Country Brand Estonia – Nordic Country and Digitalised Nation

Eoin Dixon Murphy — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 14:01:29 +0000

Estonia (Estland) is a Nordic country. The language is very close to Finnish, but above all else, the values and contemporary hallmarks make it Nordic. This includes mindset, flat society, dry humour, straightforwardness and mentality is Northern. The country is a leader in all things digital, with taxes filed in 3 minutes and e-voting being the norm. The environment is in high regard. PISA results rank Japan, Estonia and Finland as best educators (OECD 2016).

The “mental geography” is Nordic, as Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president has put it.

Image problem

Still, the country struggles with its reputation.

Its digital reputation is solid – think Skype, e-residency, Jobbatical, Transferwise, NATO cyber defence centre, the EU’s IT Agency or even Barack Obama saying on a state visit he should have asked Estonia for help before taking Obamacare online. Nonetheless, associations people connect to this aspiring Nordic country are negative or neutral at best. Those who have had a connection, whether for business or travel, have a positive and surprising impression, as studies by Enterprise Estonia / Team Estonia show.

In 2015 the Enterprise Estonia made the right decision to revamp its branding platform. Since 2017 the toolbox Brand.Estonia .eu and landing page Estonia.ee are the new resources all are welcome to use!

Innovation at heart

Here is an innovative example of how Brand Estonia managed to position the new brand. Instead of showcasing the usual beautiful pictures and materials, Estonia has a honest visual identity. A picture of a swamp. But it goes further. Coming back to the negative perceptions people have, high CO2 emissions and one of the largest gender pay gaps in the EU are indeed a problem. How can a country make this weakness a strength and show that it really does see it as a problem? Estonia chose to talk about it openly and offers materials (visuals, talking points, data) on this. Honest and authentic branding.

Co-operation

We have had the pleasure to work with Brand Estonia, benchmarking them with the innovative and capable branders of Finland. Brand Estonia also worked with us during the formation of its new branding platform. We provided inspiration, best practises, engaged stakeholders and helped to explain the need of place branding and how frontrunners do it. This entailed participation in the Nordic Place Branding Conference 2015 and 2017, to co-organising the “Nation and City Branding Conference” in 2016 in Tallinn to offering input and comments to the brand architecture on a running basis and giving a speech at the brand platform launch in January 2017.

We were very glad to have been able to work with Brand Estonia and the Estonian Design Team (Eesti Disaini Meeskond). We wish that the branding toolbox and material that have been developed in co-creation with the stakeholders, businesses and civil society will take off.

“In Estonia, clean and untouched nature co-exists with the world’s most digitally advanced society. It is a place for independent minds where bright ideas meet a can-do spirit.” That is the country’s shortest pitch.

Best practise

Today, in place branding terms, it is considered as one of the best practise cases. “After restoring its independence in 1991, Estonia has come a long way to find its place on Europe’s and the world’s map. This Nordic Country in northern Europe, with half of its territory “occupied” by forests and wilderness, has worked hard to build its economy and position itself as an innovative and technological country.” Best practise case as described by City Nation Place (January 2020).

Berlin Partner – Talent Attraction Management and Place Branding

Future Place Leadership — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 10:16:26 +0000

A long standing partnership with Berlin Partner

Ever since we started working together with Berlin, things have moved fast and smooth. The Talent Services Department of Berlin Partner, the economic development agency of the Berlin region, participated in our Talent Attraction Management for European Cities, Regions and Countries training programme in 2016. Since then we have worked on multiple projects together, not the least the European Talent Mobility Forum cluster.

We have also been to Berlin to give inspiration talks on place branding and talent attraction, in order to help Berlin mobilise stakeholders and refine their work further.

We co-organised our flagship training programme, ‘Talent Attraction Management for European Cities, Regions and Countries’, with Berlin Partner in May 2017 in Berlin. Subsequently, we’ve had the great pleasure and honour of being selected by Berlin Partner to help lead a strategy review process of Berlin Brain City in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

We have facilitated a series of workshops throughout the years with key stakeholders, and have done surveys to both evaluate existing campaign strategies as well as repurpose and reorient the future brand platform.

One of the projects we did – in close dialogue with the Berlin Partner team and the stakeholder institutions – was a new strategic concept, along with activities such as repurposing the current Brain City Berlin ambassador network to a kind of ‘Scientists of Berlin’ network and launching a social media takeover programme to showcase what it is like to work for one of the partner science institutions.

Berlin Partner is a shining example of a well-coordinated and long-term pursuit of managing a place to make it more attractive and more visible to target groups. We have therefore invited them as speakers at several of our conferences, for example the Nordic Place Branding Conference, to share inspiration about the innovative work they do.

Berlin is always beta, as they say – always testing and trying out new things, which is very much in line with how we strive to work.

Any questions, or something we can help you with? Get in touch!

Place Branding - Future Place Leadership