Some countries like Singapore, New Zealand and Ireland grab a far greater share of positive global headlines than their size and economic might suggest they should.
Global brand consultancy, Brand Finance has been compiling a nation ranking it calls The Global Soft Power Index which tracks the attraction of and persuasion of nations around the world.
The index’s 2021 edition includes Sri Lanka for the first time. Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and Switzerland occupy the first five positions in the index.
Sri Lanka enters the index at 70th place out of the 105 countries surveyed in the study. It is the highest ranking new entrant from Asia and is in 12th position on the continent.
Brand Finance highlights Sri Lanka performs exceptionally well on culture & heritage, ranking 7th in Asia – ahead of Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and 8th in Asia on how effectively it managed Covid-19.
Sri Lanka ranked in the middle of the pack for other attributes such as business & trade and governance compared to its counterpart Asian countries.
Parul Soni, as Associate at Brand Finance from its UK office, was joined by Aliakber Alihussain, Country Manager in Sri Lanka for an interview.
What is the Soft Power Index?
Ali: Soft power is a country’s ability to influence the preferences and behaviour of people in the international arena, through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion. The Global Soft Power Index measures these perceptions and can help determine how people around the world view a nation. It’s a survey conducted with the participation of over 75,000 respondents across 102 markets covering over 40 different metrics relating to soft power, and different arenas where soft power influence is used.
How is this useful for a country?
Parul: The Global soft power index is both a report card and a roadmap for nation brand managers, governments, trade authorities, tourism bodies, and anyone in the business of promoting a nation. It gives context to how they should market the nation, what perception gaps exist, and what levers to pull to bridge those gaps.
You track several metrics in compiling the Soft Power Index. Can you explain those?
Parul: We’ve identified 10 key metrics that we track. Three of these are what we define as key KPIs. The first is around familiarity, the issue of mental availability; do people know anything about your country? Are they familiar with it? Do they keep up with it?
The second metric is influence. How influential is the nation brand in the respondent’s country? The third key KPI is reputation, which means how reputable is the nation as viewed by audiences around the world.
Beyond these three KPIs, we also have the seven pillars of soft power, or areas where soft power may influence you. These include business and trade, education and science, and also culture and heritage.
Within the seven pillars of soft power, we also have various attributes that are measured, for example, within business and trade, we measure future growth potential, ease of doing business, and this year we’ve added a 11th metric, that is the Covid-19 response.
We’re looking not just at how nations responded and handled the health crisis, but also maintained economic stability, managed international aid and cooperation and how they acted on the world stage alongside their neighbours.
We are used to the World Bank’s annual “Doing Business Index” rankings. Often countries now use this as a benchmark to improve their ranking with targeted actions around the metrics that the Index tracks. Have you found similar trends around the Soft Power Index? And is that important?
Parul: Indices like World Bank’s annual “Doing Business Index” rankings are great at providing an objective view of your nation’s frameworks, infrastructure, and processes.
However, while that information is important to track, it can often be different to how ordinary people around the world actually feel about you or what they know about you. That is where the Global Soft Power Index, based on real world perceptions, provides insight into the perceptions that lead to decisions that impact your nations.
In brand terms, you might have an excellent product, an excellent nation that does well on objective indices, but if nobody knows about it, then you are giving up an opportunity to showcase your offering to the outside world.
The Global Soft Power index perception survey is designed to capture the level of that awareness.
It’s not just asking well-informed audiences or specialists, it’s asking normal people around the world what they think of nations because these are the people who have a direct impact on the nation.
These are the people who are going to decide whether to buy a ticket to go on holiday to Sri Lanka versus the Maldives.
Ali: If we take our nation as an example, currently, Sri Lanka has a branding message of “So Sri Lanka”, but at the same time, it would be interesting for the Tourism Board to understand what important levers can be pulled to augment a branding strategy that will resonate with those looking to travel to Sri Lanka.
When we look at the report Sri Lanka’s score for culture and heritage is impressive, we are rated as a country with a rich heritage. This information will be useful for promotional agencies when crafting a nation branding strategy.
What are the overarching trends or changes you’re noticing with the latest survey?
Parul: In the latest global soft power survey, we’ve found governance becoming an increasingly important topic, and it has had a big impact on how people perceive the nation’s handling of Covid-19.
Travel is at the back of everybody’s mind, and the focus is on which country provides a stable, safe and secure environment. The countries that ranked high on the index are the ones that have been able to handle the pandemic successfully and open up their economies.
Besides Covid, and the governance pillar, in what other areas of the index are you noticing shifts globally?
Parul: Another key area that we’ve seen a shift in is reputation. Several countries, most importantly, the United States, which was our top-ranking nation in 2020, has seen a big tumble in its reputation.
That’s down to, not just one event or one year, but a combination of several things that have been happening in the country over the last few years. It takes a lot to build a brand’s reputation, but it also takes a lot to dent it.
That’s the power of a strong brand. It’s taken four years of a turbulent Trump presidency, a pandemic, and failure of crisis management to lead to the damage that we’re seeing to the US reputation.
Sri Lanka on its first inclusion in the report has been ranked at seventieth in the index. What does this say about Sri Lanka generally in the context of the index?
Ali: Sri Lanka is scoring quite low on familiarity. It would be important for Sri Lanka, to rise in rankings, to focus on improving this. Sri Lanka scores well in culture and heritage; much higher in comparison to other Asian countries.
However, the score derived for education and science is low, despite the efforts of the government. Private sector led initiatives like the “the island of ingenuity” to promote Sri Lanka as a tech knowledge hub is an excellent example of what Sri Lanka can do to improve its perception as a centre for education and science.
If you were to highlight some opportunities from what you’re seeing in Sri Lanka’s data for the first time, what would those be?
Ali: The first one would be tourism. Secondly, we should be looking at business and trade.
Right now, Sri Lanka requires a lot of foreign investment, and we find that the government is trying to create an environment where business can be done with ease.
That perception, however, is still not coming out through the research. In fact, Sri Lanka is falling behind its other Asian counterparts.
On a positive note though, we find the future growth potential score is quite high, which means there is an opportunity for Sri Lanka.
What is the future growth potential score? What does that say about Sri Lanka?
Parul: The future growth potential is a metric that we’ve introduced this year, and it’s designed to capture the future ability of nations. Notably, within the top 10 list, we don’t see the usual traditional European powers that you’d expect.
Instead, it’s nations where people see potential in terms of future economic growth It is one of the stronger metrics for Sri Lanka, and that shows that people around the world are seeing the potential for the future growth of the economy.
Can you give us a sense of how Sri Lanka ranks, versus its South Asian and Southeast Asian counterparts?
Ali: If we take the two pillars, business & trade and culture & heritage, and compare Sri Lanka against our south Asian counterparts, we find Sri Lanka does score higher compared to the other countries except for India.
For attributes like a great place to visit and rich heritage, we find Sri Lanka tends to perform higher than countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
For trade, Sri Lanka is still lagging although there is significant potential. That could be due to the political instability and the red tapes businesses have to go through for foreign investment.
Why do you think nation branding should be something countries take seriously?
Parul: Nation branding is, in effect, how you’re presenting your nation on the world stage, how various audiences and key stakeholders, who have an impact on your economy, see your country.
If they don’t see your country in a positive light or they’re unaware of what your country has to offer, that’s a significant loss of potential. And nation branding is the reason why you see certain smaller countries like Singapore, New Zealand and Ireland, all punching above their weight because they’re able to leverage the soft power and their nation brand to get what their nation has to offer, across to the world.
Our Global Soft Power Index survey is the first step in diagnosing what these different perceptions are, understanding the nation’s ranking and how it does amongst various audiences and how it compares to other nations.
For Sri Lanka, taking the example of tourism, what our data allows you to do is look at how respondents from Europe see Sri Lanka versus how respondents in Asia see Sri Lanka. If gaps in perceptions are discovered then those can be addressed.
It also allows you to look at certain demographics, for example, how do millennials view Sri Lanka? How does the working population view the country? What do women feel about my country?
Having that understanding, helps you craft the message you’re projecting to the world through your nation’s brand.