My friend and colleague William Shepherd directed me to a piece at Quartz by Michele Acuto and Parag Khanna, on how cities are driving globalization more than nationsâa theme I touched upon on this blog in March 2010. As he said, I had called it three years ago, though admittedly Acuto and Khanna have fleshed things out far better.
It’s not just the fact that cities elicit less pluralistic feelings among the populationâWellingtonians felt pretty strongly when PM John Key made his comment that our city was ‘dying’âbut there are practical reasons for cities to lead the way.
First, we can’t afford to wait for central government to take the lead on a lot of policies. When it comes to economic development, cities should be able to mobilize a lot more quickly. The idea is that cities are leaner, flatter and more responsive to change. The reality is that some are mired in bureaucracy, and if voters agree that that has to change, then I would love to see that reflected in this year’s local body elections. Based on what I’ve seen, you won’t find the agent for change within politics, howeverâthey have had more than enough opportunity to voice this very view. This has to come from outside politics, from people who understand what cities are truly capable of, especially when they engage and realize their potential.
Acuto and Khanna cite several examples where cities have had to go above and beyond what their national governments have provided, in the areas of security, climate change and academia. Even stock exchanges are merging between cities:
Stock exchange mergers testify to this changing geography of influence: the popularized link between New York and Frankfurt via the 2011 talks on the NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Boerse merger only hinted at a wider trend that, in the past two years alone, has seen negotiations between Londonâs and Torontoâs stock exchanges, and similar discussions between Sydney and Singapore, Chicago and Sao Paulo, Dubai and Mumbai or the ShenzhenâHong KongâShanghai triangle, all of which indicate how global finance networks are being redrawn through emerging global cities.
In my discussions with MBIE, the New Zealand Government has been aware of this trend, but other than the discussions about regional reform, very little of it has surfaced in Wellington. Yet the government has a focus on Auckland, and Christchurch will be state of the art once its rebuilding is completed. We have a perfect opportunity to use our inherent agility, if only we had our eyes on the prize, and moved forward rather than played politics, stuck with “think local, act local” thinking.
Secondly, cities should find the task of marketing themselves less confusing. A nation-branding exercise, for example, hits a snag early on. When I quizzed Wally Olins about this many years ago, he identified a very obvious problem: which government department pays for it? Is this the province of tourism, internal affairs, foreign affairs, trade, or something else? A city should be able to establish sufficient channels of communications between its organizations and trust in oneâin Wellington’s case, tourismâto handle it. If these channels are broken, again, it’s going to take some new blood and real change to fix them and inspire a spirit of cooperation. There’s a pressing enough need to do so, with a vision that can be readily shared. We need to think differently in the 2010s.
Thirdly, cities can foster offshore relationships more effectively. New Zealand, as a country, has not done as well as it should in promoting itself in various Asian cities, for instance. In one major city, I have had feedback that New Zealand stands out for the wrong reasons, in not having its chief diplomat join other countries in celebrating a particular national holiday. We seem to be on auto-pilot, not being as active as we should. Yet, as Acuto and Khanna point out, almost all global economic activity is being driven by 400 cities. Wellington, especially, should be able to take the initiative and head to the world’s major cities, promoting ourselves and ensuring that the innovators and enterprises here can hook up with others. We can establish trade and cultural links more quickly if we go to the source. Many cities and provinces even have their own economic offices, so they expect such approaches: they want to work at the city level.
And if we head offshore to promote our own, then we should expect that foreign direct investment can flow more effectively inward, too, having established that relationship.
This all makes sense if you consider how democratization has changed the world we live in. On so many things already, we cut out the middle man: in printing, we no longer need to go to typesetters or plate-makers; online publishing has meant our words can go to the public on blogs; social media have allowed us greater access to companies and politicians. Air travel is more affordable than it was 30 years ago. Cities have the resources to engage with citizens and learn about their needs. Offshore relationships can be maintained between trips using Skype and other digital resources. The nation-state will remain relevant for some time, but cities can deliver more relevant, more specialized and more customized programmes in a more timely fashion. Now, do we have the courage to declare that we no longer want “politics as usual” this year?
The Google experience over the last weekâand I can say ‘week’ because there were still a few browsers showing blocks yesterdayâreminds me of how brands can be resilient.
First, I know it’s hard for most people to believe that Google is so incompetentâor even downright corrupt, when it came to its bypassing Safari users’ preferences and using Doubleclick to do it (but we already know how Doubleclick bypassed every browser a couple of years ago). People rely on Google, Google Docs, Google Image Search, or any of its other products. But there’s something to be said for a well communicated slogan, ‘Don’t be evil.’ Those who work in computing, or those who have experienced the negative side of the company, know otherwise. But, to most people, guys like me documenting the bad side are shit-stirrersâuntil they begin experiencing the same.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s OK for a small publication to get blacklisted, or people tracked on the internet despite their requests not to be. But I don’t think we can let these companies off quite so easily, because there is something rotten in a lot of its conduct.
By the same token, maybe it doesn’t matter that we can’t easily buy a regularly priced orange juice from a New Zealand-owned company in our own supermarkets. Most, if not all, of that sector is owned by the Japanese or the Americans. We haven’t encouraged domestic enterprises to be global players, excepting the obvious ones such as Fonterra.
However, most people don’t notice it, because brands have shielded it. The ones we buy most started in this country, by the Apple and Pear Marketing Board.
And like the National Bank, which hasn’t been New Zealand-owned for decades, people are happy to believe they are local. It was only when the National Bank changed its name to ANZ, the parent company, that some consumers balked and leftâeven though it was owned and run by ANZ for the good part of the past decade.
Or we like to think that Holden is Australian when a good part of the range is designed and built in Korea by what used to be Daewooâand brand that died out here in 2003. Holden hasn’t been Australian since the 1930s, when it became part of GMâan American company. However, for years it had the slogan, ‘Australia’s own car,’ but even the 48-215, the ur-Holden, was American-financed and developed along Oldsmobile lines.
Similarly, Lemon & Paeroa has been, for a generation, American.
Maybe it’s my own biases here, but I like seeing a strong New Zealand, with strong, Kiwi-owned firms having the nous and the strength to take on the big players at a global level.
We can out-think the competition, so while we might not have the finances, we often have the know-how, that can grow if we are given the right opportunities and the right exposure. And, as we’ve seen, the right brands that can enter other markets and be aspirational, whether they play on their country of origin or not.
Stripping away one of the layers when it comes to ownership might get us thinking about which are the locally owned firmsâand which ones we want to support if we, too, agree that our own lot are better and should be stronger.
And when it came to Google, it’s important to know that it has it in for the little guy. It’s less responsive, and it will fence with you until you can bring a bigger party to the table who might risk damaging its informal, well maintained and largely illusionary corporate motto.
We only had Blogger doing the right thing when we piggy-backed off John Hempton having his blog unjustifiably deleted by Google, and the bad press it got via Reuter’s Felix Salmon on that occasion.
We only had Google’s Ads Preferences Manager doing the right thing when we had the Network Advertising Initiative involved.
Google only stopped tracking Iphone users using a hack via Doubleclick (I would classify it malware, thank you) on Safari when the Murdoch Press busted it.
That’s the hat-trick right there. Something about the culture needs to change. It’s obviously not transparent.
I don’t know what had Google lift the boycott after six days but we know it cleans itself up considerably more quickly when it has accidentally blacklisted The New York Times or its own YouTube. One thought I had is that the notion that Google re-evaluates your site in five hours is false. Even on the last analysis it did after I resubmitted Lucire took at least 16 hours, and that the whole matter took six days.
But it should be a matter of concern for small businesses, especially in a country with a lot of SMEs, because Google will ride rough-shod over them based on its own faulty analyses. Reality shows that it happens, and when it does happen, you haven’t much recourseâunless you can find a lever to give it really bad publicity.
We weren’t far off from issuing a press statement, and the one-week mark was the trigger. Others might not be so patient.
If we had done that, I wonder if it would help people see more of the reality.
Or should we support other search engines such as Duck Duck Go instead, and help the little guy out-think the big guys? Should there be a Kiwi search engine that actually doesn’t do evil?
Or do we need to grow or work with some bigger firms here to prevent us being bullied by Google’s, and others’, incompetence?
Take a car range that’s not selling too well, and try to pull the patriotic heart-strings to see if you can move a few.
Trouble is, this ad for the MG 6 Magnette, which is running on some of our sites, is pretty awful.
It’s not convincing, for starters. Brand Germany has its positioning so well sewn up that it’ll take more than a low-budget campaign to shift consumer perceptions, even in Britain. Whomever did this creative obviously hasn’t realized that even the Metropolitan Police doesn’t always buy British any moreâthough, by and large, the French police will buy French, and the Polizei will buy German.
It’s worse than CitroĂ«n’s effort in trying to convince us that the C5 is Germanic, though at least in its case, it came off mildly aspirational.
And how ‘Beautifully British’ is the MG 6 anyway, when it was Chinese funds that propped it up, and most of the car is made in China for only final assembly in the Midlands?
As Edward Sheldon pointed out in the AROnline Facebook group, a much better approach would be to distinguish the MG 6 by making the notion of “buying German” seem me-tooish. Target the MG 6 at the non-conformist, those individualistic buyers who don’t want to drive yet another Focus or BMW Dreier. Even the off-the-cuff copy that Edward came up with in conversation (âExclusivity is a myth. Follow your Heartâ) is better than the drivel MG originated.
While it might not be the better car, at least those who opt for a 6 know they are bucking the trendâafter all, people have bought outclassed French cars in some segments because they didn’t want to seem like the chap next door.
What is even more interesting is that the promotions for the same car in China are far more interesting, with a greater need to cut through the clutter that is 2010s Chinese advertising. The use of MG’s history, the ‘Morris Garages’ legend, and a ridiculous storyline that makes the Milk Tray Man seem dull help turn the 6 into a far more appealing proposition, even if not all of it translates well into English. But Britishness, in this case, seems to work far betterâit looks like the Chinese agency understands subtlety, using the smallest of hints. Granted, I am comparing a web ad to a video, but still âŠ
I’ve had a wonderful time in Pune and Mumbai, two cities to which I had wanted to go for some years. Like some New Agers say: be careful what you put out into the universe. It can come true.
My main reason for going was to address the Knowledge Globalization Conference at FLAME in Pune. FLAME’s campus is remarkable: 1,000 acres, near a fancy golf course, and completely teetotal (which actually suits a social-only drinker like me). The scenery in the valley is stunning, and the sound of the water trickling down the mountain during the winter was particularly relaxing.
But as with any place one visits, it’s never the scenery that makes it: it’s the people. And in Pune I found a sense of optimism from all people from all walks of life, one which I hadn’t seen for quite some time.
I also ran into Deo Sharma from Sweden, whom I first met in 2002 in KĂžbenhavn. When there are coincidences like that, you know you’re on to a good thing.
Equally inspirational was addressing the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication. This talk, arranged through my friend Nishit Kumarâwho learned I got a bigger buzz sharing knowledge than sitting on a beach relaxingâwas attended by 600 students at different year levels. When you see a school like that, and students prepared to ask tough questions (both in person and later on Twitter), you feel encouraged that Pune has an incredible future ahead.
And before I advance to my next point, Mumbai was just as fantastic, and I need to acknowledge my old friend Parmesh Shahani, who let me stay with him in a home that beats some of the art galleries I have seen.
Everywhere you go in Pune, you see schools. A lot of tertiary institutions. Like so many Asian families, Indians place education highly. I had two parents who never seemed to go out on the town because we weren’t made of money, and everything they had went to my private schooling. I can well comprehend this mentality.
Which, of course, begs the question: why isn’t our country doing more in this sector with India?
I realize things are gradually changing as we incorporate more air routes directly to India and the government begins focusing on our fellow Commonwealth nation, but, as with capitalizing on the wave of Hong Kong emigration in the 1990s, I fear we might be too slow. Again.
This is nothing new. I’ve been saying it since the mid-2000s, on this blog and elsewhere. Privately I’ve probably been uttering it for even longer, before we nominated Infosys of Bangalore as one of our Brands with a Conscience at the Medinge Group.
And yet in the quest to get a free-trade deal with Beijing, we brushed aside India, a country with whom we have a shared heritage, a lingua franca, and a lot of games of cricket.
When I first went to India in 2008, one Indore businessman asked me: why on earth did New Zealand pursue the Chinese deal ahead of the Indian deal?
âFollow the money,â I swiftly answered, a response to which I got a round of applause.
I know the numbers may well have been in China’s favour, but sometimes, there is something to be said for understanding what is behind those numbers. And there is also something to be said for looking at old friendships and valuing them.
We can’t turn the clock back, nor might we want to, but it seems greater tie-ups with Indian education could be a great way to expose the next generation to more cultural sharing.
While in Pune, there was news of two Indian student murders in Manchester, which won’t have done the British national image a great deal of good. Australia already suffers from a tarnished image of racism toward Indian students, one which the Gillard government is hurriedly addressing with advertising campaigns featuring Indian Australians. It strikes me that there is an opportunity here in New Zealand, now that I have apologized for Paul Henry. Only kidding. I don’t think that I had much influence doing so unofficially, but I felt I had to get it off my chest, and I did apologize.
I was frank about it. I was frank about Henry, and I don’t mean Benny Hawkins off Crossroads. I was frank about the Indian immigrant who had to change his Christian name to something sounding more occidental before he got job interviewsâprior to that he did not get a single response. But, I also noted, none of this would be out in the open in the mainstream media if New Zealanders, deep down, were not caring, decent people. The incidents would have been covered up.
Despite what we might think, most folks didn’t realize that we had a decent high-tech industry, that we are the home of Weta, and that Tintin, The Lord of the Rings and King Kong were local efforts. Although Players had only been out for three days by that pointâand not to particularly good reviews, eitherâfew realized a third of it was filmed in New Zealand.
They still think of sheep.
But there is a generation which, despite a huge domestic market and the optimism in their own country, wants an overseas experience, and the occident is still regarded as the place to do it in.
When they heard there was the possibility of high-tech jobs in a beautiful land, ears pricked up.
I realize the OECD stats say we’re average when it comes to innovation, but I know it’s there, under the radar, growing. People like Prof Sir Paul Callaghan reckon it’s the realistic way forward for our nation. Interestingly, this message sounds an awful lot like the one I communicated during my 2010 mayoral campaign.
And if we are to grow it, then maybe working with our Indian brothers and sisters is the exactly the direction we need to follow.
Being niche and understated is cool positioning for a local audience, but to be relevant on the world tourism trail, we need to shout about why we are great.
Actually, not always. And even if we did have to shout about it, saying, ‘We are loser tryhards’ is not the message we want to give off.
Mr Fitzgerald, have you asked how potential visitors would perceive this sign? Did you not learn much from last year’s experience, where there were international people joining anti-sign groups? Or that there were comments from branding experts abroad who felt this sign was a massive joke?
Marketing is not always about shouting, nor is destination branding. It’s about, first and foremost, getting your internal audience on side. In the case of the ‘Wellywood’ sign, you’re failing at that. One poll last year showed four in five Wellingtonians were against this sign.
Secondly, marketing is a job that’s done not just by Tourism Wellington, but by all residents, because it’s no longer a mass media, topâdown discipline. People power drives a destination’s brand.
You’ve just made this city that much harder to sell, which has consequences for visitor numbers and airport usersâbut should I really expect a non-Wellingtonian, non-New Zealander to understand what this place means to us?
A very good Vista Group luncheon (Jim, Natalie, self), where we discussed: the Gap rebrand; The Hobbit, unions and the BNZ Centre boilermakersâ strike; and my mayoral campaign.
On the first topic, we concluded that it was down to a simple cock-up. None of us could see any reason for the Gap to rebrand (was there a change of strategy, management, or trend?) though we did see a reason for Wellington to do so.
âAbsolutely, positively Wellingtonâ has been with us for 20 years. I remember when it was first released, all set in Perpetua Bold, adorning the new office of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce after its shift from Church Street. As Jim pointed out, it was a contrast to the negativity that Wellingtonians had about our cityâs own image, as typified by TV shows such as Gliding on: drab, grey, and full of civil servants.
The one event that might have given us a bit of a boost was Sesqui. And what a disaster that turned out to be: an event that never began.
I said as much when we discussed the arts and cultural side to Wellington during the campaign. The brand, Mayor Prendergast mentioned, was revamped when she took office. Nine years on, I think we need to move on again: that Wellingtonâs brand does not reflect our cityâs passions.
Every brand must be inclusive. It must also differentiate. There are many people in the ICT sector, who are an important part of Wellington, who need to be included. We have fashion designers and event producers, who thrive on the notion that Wellington is the most creative city to be in. When the former mayor said that we were now also the culinary capital, I said that we had to define that by way of our cityâs creative manna: not just the culinary capital, but the culinary artsâ capital. Everything we do seems to be underpinned by this idea of putting in that extra zing, whether itâs my oft-quoted example of Silverstripe or the quality behind Mojo Coffee.
There is work to be done, and Iâd love to engage with Wellingtonians on getting some kind of framework down for a 2010s city brand. The campaign may be over, but itâs only highlighted the things that need to be done. Letâs start with the strategic ideas and work our way to the operational.
Yesterday, I began watching the Indian media get hold of the Paul Henry story. Indians are, rightly, up in arms with the TV hostâs insult of Chief Minister Smt. Sheila Dikshitâs nameâthis, plus the incident questioning whether Governor-General HE Sir Anand Satyanand was a New Zealander, shows a pattern where Henry thinks poorly of people with Indian ethnicity.
The Indian people might want to know that the insults to their people are not restricted to Mr Henry: his colleague Paul Holmes has been rubbishing New Delhi and India in the weeks leading up to the Commonwealth Games, using the fact that few New Zealanders have been there, and pushing unfair stereotypes about hygiene. Mr Henry is also not alone in making fun of Chief Minister Dikshitâs name, with sportscasters giggling about it like children.
Henry has received the flak because he perhaps had more of a profile, and is already down after the comments about Sir Anand. Isolated incidents we can probably forgive. But, collectively, it shows our media still have plenty of representatives from the redneck sections of our societyâand I am happy to tar those members with the same brush as the one I have used on Henry. Right now, I hope there are many broadcasters feeling at least a little shame for joking about the Chief Ministerâs name.
And we wonder why politics is under-represented in New Zealand by minorities, how Parliamentâor even the local body elections that I contestedâdo not reflect our rich cultural mixture. This week, we did not have to look very far: one of our institutions, the fourth estate, is quite prepared to treat Chief Minister Dikshit with little respect; and one of its members is willing to imply that a Governor-General, who speaks with a New Zealand accent, does not sound âlike a New Zealanderâ because he has Indian roots.
Itâs not as though we begin on the best footing when we go to India. When I spoke in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, two years ago, one question asked of me by a member of the local business community was why New Zealand had cooperated with China over free trade prior to considering India as a trading partner. I answered him frankly, âFollow the money.â To me, even being someone of Chinese ethnicity, I see benefits working with India, with its proficiency in English, its common law heritage, and its respect for intellectual property. Of course China is importantâbut not at the exclusion of a fellow Commonwealth country. The gentleman justifiably felt India had been sold out.
The Indian Government has rightly summoned our High Commissioner asking for an explanation. Our nation has had to apologize to India for Paul Henry. Yet one thing remains very clear to the Indians: Paul Henry is a civil servant working for state television. Words are not going to mean an awful lot to Indians, if they are not backed up by action by our government. Read between the lines of the Ministry of External Affairsâ official protest: they want him fired. Their words:
It is hoped that the government of New Zealand would take immediate demonstrative action against the said individual to send out a clear signal that such behaviour is totally unacceptable.
They mean that a 14-day suspension isnât going to cut it. And that was for the Sir Anand issue, not for the Sheila Dikshit humiliation.
Having been to India, I know the industry of the Indian peopleâand I know that they can do whatever they put their minds to. If they begin crying boycott, we are in such trouble that even a smile from the Prime Minister cannot cover.
Paul Henry has done one good thing: expose some of the unacceptable thinking that he and others harbour. But just as Sir Peter Jackson strengthened our national image, one man has now weakened our countryâs image as a progressive, multicultural and embracing nation.
TVNZ, which has flip-flopped between defending Henry and giving him a light slap on the wrist, needs to do more soul-searching than CEO Rick Ellis, or Henry sympathizer and spokeswoman Andi Brotherston, has done so far. Does the network truly condone this sort of behaviour? A mere suspension, and the use of the Dikshit clip for days after the Sir Anand affair, are saying that it does. And in such a case, Paul Henry is being unfairly targeted as the sole offender: the circumstantial evidence is that TVNZ has a far sicker culture than even I had imagined.
To think: usually, I go abroad holding my head up high because I come from New Zealand. People are willing to help me out because they respect our nation. Iâm going to brace myself for a much harder time when next working in India, because some of our countryâs less palatable members have been able to get away with pushing their agenda for too long.
I initially thought that the Facebook page demanding a TVNZ boycott was going too far, given that there are responsible TVNZ staff, too. However, I have not watched a single second of TVNZ programming this week, as an unconscious decision. (Commonwealth Games coverage on Prime has helped.) Maybe the supporters of that Facebook page have a point, because as the days pass, and there continues to be inaction from TVNZ, it is becoming apparent that more heads need to roll. My idea of getting Henry to meet with the New Zealand Indian Central Association is looking more meaningless by the day.
Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is not from technocratic ideas or the notion that we are liberating more of the economy, but by growing entrepreneurship. The city will take the most socially responsible, entrepreneurial start-ups and act as an agent to grow them (with an agreement that they remain in Wellington, of course) and create the capital flows to get them funded. I realize there is Grow Wellington already, but their ambit will be shifted.
So, itâs economic growth from the bottomâup.
Then (italics added for this post):
The clusters have naturally formed but they can get so much stronger. If the city is being them, then there is no reason Wellington cannot become internationally known for them. I think in this last week I have shown that borders mean very little to me, and anyone who wants to be mayor in the 2010s needs to have a similar mindset. We are not competing just for national resources, but global ones; and by being part of the global community, we might start bridging more communities and getting some greater global understanding. The nationâstate as it was understood in the 20th century is dying as a concept, and governments have only themselves to blame. Things are shifting to the individualâcommunity level, and you are right, real things happen when it is people acting at the coal face. Those who distance themselves will not be equipped for this century.
I still need to get a few book reviews up, and hereâs a good one to begin 2010 on. Nation Branding: Concepts and Country Perspectives, edited by Nishit Kumar and Anil Varma and published by ICFAI Press, is a very complete book giving a snapshot of the disciplineâs practice in the late 2000s. There are over 20 chapters, with contributions from the authors, and from Simon Anholt, Melissa Aronczyk, myself and others.
Unlike others that blend points of view from different authors, Nishit and Anil have tied this book together beautifully. It reads well as a single volume, the information is up to date, and readers should get a very strong overview of the subject area. Thereâs plenty of academic rigour in the research, but the book does not lose non-academics when it comes to the subject.
Practitioners would be well advised to combine a reading of, say, Keith Dinnieâs Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice, Simon Anholtâs Brand New Justice, and this latest volume.
