Term-Paper on Branding Bangladesh – How to Proceed

Executive summary

Self-identification in culture and heritage can be a great theme to pride ourselves on as

Bangladeshis. For eras, we have been honored for inheriting more than two thousand-year old
civilization. The glorious background we belong to can easily put the whole nation into an
image. The tourism is also not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh. So great were the attractions
of Bangladesh that to quote a French traveller François Bernier 'it has a hundred gates open for
entrance but not one for departure.' The mystic melody of our natural beauties lies in this single
expression.

Since tourism captures the entire image of culture, heritage, history and natural beauty, it can rise
up through a country's identification process. Branding is a consequence of this process.
Conversely, destination branding is a very basic part of the whole marketing strategy of tourism
business.

This report covers –

• Concept of destination branding

• Necessity of destination branding

• Current position of Bangladesh as a brand

• Ways to improve the brand image of Bangladesh

Efforts are also been made to find out new slogan for Bangladesh as a brand.

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Contents

Contents..................................................................................................................... 2
Overview:................................................................................................................... 3
Concept of Destination/Nation Branding:....................................................................3
Disseminating positive information about Bangladesh...............................................4
Why Branding is Necessary: ......................................................................................5
The gap in the perception about Bangladesh in the outer world and what place
branding has got to do with Bangladesh?...................................................................6
Remedy of ‘Perception Gap’ is rebranding Bangladesh in outside world:...................7
Current perception about Bangladesh in the western world: .....................................8
Now how the perception of the general public about Bangladesh can be changed in
a short term?.............................................................................................................. 9
How to input the abovementioned information to the brand ‘Bangladesh’ for the
general public of the western world :( what can we do about this image problem?) 12
Plan of Action:...........................................................................................................14
Conclusion:............................................................................................................... 15
References:.............................................................................................................. 17

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 Term-Paper on Branding Bangladesh – How to Proceed

Overview:

Bangladeshis have a persistent grievance that Bangladesh is not justly portrayed in international
forums. It has become commonplace for the country to be associated with natural calamities,
wavering political situation, corruption and other negative attributes. In most cases, propaganda
is blown way out of proportion relative to other parts of the globe.

It is unfortunate that the commitment and resilience of the people to enhance the image of the
country goes unnoticed. There is a general tendency among the international community to draw
parallels for Bangladesh with countries facing difficulties, completely overlooking the fact that
Bangladesh, with its backwardness and structural deficiencies, has made significant progress in
fields that would make many emerging countries envious.

It would be self-defeating for us to engage in the blame-game and put the responsibility of such
misrepresentations on the international community. We have to admit our inability, thus far, in
projecting the country and the true spirit of its people, necessitating the brand building of
Bangladesh.

The “Brand Forum” seminar is a timely effort, and the organization should be lauded for
spearheading this initiative. However, in approaching the problem and formulating an effective
strategy to resolve the issues, we need to be systematic and consistent.

Concept of Destination/Nation Branding:

In developing a brand identity for Bangladesh, we must understand the essence of the term
“branding.” Marketing genius Philip Kotler defined brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or

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 Term-Paper on Branding Bangladesh – How to Proceed

design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or
group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors.”

He explains that a brand is basically a seller’s promise to deliver a specific set of features,
benefits, and services consistently to the buyers. The best brands convey a warranty of quality.
Branding can convey up to six levels of meanings; attributes, benefits, values, culture,
personality, and user. The branding challenge is to develop a set of positive associations for the
brand.

Nation branding aims to measure, build, and manage the reputation of countries. It applies some
approaches from commercial brand management practice to countries, in an effort to build,
change, or protect their international reputations or external perception.

So, we can summarize as – “Branding a destination is an element of promoting tourism image

which can be defined as just a set of associations that are linked to a particular country. Branding
through tourism signifies the values of a country. It tells about the quality of the services and
beauties that are offered by the country to its consumers. It tells how a country differs from other
countries as its competitors. Hence building a good country brand image means achieving
success in the tourism business”.

Disseminating positive information about Bangladesh

Bangladesh is getting a trickle of foreign direct investments (FDIs) whereas other countries in
the neighborhood continue to be its beneficiaries. China is remains the top FDI recipient. India
and Pakistan are also receiving much more FDIs, without offering better conditions of
investment or returns to the foreign investors. A sound analysis would show that the biggest
bottleneck is possibly the country's unfavorable image abroad. A positive macro-economic
environment, sound infrastructure, easily trainable workers, good terms and conditions for
repatriation of capital and profit by the investors, are among the factors that attract FDIs.
Bangladesh does not lack so much in these respects compared to its neighbors. In fact, its labor
cost is lower than that of China or other countries in South Asia. It’s infrastructure, needing
improvement, are not so bad as to divert foreign investments on a large scale. Its macro-
economy, with some slumps, has been stable on the whole for long, and improved in recent
years. Besides, the aptitude of its workforce to adapt to the requirements and training of foreign-

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funded enterprises is noted to be relatively good. Certainly, the conditions for FDIs in
Bangladesh can be improved or need to be improved, but it can be no reason for foreign
investments to stay away from the country.

By now Bangladesh should have been a notable investment destination for the opportunities it
extends. Why have not the investors responded then? It could be that potential investors are
ignorant about what this country offers or they are demotivated by an image problem of the
country.

Information gap about Bangladesh abroad is mainly responsible for the situation. Not many
intending investors know that Bangladesh exports world class apparels, high quality shrimp and
frozen foods. They don't know its potential to make and export a wide range of environmentally
friendly products and the country's competitive labor costs.

Extensive dissemination of all these information by Bangladeshi missions, some 60 of them

round the world, would have an impact in channeling FDIs into the country.

What does the External Publicity Wing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in relation to this
need? Why is this wing not enabled to carry out campaigns to this end? Nobody knows the
answer, for sure.

The local press and local correspondents of foreign media could report the success stories of
Bangladesh in the economic spheres. The chamber bodies should work together to project the
country by organizing international seminars and holding exhibitions of Bangladeshi products
abroad so that foreign investors could know about good rates of return from investment in
Bangladesh.

There is a need to counter the negative campaign against Bangladesh carried out by some
countries. These countries need to be exposed.

Why Branding is Necessary:

Creating a strong brand image: A "brand image" is important for every tourist destination. If
developed with awareness the brand serves to distinguish a destination from competing

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destinations. However some destinations do not have a brand strategy, and are supported by
inconsistent advertising campaigns, creating a confused image to prospective customers. Image
must be controlled by a clear projection of brand identity. Bangladesh needs this clear projection
of self-identification right away.
Achieve tourist attention: When consumers decide on a destination for a holiday or a business
conference, several "brands" compete for their attention. A strong brand is differentiated from
others, has several strong advantages when compared to others, and has an attractive appeal to
consumers. In tourism, while factors such as cost of travel, convenience, and quality of facilities
are important, the strongest motivator is "image". Image puts a destination on the consumer's
"shopping list" and creates an emotional appeal, which enhances that destination's chances of
being chosen over others.

Compete with other tourist destination: Recently a survey commissioned by the Malaysian
Tourism Promotion Board reports: Singapore is seen, by a broad selection of travellers and
tourist agents from the US, Japan, India, Germany, Australia, UK and Sweden as "clean, modern
and safe". China's dominant image and attraction is "culture". Malaysia is seen as "multicultural
with many beaches". Thailand has a brand image of "exotic, fun, and friendly people".

So, what's about Bangladesh? It will be really possible to heighten our image through collective
contributions from our own national duties and responsibilities. Of course, image projection
needs a continuous process. It will not take birth overnight; rather a vigilant gradual grooming of
Bangladesh will be correlating to create a brand destination. Formal advertising and promotion
of a country as a tourist destination in other nations may also have a great effect. If that image is
unfocused or not clear, the destination will have difficulty competing with images created by
competing countries. Advertising, PR and promotion must complement informal information
obtained through word of mouth and personal recommendations, by either building upon the
latter or correcting negative perceptions that may be incorrect.

The gap in the perception about Bangladesh in the outer world and what
place branding has got to do with Bangladesh?

The issue is the ‘perception gap’ about Bangladesh in the outside world. In seventies,
Bangladesh was termed as a ‘bottomless basket’ of the world by the western media. Till now, the
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country’s image has not improved significantly. Till today, Bangladesh is portrayed in the
western media as country of cyclones, floods, with no significant economic activities etc. But
Bangladesh has come a long way from the situation it had in seventies and eighties which is not
highlighted appropriately in the western media. Bangladesh now without any major help with the
outside world handles the natural disasters. In eighties, almost 100% of the budget of Bangladesh
was dependent on foreign aids, now Bangladesh itself provides 60-70% of its budget from
internal sources. It has now some established industries like Readymade Garments and
Pharmaceutical Industry. Bangladesh is one of the major exporters of clothes in the world.
Bangladesh has achieved tremendous development in rural socio-economy. According to UNDP,
in 2006, Bangladesh has performed well ahead of its neighboring countries like India, Pakistan,
Nepal in the area of child mortality, gender parity at work, children education, empowerment of
women, sanitation etc. For contributing in the rural development, one Bangladeshi organization
(Grameen Bank) and its founder Dr. Muhammad Yunus have received the Noble Peace Prize,
2006. The country has now a strong private corporate environment where millions of
hardworking people work.

Remedy of ‘Perception Gap’ is rebranding Bangladesh in outside world:

The new Bangladesh Brand will be targeted to General public of the people from different parts
of the world such as
Western world:

USA and Canada.

UK and north European countries.
Australia
Far East and ASEAN countries:

Japan, South Korea, China

Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam
Middle East:
Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait

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South Asia:

India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal

Others:
Iran and turkey
If positive rebranding is possible in western world is possible, rebranding in Far East and
ASEAN countries and south Asia will be an easy task because more or less those countries are
influenced by the western perception. Middle East requires a special branding strategy where
perception differs from that of western countries.

Current perception about Bangladesh in the western world:

Country as general:

1. Bangladesh is a poor country, much poorer than its neighbors like India and Pakistan.

2. Most of the parts of Bangladesh go under flood water every year.

3. It is a Muslim country like Pakistan, Afghanistan with many fundamental mullahs and women
in BD wear burkhas like Middle East.

4. Dhaka its capital is like a slum capital like many impoverished African countries (according to
experience with SKYSCRAPER CITY website (the leading forum related to world cities), where
many of the westerners couldn’t believe after watching the pictures, that Dhaka has so many
high-rises and glass buildings.

5. Bangladesh is the most corrupt nation and attitude of all people will reflect that.

6. Bangladesh does not have educated human resources like its neighboring country India.

This negative perception in the public’s mind of the western world does harm to us in many
ways. People in their childhood get the general impression about a country and later many of
them become either a tourist or investor of that country. And in this way westerners perceive us
as a country of not worthy of visiting, investing or respecting.

As an investment worthy country:

1. Bangladesh is such poor that it might not have much investment opportunities.

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2. Bangladesh has no educated or skilled human resource.

3. As a Muslim country, it is very conservative hence they even not think of it worthy for
business visit.

4. It has got violent political backlashes often.

As a tourist destination:

1. It is a small and overpopulated country, therefore nothing much to see.

2. It is a Muslim and conservative society, therefore nothing to do here as a fun loving tourists.

3. It has significant health hazards like malaria, dengue etc.

4. As people are poor, there is always a chance of being harassed by beggars, and touts there.

5. There are fundamental terrorist groups there and there is significant risk of security for
westerners.

6. Dhaka is a very small, polluted city where there is nothing available from medicine to day to
day things that westerners use.

7. There is not many of a tourist spots there.

8. No western foods are available in Bangladesh and it does not have quality hotels to reside in.

Now how the perception of the general public about Bangladesh can be
changed in a short term?
Well, some of the perceptions of the general public in western world about Bangladesh are true
and there is no argument to hide those shames but many of them are a bit over exaggeration. And
besides downsides, Bangladesh has also some positive features that are not reflected at all in the
existing perception. For instance,

1. Bangladesh is no more a ‘bottomless basket’ case. There were times in seventies and early
eighties when almost 100% of Bangladesh’s budget was dependent on foreign aid. Now

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Bangladesh itself provides 60% - 70% of its budgets from internal sources and this contribution
is increasing day by day.

2. Bangladesh is often flooded during monsoon, but it does not mean all of Bangladesh goes
under water (it goes but very rarely, only in 1988 and 1998 BD experienced such flood in recent
history). There are many areas which are usually free from flood water in particular all the tourist
spots like, Chittagong hill tracts region, Cox’s bazaar and St. martin island, Sylhet tea estates and
North Bengal never go under water.

Bangladesh certainly had natural disasters like flood, cyclone etc. but it is the resilient people of
Bangladesh has who fought back and now a days without much support of the outer world, the
country itself handles those natural calamities.

3. Bangladesh is certainly poor but not much poorer compared to its neighbors. For instance,
according to CIA fact book the comparison GDP per capita in PPP (purchasing power parity) for
Bangladesh and India are-

Bangladesh $ 2100 and Pakistan $ 2400

One top of that, according to UNDP, Bangladesh is performing tremendously in rural

development and was well ahead of its neighbors in 2006 in the areas of child mortality, health
and sanitation, gender parity at work, gender parity at school etc.

For contributing in the rural development, one Bangladeshi organization (Grameen Bank) and its
founder Dr. Muhammad Yunus have received the Noble Peace Prize, 2006.

4. Bangladesh is a Muslim country but it is not an extreme one. It is very moderate Muslim
country and practice of Islamic Shariah is here a personal issue rather a legal or state issue.
Therefore, here use of burkha for women, attitude towards the participation of women at work,
living daily life is completely considered as personal and people has freedom to choose their way
of life.

5. Yes, Bangladesh is one of the most corrupt nations in the world, which is known to the entire
world. But what is not known to the outside world, is, this corruption is confined to government

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offices and political parties. The general public here is very hardworking, welcoming, and
helpful. They have nothing to do with corruption.

6. Though Bangladesh has political instability, it is neither a communist country nor it has
military ruler. It has some kind of democracy for last 15 years, freedom of speech and a strong
independent print and electronic media.

7. Bangladesh has developed a strong private corporate culture and it has many skilled and well
educated technical and managerial human resources who are not only working in the country but
also working around the world including developed countries. For instance there are Bangladeshi
engineers working in Microsoft, IBM, AT &T, and NASA etc. Bangladeshi medical consultants
are working in all major medical services in USA and UK. Pharmacists are working in Pfizer,
GlaxoSmithKline, Teachers and research scholars are working in leading universities of the
world including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge etc.

8. Though Bangladesh is a very small country in the world map, it has diversification in
landscapes, culture and religion. It can offer different experience for the tourists. For instance it
offers eco-tourism to Chittagong hill tracts where tourists go to live with ethnic tribal areas for
several days in remote hills and lead the local life without help of the civilized world.

BD can offer a steam ship tour through the river and Sundarbans (the world’s largest mangrove
forest- the home of Royal Bengal Tiger) which is a unique experience to see the rural
Bangladesh. Or, it can offer the calmness of Cox’s bazaar and St. Martin Island tropical beaches
where there is no rush of tourists and still virgin in terms of mass tourism.

9. There are also some economic achievements of Bangladesh. Bangladesh managed to develop
a huge Readymade Garments industry employing thousands of women. It is now a leading
exporter of clothes in North America and in EU (one in every 3 t-shirts in EU is made in
Bangladesh).

10. Bangladesh has disciplined and well trained armed forces, which has contributed immensely
to the world peace by participating in the UN peace-Keeping missions. BD has the highest
number of peace keepers working for UN.

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All these positive points and reality should be informed to general public in a way that will
change their perception about Bangladesh.

How to input the abovementioned information to the brand ‘Bangladesh’ for the
general public of the western world :( what can we do about this image
problem?)

1. We know every big city in the western world has some kind of big festivals at some point of
time in a year such as London has its LONDON CARNIVAL; Sydney has its own festival.
Bangladeshi community has to participate on this festival at a grand level demonstrating
Bangladesh’s culture while doing so distributing free gifts (i.e. Bangladeshi Icons like royal
Bengal tiger, canoes, and booklets about the tourism opportunities and positive things about
Bangladesh).
A formal organization (which we are going to form) containing professional event management
and advertising people from Bangladesh, students and any interested Bangladeshi volunteers
living in those western countries, and if possible a representative of Bangladesh embassy will
coordinate the whole participation in those festivals.

2. Perception about a country in western world in the mind of a person is usually grown at young
age because when the go to school they read about different countries and areas of the world,
again when they are a bit older they get confirmation about their perception by how the media
there portray the image of the country.

The young generation now a day in western world use internet as a tool for interaction with
others. There are numerous ‘blogs’, ‘forums’ and sites like, thorn tree (for tourists), skyscraper
city (for city scrapes and cities), YOUTUBE (for showing videos of any kind to the outside
world) which are used by the millions of youths all around the world. These sites can be utilized
to convey the positive message about the country to the youths of the western world.

And I can assure you this is a very effective tool and its effectiveness is proven. I can mention a
couple of example here. In the Bangladesh section (inside Indian subcontinent) of ‘Thorn Tree’
forum of LONELY PLANET, (one of the world’s most favorite tourism BLOG), there is a
person called MR. Mahmud, who himself without out of only patriotism tried to portray

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Bangladesh as a good tourist country and offered free help to the tourists who are interested
about Bangladesh. His strategy worked and he managed to bring many western tourists to
Bangladesh. It is really a success story. Kudos to Mr. Mahmud.

Another instance is a Bangladeshi guy living in US whose nick in Skyscraper city forum (the
world’s city forum) is ‘TMAC’, TAN and other patriots have posted thousands of pictures of
Dhaka, rural areas and tourist sites in the Skyscraper city and has been able to change the
perception of the many people in a positive way about how Bangladesh looks. Many of them
were impressed to see Bangladesh’s modern urban looks (of Dhaka) and natural beauty that
otherwise had the negative impression about our beloved country.

3. Bangladesh needs to send some strong message to the outside world about its attitudes and
handling of corruption, fundamentalism etc. it has done that about handling fundamentalism by
controlling the extremism very fast which was appreciated by the western world very much.
In case of curving corruption, so far government failed to take any meaningful action. But
Transparency International -TA (a Germany based think tank) is fighting against it all alone. It is
revealing corruption statistics and building public awareness against it by various promotions.
The activities of TA has to be highlighted in the western media…..giving them an idea that ‘we
know this is a problem, and we earnestly are fighting against it, government did not help us, but
we the public are concerned and taking actions by ourselves’.

4. More and more success stories of Bangladeshis has to be framed in documentary videos like,
‘Dr. Yunus’ success with Grameen Bank Model’, ICDDRB’S success about eradicating cholera,
Mr. Leepu’s success about exotic car designs (it is already shown in Discovery channel all-
around the world) etc. And then making arrangement to show these documentaries to the main
stream western TV channels, if necessary even on payment.

5. For tourism, there should be a One Stop Information Service in Dhaka airport under a private
management where, there will be counselors who will suggest the tourists according to tourist’s
budget, days available and type of tourism he/she wants. And this whole service has to be free of
cost; if possible it has to be provided by the help of sponsorship of local corporate companies
like telecommunication farms or multinational companies and banks.

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Plan of Action:
Now whole promotion of rebranding has to be done as an integrated action so that, one activity
becomes complementary to another. For instance, the participation in festivals of the different
cities has to be coincided with promoting Bangladesh in different FORUMS and western Medias.

To do this, a formal organization has to be formed which will co-ordinate the whole promotion
thing. If possible, the government of Bangladesh, local media and local corporate companies’
participation should be ensured to solve funding problem, to get the help of the government and
non-government institutions. Say if government approve and provide the fund necessary it will
also be possible to hire lobbyists to promote the image of Bangladesh in the parliaments of
western countries and hence get new opportunities of bilateral benefits. We have to convince
about the simple idea to all in Bangladesh that, if Bangladesh’s image is increased, its export
order will increase, its people will get more visas to western countries, people living abroad will
take pride to introduce themselves as Bangladeshis and the government of BD will get more
respect and acceptability to the western countries for which it always concerned about.

To promote the idea of the rebranding to the politicians (ruling party), private sponsors, and
media, seminars, face to face negotiations has to be done. They should also give examples of
companies like INTERBRAND which are engaged in such place rebranding.

Developing a strong image for Bangladesh as destination requires a carefully planned brand
strategy based on:

• A well-defined and unique brand personality

• Selection of the correct positioning strategies

• 'Themed' product development

• Consistent and appropriate advertising and promotion

• Careful brand guardianship

All the above must be built on a thorough understanding of consumer needs. Above all, the
success of brand image development will depend on how the perceptions of consumers can be

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encouraged to believe that one destination is different and better than its competitors. This
encourages consumer acquisition and retention, including extending the length of stay.

Normally all the branding campaigns will be decided by the advertising and management
departments with a bit of top level management involvement. We should use the budget that has
to be allocated to the branding campaigns in a very intelligent manner.

It will not be wise to start with a huge budget campaigns unless the country image is already a
big brand. We have to spend amount sparingly in all the available advertising mediums and
analyze the results from all the different mediums carefully. We need a deep marketing mix
analysis. This will show us what advertising mediums are giving us a better brand image. Then
we have to try to spend more amount on those mediums and try to analyze the possible steps we
can take to better the brand visibility from the weaker mediums.

Conclusion:
Destination branding process is a continuous work. It should go on until the country image takes
a lasting shape in the industry. Otherwise there is a great chance of another country taking over
the market share. If we follow these basic steps, it is definite that the brand image of Bangladesh
will be quite healthy and in turn it would bring in the required Gross Democratic Product (GDP)
growth.

We are truly a “nation-state” with almost the same culture, religious tolerance, and social values.
In developing a brand, we must believe in what we propose to deliver. We must be open to our
weaknesses and backwardness, and leverage on the strength of our achievements.

The brand building initiative has to be a coherent approach driven by various sectors — the
government, political parties, civil society, media, professionals, private sector, cultural world,
workers and farmers, urban and rural people, etc. When all of us can share a common identity,
we shall be able to establish Bangladesh with a rejuvenated brand that the world will respect.

All the stakeholders in a transition economy like Bangladesh must be clear about the destination,
in line with similar countries that have transitioned to the next growth trajectory. However, in the
process of developing an energetic brand, we should not sideline critical issues such as the anti-

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corruption drive, generation of economic activities for poverty alleviation and gaining the trust of
the citizens through actions.

We need to send a message to the international community that we mean business, there is policy
continuity despite change of the government, democracy means the same thing here as
elsewhere, and that we are continuously striving to build respectable institutions. All these will
be a continuous battle, just as creating a vibrant brand for “Bangladesh” is.

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References:

1. http://www.mof.gov.bd/budget/afs.html

2. https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications...s/bg.html#Econ

3. https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications...s/pk.html#Econ

4. http://www.un-bd.org/bgd/index.html

5. http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/s.../msg00008.html

6. http://www.newagebd.com/2006/jul/29/index.html

7. http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcrip...nscriptID=3334

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