What: Creating Brand UAE with a grant award of Dh62,500.
When: Starting October 2013 for a period of two years.
How: A two-year project that will analyse the complexities that go into making a nation a brand.
Who: A multinational team of academicians from around the globe. Professor Ian Michael from Zayed University, Prof Melodena Balakrishnan from the University of Wollongong in Dubai( UOWD), Professor Salah Hassan - The George Washington University, USA, Professor Brian King from Hong Kong Polytechnic and Tanita Sandhu - The Academy of Art University, San Francisco, USA
Where: UAE.
Quite unlike a product, service or lifestyle, turning a nation into a brand is a far more layered and complex exercise. It does not just mean promoting tourism and hospitality of a nation but looking at some of the intrinsic cultural values, heritage and traditions that lend it its exclusive identity.
A competitive grant scheme administered by the Research Incentive Fund (RIF) of Zayed University in response to a call from the Prime Minister’s office to develop a brand design for the UAE, the contest had about 50 applications from which this team was awarded a grant of Dh62,500 to conduct an in-depth research on what is really Brand UAE, its logo and what it really entails.
Education spoke to the two members of the team from UAE, Professor Ian Michael from Zayed University and Professor Melodena Balakrishnan from UOWD - experts in marketing, business and place branding - to understand what it will really take their team to indulge in such a challenging and complex exercise.
The art of story-telling as a tool
“The grant is an academic research study which will take two years to figure out the elements that should go into Brand UAE. Nation branding is complex because it involves multiple stakeholders and ownership cannot be had with a single entity as impressions of brands are formed through experiences with private and public sector entities. A nation brand needs to reflect the heritage of a place (in this case, we are also looking at seven emirates) and the aspiration a country has,” remarked Professor Melodena.
The exercise of creating Brand UAE is likely to be layered, where the team has to look into a host of things that make a significant contribution to the identity of UAE.
The team intends to create a brand architecture or a grid that looks at all the elements that go into making a brand. “Our methodology is going to be capturing the essence through story telling. There is a lot that this country has achieved in a very short while. At the core of it all are the people of UAE and the people of each emirate have a story to tell within which is embedded the heritage of a place. At the centre of every story, there are heroes and we’d want to chronicle that.”
Involving students
One of the most important aspects of the project is the involvement of undergraduate students in the research. Professor Ian Michael of Zayed University elaborates: “The University is also very particular that its RIF should encompass student participation in the research process. To achieve this, two groups of female Emirati students (one Bachelor’s) and the other (Masters) are working on a research project which forms part of their course work to enable our team to brand the UAE. They are using “Story Telling” research methods with members of the Emirati community to enquire about the perceptions they (Emiratis) have about all the seven emirates, and the students will further discover through this research method about what the respondents perceive or expect their country to be and have as a Brand Identity.
“Further, groups of Zayed University students will continue working on our research project as part of their Capstone (major primary research project that they have to do before graduating). This research has created tremendous amount of “buzz” among the business and communication students at Zayed University.”
Inspiring pride in a nation
Professor Melodena remarked: “A brand that is grounded in strong brand values can last forever - just the campaigns or depictions can change. As researchers, we want the brand to resonate with the people of UAE, which is why we are using Zayed University students to get local insights. They have interviewed grandparents to get a perspective of the nation’s history. Research shows that pride is the most important element to create unity and that is our focus. A brand that creates pride, reflects values and takes the country forward.
The team is focusing on three target groups to cover during the course of the research. Says Professor Melodena: “The values need to reflect the people of the nation. We have three target groups the research project looks at - Nationals, Expat residents, Investors (business and individual). We are also looking at the impact major UAE corporations have on the perception of a UAE brand. It is a well-known fact that worldwide - airlines, MNCs and other services can impact the brand reputation and identity of a nation. Strangely, airports are often the first point of experience of a nation brand but people form their perceptions through a variety of communication tools like media, movies, books, songs, word-of mouth (which is the strongest), blogs, etc.”
Developing human capital
At the end of two years, the team intends to have enough insights into the nation to balance old and new, create pride, differentiation and yet be memorable. “The money from the research grant is being used to make sure the process has academic integrity and that we develop human capital. To this extent, we use students and teach them theory on nation branding (very few subjects are offered on this topic), we teach them different research methodologies like storytelling, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis and more importantly, they get an opportunity to make all the voices of the various stakeholders heard. We are working with industry partners to ensure we have multiple stakeholder alignment,” remarked Melodena.
The team has experts in branding, tourism, design and most of them have industry experience.
