“Good People, Great Nation” Is Not Sellable – Al Ries
Elcee McEdwards and Ralph Tathagata had the opportunity of dragging world renowned marketing and branding experts, Al and Laura Ries, into the ‘Great Rebranding Nigeria Debate’ in an exclusive interview. Their views are apt, instructive and straight to the point. They also spoke on some other issues.
Highlight: “Nigerian Pineapple tastes better than any pineapple I’ve ever tasted in my entire life” AL RIES, AUTHOR OF POSITIONING AND INTERNATIONAL BRANDING GURU DURING HIS RECENT VISIT TO NIGERIA.
Excerpts.
There is an ongoing debate about the appropriateness of the Nigerian re-branding project being built around the theme “Good People, Great Nation”. This idea has been variously criticized, bothering on some of the issues you raised today during your lecture. What would be your advice?
Al: It is certainly true and a good idea that you have good people and a great nation. The problem is that here’s a very big abstraction that is very hard to communicate; (Laura: and deny). One way to test such an idea is to reverse it and see if it applies to other countries in Africa. Okay? Let’s reverse “Good People and Great Nation” and say that all the other nations in Africa have bad people and are not very great. I mean, people are not going to buy that. You see, that’s the advantage of doing a thing like “Largest and Greenest.” You reverse that and say Sudan and all the other countries are not the largest and are not the greenest. I mean, in a sense, it’s a believable concept. I can understand why you would want to promote a (faulty concept) like ‘Good People, Great Nation’. That’s terrific. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t communicate. That’s the problem.
And you think, from what you’ve said, that wouldn’t serve our purpose, at this point in time, to effectively re-brand Nigeria ?
No, it won’t. Here is the difference: When people perceive you as the largest, the media is much more likely to pay attention to you, to write stories about you, to write stuff about the good people and great nation of Nigeria . See, for example, take United States and Canada . Maybe you think that Canadians have a good people and has a great nation as opposed to America, but nobody writes about Canada; they write about America because we are big and Canada is small. So they write about the big countries not the small countries. So by saying you are the biggest country in Africa , more media are going to write about the good people and the great nation. But if you just say ‘good people, great nation’ there is no reason for them to write about you. You take a small country, a small country actually has no chance of getting much publicity, because they feel, well, yes, it’s too small. But every day you read in the Nigerian newspaper about China , everyday! It so damn big that people always ask and look (for information about it). What do they do over there in China? What do they do in India? What do they do in Germany? They should be looking at Nigeria in the same way.
Let me get you right, when you said Nigeria does not hold anything in the mind before the world, how do you really mean?
(Laura) Well, it isn’t a strong perception that people have of Nigeria right now. I mean(despite) the fact that it has so many people. Nobody realizes that it’s the largest country in Africa. I mean, people have very poor statistics of Nigeria . It’s just not well understood or known for any particular thing. When you say ‘Nigeria’, nothing really comes to mind except that it is in Africa. I mean some people aren’t exactly sure about where it is. What will get you in the mind is standing for something; positioning and owning something that differentiates you from the rest, and that hasn’t really happened yet. And here is the opportunity; of course, in addition, the problem with ‘good people, great nation’ is the touch of credibility. It is you saying that about yourself, and we all know that you guys are very proud people and very confident people and are very willing to stand up and say something like that. But the fact is what you are saying yourself is about yourself and that doesn’t have credibility. I mean, I saying I’m great is not the same as Oprah saying that I’m great. And if Oprah says that about me, hallelujah, praise the Lord! I mean, that’s my ticket to blow my status. So, it is the credibility of saying something that is actually tactfully based upon numbers. The fact is that you are clearly the largest; that is in no dispute in terms of population, and you are clearly the greenest. That’s also your stable picture showing how great Nigeria is compared to the rest of the continent in terms of its arable and cultivable land. So, those will instantly be accepted by the national media as truism. Whereas the problem in the controversy of a great people and great nation is, well, Al’s already said that. There is the need for someone else to say it of you to give it the authenticity and credibility and believability with the outside world.
Al, you talked about how we can develop a variety of unique agricultural products. Now, specifically, how can we do that? We have a lot of things… we have onions, pineapples, palm oil. Where can we start?
I like pineapple. Pineapple is expensive compared to most other fruits, and the good thing about pineapple is, the stuff is so hard that it ships well. Try to ship a tomato for example, you’ll see the problems. You can’t hoard a pineapple, you can drop the stuff and it won’t break. It’s also expensive. So the combination of being expensive, durable and easy to ship makes pineapple very good and ideal for that purpose. I’m not saying it’s the best idea, there are better ideas.
(Laura cuts in) And it’s very hard not to be good in pineapple. A lot of people grow it and it usually has a very good taste, and it seems an opportunity. But we need a lot of study obviously to really investigate it and analyze what might be the best choice, right…that’s the one that has great potential
(Al cuts in) But personally, I ate pineapple this morning and the other two mornings we’ve been here. I was shocked. I said “My God! This is really, really sweet pineapple. I couldn’t believe how good it tasted. It tastes better than any pineapple I’ve ever tasted in my entire life and I need no other pineapple. I think that this is a brandable idea.
How do we build a global reputation around that?
Laura: One farm or one tiny farm is not going to be able to make much difference. What we talked about is the need to have a consortium, so we have hundreds of farmers working as one promoting that one brand name. For instance, there are sugar-low pineapples in Hawaii which is a premium. It is supposed to be sweeter than the others. So, we are having that need to set the pineapples apart because, by its colour, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be sweet, but, of course, it very much is. So you need to have that brand name to reinforce the difference; and certainly, tasting is believing. You know, the one good thing about products is that you just want to buy it and you know that it is of a good quality and a very good product.
Al: And you have a very good opportunity for Public Relation or PR. Food products, any new food product, almost always gets a lot of publicity. Because, think about it, everybody has to eat, right? So, it’s a character that appeals to everybody. From a PR point of view, what you do is just take a pineapple and send it to 50 food magazines and newspapers…
Elcee: In Nigeria or outside…
Outside Nigeria . Forget Nigeria , we’re talking about building global brands. So you take it outside of Nigeria . You even start with South Africa , then you build the brand as a very popular brand in Africa and then you move it to Europe and Asia and United States . I mean don’t try to ship it 5,000 miles tomorrow. No! You kind of take it one step at a time.
Much emphasis seems to be laid on product branding which is tangible. Now, can we talk about service branding, as in branding Nigeria from the service point of view? What can Nigeria do to the world in terms of service?
Well, there is no reason that banking or financial institutions or manufacturers or all sorts of service industries, service companies… There is no reason why those individual companies shouldn’t try to build global brands from Nigeria . But I say one thing: If Nigeria tries to promote a basket of brands in every different category, you will achieve nothing; nothing. It’s only if you can focus, you see, if you can make Nigeria known as the green nation around the world, it is going to help other brands; it’s going to help the financial brands, the church brands, banking brands, manufacturing brands. It’s going to help everybody. So, on the basis of that, if you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at a lot of things. If you try to tell people you are good at a lot of things, they don’t think you are good at any one thing. So, it’s a question of focus. And if you can build a powerful perception among people, globally, on one idea, they will think your banking industry is better, they will think your other products are great. See, people think Germany is pretty good because they see Mercedes and BMWs. Maybe, they don’t know any other product out of Germany beside Mercedes and BMWs, but they still think most German products are very good. You understand, start with the specific and get into the general.
So, where does the government come in all of these apart from the private sector; you said that it’s not actually the duty of the government to do this?
Think about what the government is interested in; the government is not interested in the global brand. You can’t vote for the president of Nigeria if you are living in the United States. So a powerful global brand beyond the state of Nigeria cannot help the politicians in Nigeria. The politicians in Nigeria want to make the Nigerian people feel good. How do we make the Nigerian people feel good? Well, we look around and say, “Good people, oh! You people are so good.” But that flatters people in Nigeria, and that’s the kind of idea that Nigerian politicians want to buy. They are not interested in the global brand, they are interested in the local brand; and ‘good people, great nation’ appeals to Nigerians here in Nigeria , and makes the political party in charge look good. So, I mean, in a sense, their motivations are wrong compared to the business community. The business community’s motivation is outside of Nigeria. “How do we make people think of Nigeria as a good place, outside of Nigeria.” And so I think there is a problem, I don’t think the government is going to be easy to sell on an idea that is different from ‘good people, great nation’.
On a last note, I think you mentioned something like interplay. You said something like, “the way a nation is perceived by the outside world will also affect the way the brand coming out of it is perceived. So, don’t you think, based on this, the government should come in. I mean, shouldn’t there be interplay of some sort between the private sector and the government?
Well, if the government can, in a sense, perceive the problem of creating a powerful global position for Nigeria, benefiting Nigerians and Nigerian companies; then maybe they’ll see the power of an idea like “largest and greenest”. But they can have a different mindset; I think the mindset of most politicians is directed to the voters…
(Laura cuts in) and it’s been our experience in the United States that the government and business are at odds with each other. They very rarely play on the same side, and so they really don’t necessarily always work together. Business only understands business; and government for instance is about providing the needs and services to the people – the roads, the hospitals, the police, the security, the infrastructure, absolutely. And they are not generally the type of people who are in a very good advantage. So, there has to be an understanding and appreciation of what they need to do for the business community, or the business community can do it themselves. I mean, there’s nothing to be sad about the fact that they can’t get together, to try and work to promote Nigeria. Because, again, a lot of this is about PR; and the business leaders are going out and doing reviews and talking about it. It’s not about going on the CNN. To make a real difference, it’s got to come from the bottom up; from the words of PR, from the words of mouth, from the experience of people and certainly the experience of them seeing powerful Nigerian brands on the global scene.
