Poland as a Brand – A Few Words on Branding

I recall an incident where a representative of an organisation, whose image was handled by Stratosfera, sarcastically remarked, “You treat us like a brand of washing powder!” He intended it as a reproach, but we perceived it quite differently. In our view, the client was acknowledging that we had used solid, proven technology to solve his problems in terms of marketing strategy and branding. For us, it was a compliment to our marketing professionalism.

This text was authored by Krzysztof Najder, P.hD., our Founding Partner, originally from 2004.

In trying to make people think well of our country, ourselves, our culture, and our economy even before they get to know us deeply, we are essentially tackling a standard task in marketing strategy. In this task, our country is the brand, and we, our culture, economy, and resources are the products it represents.

Talking about Poland as a brand is neither a rhetorical device nor a diminution of its significance. On the contrary! Thanks to this approach, we can use the most effective existing methods of creating a positive image for our country.

The Challenges Facing the Poland Brand: How Does Branding Work?

There are situations where you don’t need to worry about a brand’s image. If the products sold under it are well-known, recognised, and generally perceived as exceptional in some way, and the competition is either asleep or non-existent, then additional efforts to maintain the brand’s image are unnecessary. Such luck is reserved solely for producers of innovative, hard-to-replicate market hits. We are not in this situation.

Poland is one of the two hundred-odd national brands fighting for a share in the global consumer’s consciousness. The list of countries is both shrinking and growing: within our lifetimes, it has expanded several times over! Marketing experience shows that outside the top twenty, all other places are losing positions. Meanwhile, in terms of the Human Development Index, we rank thirty-fifth.

Opinions About Poland

We are even further down in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness ranking: 41st place. Among others, countries such as Malaysia, Costa Rica, and Trinidad rank ahead of us. We are somewhere in the sixties in terms of Gross National Product per capita; even within Europe, we are outside the top twenty.

Opinions about Poland are not positive. To our neighbours, we appear as a corrupt, bureaucratic country that does not respect civil liberties and lacks a market economy. Studies conducted by Stratosfera indicate that not only our reality contributes to this image but also a mere lack of information.

Perception of Poland Abroad

To many French people, we are a distant, almost arctic country, somewhat accidentally belonging to Europe, perhaps a Soviet republic? The British associate us with poverty, dirt, and post-communism. Better-informed Germans, due to geographical proximity, remember the Polish Pope and beautiful women of Slavic appearance, but still, their first association with Poland is car thieves.

Every brand is influenced not only by market success (or lack thereof) but also by the corporate culture of its owner: the company’s and its employees’ belief that they and their products are worth a lot. In this matter, Poland sets a record, unfortunately a negative one. We think worse of ourselves than of others.

Self-Perception of Poles

If we see Europeans (of course, the “real” ones, not us) as confident, hard-working, educated, and honest, then we ourselves appear as lost, moderately cultured, inclined to deceit citizens of class “B”. We only have no trouble with national pride: we are more generously endowed with this than the rest of Europe.

We should not, however, rejoice too much: pride without foundations tends to disappear. Just look at the relevant indicators: we are proud of our national belonging, but at the same time dissatisfied with living in our country. Unlike the rest of Europe’s inhabitants, who are clearly more satisfied than proud.

Building the Brand Image from Within in Marketing Strategy

The challenges facing the Poland brand are therefore serious. We are not only little known – and if known, then rather negatively – but in addition, somewhere along the way, we lost our raison d’être. Successfully built in the past through existentially painful but morally beneficial situations of national missions. We must start building the image of our national brand from within.

Components of the Poland Brand in Marketing Strategy
The basic elements of any brand are its verbal-graphic identification, flagship product, and core message. In marketing, these elements are described in various ways, but regardless of the terminology, they are the most important. The verbal-graphic identification of the brand consists of its name and logo (usually also containing the name).

In Poland’s case, the name itself is already given; we can only consider whether – because our national brand is also used outside the country – it should be formulated precisely in Polish. Besides the native sound, we have at least two candidates, in the former and current universal language, i.e., Latin (Polonia) and English.

Choosing a Brand Name in Strategy – so-called Naming

I think there would be little protest against rejecting the former, if only because we are trying to modernise rather than archaise our image. The English name, on the other hand, is burdened with an unfortunate phonetic similarity to the English name for the Netherlands, a country otherwise much better known and accepted.

Presumably, each of us has some equally grim as true story about an unlucky tourist who, to his surprise, ended up at an airport in Holland, even though he was heading to Poland – or vice versa.

Thus, it is not an obvious choice; after all, despite the ubiquity of English, it is not a favourite language among all European nations. For example, the French seem constitutionally allergic to it. Adopting the native name, on the other hand, involves the risk that foreigners will have doubts both about its pronunciation and meaning.

Advantages of the Original Brand Name in Strategy

However, this is already a research topic that can be resolved relatively easily. Using the name Poland in its original sound indicates self-confidence and conviction about the attractiveness of the national brand, which is an important advantage. It is also difficult to imagine a situation in which we use a name besides the original one in internal communication. It is, of course, the only option when our target group is Poles.

The graphic side of identification is a much more open problem. Using national insignia (the eagle; white and red) is the easiest and hence tempting solution. However, if the insignia were associated with the right image connotations, we would not currently have a marketing difficulty to solve.

Symbolism and Image Strategy

This is why (a similar issue is faced, for example, by the United Kingdom) it is better to focus on symbolism independent of these insignia. In the case of any brand, a complete break in identification continuity – e.g., simultaneous change of colours and graphic symbol – signals that its value system is also being totally overhauled.

We might want to signal that Poland is changing, but to such an extent? We probably shouldn’t give up some, albeit minimal, reference to our insignia. The next element of the brand after identification is its flagship product. When saying that brands are the most important entities in the marketing world, and we must focus our attention and efforts on them, we must not forget that these brands matter. And an essential part of their significance is the products offered under them.

Poland’s Flagship Products

Many countries already have such products, thanks to tradition (French wines, Cuban cigars) or more recent technological advantages (Japanese cars). In every case, however, it is not about a product hastily invented as well reflecting the values of a given country. It is about a real export good, so unique and high-quality that it has become permanently associated with the given state.

In our case, the most well-known goods are vodka and sausage, of which vodka can probably be omitted (regardless of its somewhat ambiguous symbolism) due to the successful international expansion of Russian vodkas and their international copies. So, should Kraków’s dried sausage remain our flagship product and compete with Hungarian salami? Fortunately, we do not have to decide here and now.

Potential of Tourism in Poland

Besides products in the literal sense, we also have at our disposal at least our country in the physical (i.e., touristic) sense and ourselves, Poles. The last important element shaping the brand, its message, defines what the brand promises to create a certain image and value in its target group.

Similar to the flagship product, we choose the message not only based on an analysis of the brand’s strengths and weaknesses, but also considering at least two more factors: the competitive environment and the beliefs of the chosen target group. Considering only the first factor, we can distinguish three further strategies for creating a brand message.

Strategies for Creating a Message

The first of these strategies, sectoral, involves making your product sector the thematic axis of the message (in the case of a country, the sector is nations). The sectoral strategy is the default way of building a message for leading brands that speak on behalf of all products in the product sector, not trying to distinguish themselves from competitors. Telekomunikacja Polska can simply connect, PZU can provide security, and Coca-Cola can refresh.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be a leader, but this is not a necessary condition for the effective use of the sectoral strategy. It can also be used differently – by redefining the sector in such a way as to occupy a position comparable to the leadership. The simplest redefined competitive sector is simply to establish – that is how new product sectors are created.

Examples of Sectoral Strategy

For Poland as a brand, establishment translates into finding such an advantage that is not only difficult for the competition to copy but can be presented as a distinguishing feature of a new class of products. For example, let’s take tourism as a topic: Poland – a holiday country. That’s something all touristic countries can say.

However, one can take advantage of the fact that Poland, due to its location, is communicatively accessible and that in many places in our country, the distances between tourist attractions are small. For example, in the Polish Tatra Mountains or around Kraków. In such a country, a full-fledged “tourist programme” could be very short. And we have: Poland – a country for weekend holidays. A new sector in which we could be the king.

Creating New Rules of the Game

However, we can start quite differently by establishing new, favourable for us and unfavourable for the competition, rules of the game. For example: only countries known for a very long history of statehood count. Poland – after a thousand years of practice, we know how to host guests. This is by no means the end of the repertoire of sectoral strategies!

Instead of new rules of the game, we can introduce so-called ennoblement, which involves expanding the category in such a way that in this new, more capacious one, we have an advantage – usually emotional. It sounds exotic, but this strategy is very frequently used. IBM uses it (instead of computers – Solutions for a small planet), as does Nokia (instead of mobile phones – Connecting People). If they can, so could we: Poland – the heart of Europe.

Personality Strategies

The next way to an effective brand message after the sectoral strategy is personality strategies, which appeal not to sectoral properties but primarily to the beliefs of the target group. For this type of strategy, it is more important than for other types of brand messages to carefully define the audience and support it with research on their views and life goals. Personality strategies are used in sectors where product advantages do not exist or are difficult to communicate.

One of the best-managed brands in the world, Marlboro, bases its message on a personality strategy. The central message of the brand is freedom, an otherwise not obvious promise for an addictive product. Variants of personality strategies are practically used by all major beer and cigarette brands – not because it is good for stimulants, but because, from a product perspective, these are extremely even categories.

Linking the Brand with a Character Trait

The first and simplest approach in the personality strategy is to link the brand with a specific character trait that consumers would like to have (but do not): Poland – discover your chivalrous fantasy. A more complicated variant is the appropriation not of one character trait but of an ideology, a whole set of beliefs: Poland – a country of deep faith. Formally similar, although in a wholly different spirit, one radio station tries ideological appropriation: “Radiostation” for everyone else.

You can also play differently by presenting our brand as an entry card to at least seemingly exclusive and aspirational clubs. Maybe you remember the literal, though unfortunate, slogan of 10.5 beer: Welcome to the Club. In our case, considering the realities, a possibility would be to promote our country as a place for extreme sports enthusiasts: Poland is a country for tough guys.

Competitive Strategies

The third and last type of strategy is the competitive strategy, in which we try to show what positively distinguishes us from our competitors. This is the most common type in marketing, perhaps because it is intuitively the most obvious. In its simplest form, it involves meeting the needs of consumers – you need to find one that we can indeed respond to, and our competitors cannot.

For example, due to the diversity of geographical regions, our country exceptionally well satisfies the tourist need for diversity, thus Poland – a bit of everything. A slightly more sophisticated variant involves avoiding threats, in which we start not from our advantage but from a competitor’s disadvantage.

Assuming that the competitive environment we position ourselves against is countries more developed economically and living at a faster, more hectic pace, we can promise: Poland – here we don’t know what stress is.

Examples of Competitive Strategies

You can also turn a disadvantage into an advantage, selling, for example, the lack of sophistication of our hospitality industry: Poland – because you don’t go on holiday to have air conditioning. These are, of course, just examples, not supported by either research or an analysis of the competitive environment and the target group.

They aimed to show that choosing the right strategy for the brand depends on too many elements to be determined through loose discussions and press polemics. If you believe that an architect is needed to build a house, I assure you – a specialist is needed to build a brand in at least the same measure. Especially when it comes to our national brand!