Nation Brands?

Despite all the controversy and turmoil in political life, Italy still has a very strong "national brand image".

The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index measures national reputation - as perceived around the world - about culture and heritage, population's reputation, tourist attractions, investment and immigration (N.B. measuring how attractive as a place to work and live in), governance and, finally, the quality of products and services it exports. The rankings are updated and published once a year, and the 2009 index says that Italy has maintained its 6th global position.

To tell the whole story, the Country-specific summary says that brand strength is mostly strong in things related to the past and not to future assets, and this means that the country has probably "topped its own limits". This is in line with my perception: the bottom line is that everybody loves Italy, but there's a lot of perplexity about how it works as a system...

The top 10 for 2009 (2008 in brackets):

1. United States (7)
2. France (2)
3. Germany (1)
4. United Kingdom (3)
5. Japan (5)
6. Italy (6)
7. Canada (4)
8. Switzerland (8)
9. Australia (9)
10. (tie) Spain (n.d.), Sweden (10)

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