Rebranding Russia From Communism to Cool

Like many countries, Russia is expending considerable effort to improve its image and reputation abroad, but it has little success to show for it. How can Russia do better? The first step is a simple realization: Nations, just like companies and people, have brands — emotionally resonant statements about who they are and what they stand for. A nation is such an extraordinarily diverse collection of people, history, culture and politics, and this is precisely why it needs a simple brand to help others cut through this complexity and keep in focus what is truly distinctive about it.

Apple’s brand says “innovation.” Warren Buffet’s brand says “straight shooter.” American Express says “high quality.” None of the brands captures anything like the full richness of the company or the person, but they highlight an emotional reaction that shapes perceptions of the underlying data and conditions our response to it. When people think of Italy, they think of food and la dolce vita. When they think of China, they think “workshop of the world.”

Brands matter now more than they ever did in the past. In a globalizing world where anyone can be almost anywhere and work with almost anyone, why should Russia be the place that people care about? Russia needs a brand that answers this question. Countries and companies exist in a global “attention economy” where engagement and cooperation with others is the key to increasing prosperity and assuring security. Branding is about getting people to feel and understand your distinctively attractive characteristics so that you become the partner of choice in collaborative ventures where value is created.

The technology behind “soft power” is also very much about branding. U.S. political scientists think of soft power in a coercive way — using what makes you attractive to get others to do what you want them to do. But if you are a country that is primarily concerned with developing your economy, it is more useful to think of soft power as the ability to get others to cooperate with you — to attract the interest of the globalized class of entrepreneurs and innovators who will engage their capital, creativity, technology and know-how with your country rather than somewhere else.

Today, Russia’s brand is quite negative. We conducted a survey among University of California Berkeley undergraduates, an imperfect but useful proxy for the globalized entrepreneurs and innovators whose opinion will count the most. We asked them to identify one-word associations with different countries. Their associations for Russia were overwhelmingly negative; communism (28 percent), cold (13 percent), vodka (7 percent) and corruption (7 percent) dominated the responses and placed Russia far behind the other four countries included in the survey (the United States, China, Italy and Britain).

That is the bad news. The good news is that brands change. In the 19th century, Germany was known as a country of romantic idealism and France as a military powerhouse, yet few would make these associations today. Japan, Spain, Germany, Singapore and most recently Britain have all undergone dramatic positive changes in their country brands. Moreover, we found that our survey respondents think about Russia almost as often as they think about China. Russia commands a great deal of attention, and this opens up the possibility for change.

In the 1990s, Britain successfully rebranded itself from a stodgy bastion of imperial decay —”Rule, Britannia!” — to a hip, multicultural hub of innovation and creativity — “Cool Britannia.” One of the keys to this success is that Britain really had changed. There was a gap between reality and perception that a rebranding effort could honestly bridge.

Russia can and should undergo the same kind of branding shift. Russians are today engaged in vital and passionate debates about the country’s identity and image. This makes an effort to change external perceptions deeply genuine. There is a huge gap between the reality of today’s Russia and its perception abroad. Russia still faces many pressing domestic problems, but it has come a long way from communism and from the chaotic 1990s. It is our view that for branding purposes, Russians pay too much attention to rethinking their past. The key to improving external perceptions is to identify a forward and future story that makes Russia tomorrow’s distinctive partner of choice for people in the rest of the world, many of whom care very little about Peter the Great, Josef Stalin or the Cold War. Britain did not rebrand itself by getting its former colonies to think differently about the 19th century. It succeeded by getting people to think differently about Britain in the 21st century.

There are three specific narratives that we believe could work for Russia in the future.

• Multicultural Russia. Russia is a multiethnic society that successfully manages its diversity in a unique way.

• Eco Russia. Russia is a society with a deep appreciation for nature — its dachas, thick forests and territorial expanse are national symbols — and tremendous potential to help resolve the world’s ecological problems.

• Resilient Russia. Russians as a people who successfully manage volatility, respond to shocks, take crises in stride and survive. The story of Russian resilience is a profoundly human one that people everywhere can identify with and learn from.

Like all successful narratives, these are rooted in reality and reflect the aspirations and concerns of Russians themselves. They are more emotional than cognitive, which means that they hit the gut as much or more than they hit the head. And they are about strength that derives from contribution to global problem solving. That’s a brand that any country would like to have.

Russia’s brand should appeal to a large global audience. It should be about the future not the past. It should offer solutions to problems that all of humanity faces. It should propose partnerships that drive cooperation and engagement of others who face similar problems. And it should position Russia as a leader of those partnerships. All of this is quite reasonable to achieve — at least our survey respondents thought so. When asked to identify events that would help to improve their image of Russia, respondents specified environmental and multicultural achievements as having the most positive impact on their opinions about Russia.

Russia has placed a lot of importance on trying to rebrand through global media channels. But the media environment is saturated, and you will never change a brand by talking at people and telling them what they should believe. You will change a brand by getting people to talk to one another about Russia in different ways.

Ultimately, a successful brand is not owned by the company or the country but by the consumer. Until this lesson is absorbed and put into action, any attempts to rebrand Russia will fall flat.

Andrej Krickovic is a research fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California Berkeley. Steven Weber is professor of management and senior research fellow at the Infrastructure Research Center at the Skolkovo School of Management in Moscow.