Whatever bad happens to the country and its people is blown out of proportion and all the positive things that happen go unnoticed. To a global citizen, Bangladesh is always viewed and judged by all these negative attributes.

The tremendous will, courage, resilience, commitment, and innovation of the people to enhance the fate of the country against all adversities remain surprisingly unheralded. The international community is noticeably hesitant to acknowledge our various achievements in the last few decades even while these achievements are considerably better than many other countries which the world views much favourably.

There is a general tendency among the international community to think, talk about Bangladesh, or compare it with many African and other dysfunctional countries while they tend to ignore that Bangladesh with all its backwardness and structural deficiencies has made significant progress in many fields that would make many emerging countries envious.

It would be self-defeating for us to act like a cry-baby and blame the international community for this unfair treatment. We have to admit that we have a problem in projecting the country and the true spirit of its people. This incapability of ours creates the necessity to focus on the brand building of Bangladesh.

Recently an organization arranged a seminar on "Branding Bangladesh." Though some of the discussions there were irrelevant or even confusing in understanding the subject "branding," I think it was a very timely effort and want to give the organizers my heartiest congratulations for taking this initiative. However, I think in approaching the problem and to formulate an effective strategy to resolve the issue we need to be systematic rather than adopting sporadic efforts. We need to carefully study the well-established principles of marketing management and effectively use them for our particular case.

In developing a brand identity of Bangladesh , we must understand what really we understand by "branding." Commercial brand management is basically a process of marketing management by the seller of a product to enhance the value of the product or create differentiation with the competitors. Marketing guru Philip Kotler defined brand as "a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors." He explained that a brand is basically a seller's promise to deliver a specific set of features, benefits, and services consistently to the buyers. The best brands convey a warranty of quality. It can convey up to six levels of meanings: Attributes, benefits, values, culture, personality, and user. A brand can grow stronger by emphasizing any one of the meaning or with all of them. The branding challenge is to develop a deep set of positive associations for the brand. A marketer must decide at which level or levels of meaning to anchor the brand identity.

Nation branding is basically a derivative from the commercial brand management process. It is a field of theory and practice, which aim to measure, build, and manage the reputation of countries. It applies some approaches from commercial brand management practice to countries, in an effort to build, change, or protect their international reputations or external perception at the minimum.

It is based on the observation that the "brand images" of countries are just as important to their success in the global market place as those of products and services. Simon Anholt is normally credited as a pioneer in the field. Nation branding appears to be practiced by many states, including US and UK (where it is officially referred to as Public Diplomacy) and most West European countries.

There is increasing interest in the concept from less developed countries on the grounds that an enhanced image might create more favorable conditions for foreign direct investment, tourism, trade, and even political relations with other countries.

We can often hear and read slogans like: "Malaysia: Truly Asia," "Dubai: The Jewel in the Desert," "China: The Factory of the World," "Sri Lanka: The Pearl of the Indian Ocean," etc. When we open Newsweek, Time, or The Economist, we get to see that some of the Latin American countries are also doing the same.

Though "Shining India" could not bring in enough votes for BJP, the respect for the "India" brand with its continuous institutional reforms, quality of education, industrial innovations, IT revolution, and the "Indian Knowledge Bank," with its ability to deliver, did reach to all the important target markets. These countries have willingly created these slogans and brand propositions that people can experience or feel both externally and internally.

Setting aside all the theories, we must now think about how we can develop our own brand. What factors should drive the case of our branding and how should it be driven?

In developing our brand proposition, we must identify our experiences, uniqueness, behaviour and inherent qualities of the people, obstacles and achievement from both positive and negative aspects.

The key to attaining an effective brand identity is to activate adequate positive association with all these experiences, good or bad. For an example, we are known all over the world for the sufferings and destruction we face due to natural calamities year after year. However the same incident could have been transformed into a major brand identity if we could have positively associated the courage, commitment, and resilience of our people who even after all these natural disasters have continued to develop the country with some remarkable achievements.

We have invented micro-credit to fight our own poverty and are willing enough to share it with the rest of the world. We are competing with the giants of the world in ready-made garments market and successfully growing each year. Our nation had been created out of a dream of equal justice and opportunity to everyone, tolerance and a commitment to change the fate of downtrodden and deprived. Our ancestors have made their highest sacrifice, so that their future descendants can enjoy these universally human attributes.

We have continuously faced obstacles, but we have not removed ourselves from our destination. Thousand years of culture and civilization has given our people the humility, perseverance, resilience, and ability to dream with which we fight against all adversities.

We are truly a "nation-state" with almost the same culture, spirit, religious tolerance, and social values. In developing a brand, we must not lie or promise something which we believe we cannot deliver. We must be open to our drawbacks, weaknesses, and backwardness, and try to find positive association by establishing linkage with all our achievements.

Driving the process of building brand for a country is a much bigger effort than any other commercial product. It requires a true common representation of the aspiration of the people of the country. People of the country must be able to have belief in the image projected by the brand proposition. If they do not have the confidence to believe in the brand proposition, the brand identity will be meaningless to the rest of the world and will disappear in no time.

That is why building brand for Bangladesh will have to be driven from various forums -- the government, the political parties, civil society, especially media, professionals, private sector, cultural world, workers and farmers, urban and rural people, etc. When all of us can share the common minimum identity, we shall be able to establish Bangladesh as a rejuvenated brand equity that the world will respect and treat accordingly.

All the stakeholders in a transition economy like Bangladesh must be clear about the destination they are driving at and this can't be different from other neighbouring or similar countries who have transitioned to the next trajectory of growth or development.

We all must be very aware that the effort to develop an energetic brand for Bangladesh should not remove ourselves from our original fight. We must not suffer from self-denial that believe that believing in vibrant Bangladesh resolves our all problem. We would still have to work hard to remove corruption from our society, create enough economic activities to eradicate poverty and create enough trust among people to have faith in Bangladesh.

We need to send a message to the international community that we mean business, there is policy continuity despite change of the government, democracy means the same thing here as elsewhere, and we are continuously striving to build respectable institutions. All these will be our continuous battle, just as creating a vibrant brand for "Bangladesh" is one.

The writer is a banker.