbean nations? You get my drift anyway - the Ashes is a BIG deal.

It is telling then that in former England opener Marcus Trescothick's soon to be released memoirs he reveals that during the 2005 series, England used an illegal tactic in their narrow 2-1 victory. To produce the unplayable swing bowling that had the Australian batsmen in all sorts of bother, Trescothick had experimented with several brands of breathmints designed to trigger saliva production used to polish the ball. Designated as the the team member assigned chief shining duties, Trescothick enabled the English bowlers to create enhanced movement through the air and off the pitch - especially as the ball aged.

Unfortunately for the English, this tactic falls outside the laws of the game which state that no artificial substance can be used to polish the ball. Taking that definition at face value, Trescothick cheated.

However, like other ball tampering incidents this is a tough one to police. Chewing gum has become a staple for many international cricketers, so much so that it is safe to say that in every single test match of the past 20 years there is a good chance the ball will have been polished by a player chewing gum. I guess the difference in Trecothick's case is the experimentation involved in getting the ideal product (Murray's Mints) to heighten saliva production to its maximum capability. The nefarious nature of this operation is underscored by the suggestion that this was England team policy as Trescothick was established as "firmly the man in charge" of looking after the ball while England was in the field.

It is hard to imagine Trescothick's motives in revealing this information so long after the event. Especially with the Ashes back safe in Australian hands after their historic 5-0 clean sweep on the return series in Australia of 2006-07. In any event, I am betting this ugly revelation will remain fresh in the minds of Ricky Ponting's men as they look to retain their dominance over the English in the summer of 2009.

Taking The AFL Brand Around The World

On the cusp of the 2008 Australian Football International Cup, the question remains, does the brand of Australian Rules Football have what it takes to catch on overseas?

There is no doubt in my mind that it does.

At last year's US Footy National Tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, recently retired coaching legend Kevin Sheedy claimed that in Australia, we have a game with the global appeal of rock music and we are failing to sell it well. I could not agree with him more.

As a game, it is highly engaging. Fast, exciting and spectacular, it has all that anyone could want from a spectator sport. However it has the added bonus of a flowing continuity that sports like American Football and Rugby don't enjoy.

From a brand perspective, it should be an easy sale to both spectators and players alike. In a wealthy market like the U.S., the game is full of possibility. This is reflected in the growth of the US Footy League that now has close to 40 teams around the country registered. And with the thousands of promising athletes going undrafted coming out of the college system each year, the game's potential in America has not yet scratched the surface.

SMA Down Under

I have just returned to the states after two weeks of R & R down under. Despite being the middle of winter, the gloriousness of my homeland never ceases to amaze!

I was fortunate enough to be one of the speakers at the Sport Marketing Association's 6th Annual Conference on the Gold Coast between 17-20 July. It really was a fantastic event, incredibly educational and held in a very friendly and inclusive spirit. I met some world-renowned academics and sports marketing practitioners who I am sure to remain in touch with in the years to come.

My speech entitled, Building and Leveraging a Loss-Proof Brand For Sporting Franchises, despite a few pre-match nerves, went as well as I could have hoped. I am looking forward to tweaking the speech further, various parts of it will continue to appear on this page, so watch this space.

Next year's conference is in Cleveland, a little bit of a shorter flight from Minneapolis than to Australia, so will be sure to attend again in 2009.

The Brand of Soccer in Australia

There is no disputing the appeal of the world game. It is easy to understand, affordable to play and fires passions of fans (club or country) like no other game in the world.

Having just got back from Turkey working on a project, one truly had to see the passion of the Turks as their national team went on its giant killing streak in the Euro Cup. The bars and restaurants in Istanbul and Izmir truly had to be seen to be believed!

As a sports mad-Australian, I am often found pondering why the passion for the game does not truly translate down under. The knee-jerk reaction is to say that the Australian market has already reached a point of "football code saturation" - that competing with the three big codes of Australian Rules, Rugby Union and Rugby League is too tough a challenge for soccer. However, I have heard several sources cite soccer as the fastest growing of the football codes in Australia. As such, I believe there is not anything fundamentally wrong with the rules of the sport that prevents Australians embracing it en masse as a spectator sport, I would argue that that soccer has a simple brand problem.

The space that soccer had long occupied in the Australian mind was that of a fringe sport seen only the SBS and watched with non-English commentary. With satellite TV largely changing this, the game has grown in popularity and become more mainstream. But back before the birth of the A-League, some Australian soccer clubs like Bonnyrigg White Eagles and Melbourne Croatia were divided upon ethnic lines - not helpful in branding the sport as particularly desirable or inclusive.

It is a shame that the Socceroos admirable performance at the 2006 World Cup came to an end by an act that reinforced more stereotypes for why many Australians see the game as inherently unfair and one that celebrates prima donna type behavior. With the game on the line, and the referee unsighted, Fabio Grosso took a dive in the penalty box and the Italians were awarded what the referee believed to be a penalty. The rest is history.

The late great Johnny Warren often expressed his frustration about Australians hoping to merely qualify for the World Cup. He used to suggest that if soccer was the nation's #1 game, the Aussies would be a good chance of WINNING a world cup. As a nation of sports fanatics, there may be some merit in this theory. However if Mr. Warren ever wanted an example of why Aussie fans will struggle to embrace the sport like other codes, he needn't have look any further than this controversial defeat to the Italians.

This intrinsic unfairness when the stakes are so high, I would argue, grates against the Australian psyche. Not only that, the frequent vulgar celebrations of individual achievements, not to mention the acting for free kicks and feigning of injuries will always struggle to resonate strongly with an Australian audience who celebrate toughness and humility as prerequisites in playing or watching any sport. The "tall poppy syndrome" is deeply woven into the Australian national consciousness, anyone who appears to be getting too big for their boots is often reminded to pull their head in.

Take Lleyton Hewitt as an example. Despite his more successful career, his boorish behaviour on the tennis court ensured he would never enjoy the same public standing in Australia as the true gentleman Pat Rafter. However, his one saving grace is that he is a true fighter on the court and gives his all each time he steps onto it.

Sadly for many highly paid soccer players, a Pat Rafter type graciousness seems to be lacking. The level of dissent directed towards the referee is more prevalent in soccer than in any other major sport. Apart from appearing juvenile and pathetic, this is doubly bad as it teaches kids watching at home that it is ok to throw a tantrum when they don't get their own way. The fact is, playing sport often acts as an introduction for children to learn respect for authority and the rule of law. Being lackadaisical in policing player and manager dissent, most soccer governing bodies around the world are showing they have not cottoned on to this fact. If they have, it is rarely demonstrated.

With all that said, the problems with soccer's brand do not have to be permanent. Aspects of the brand can be fixed - enabling video replays of questionable decisions, stricter rules governing player conduct and re-visiting the relevance of several other rules like off-side. Subtle changes could be made to produce a more palatable game to the Australian viewer. However, these factors are more the responsibility of FIFA and other governing bodies, and unfortunately out of the hands of the Football Federation of Australia. That said, I believe until certain changes are made to the game, it will be in no danger of losing its title as the world game, but in Australia it will remain a fringe sport destined to generate excitement only in the rare moments that the Socceroos can produce the goods.