THE ASIAN PERSUASION: UNCOVERING THE NEW EPICENTRE OF SOFT POWER

Through their contributions to culture, economics, and politics, Asian and Southeast Asian nations are indelibly moulding global discourse and influence

- Lynette Ow

Countries, like corporations and organisations around the world, use branding methods to build a brand identity and position themselves as key tourism attractions. The "Malaysia Truly Asia" theme for example has remained sticky in our minds for decades. The slogan's ambition is to show the world the uniqueness and allure of Malaysia as an exceptional tourist destination where all the colours, flavours, sounds and sights of Asia come together.

One of the tools used by countries for nation branding is the annual Global Soft Power Index, compiled by Brand Finance-a global brand and consultancy group that has played an instrumental role in assisting nations in enhancing their global standing for over a quarter-century. This influential index, which compiles the opinions of over 150,000 respondents from more than 100 countries, is a potent instrument for nation branding. In fact, the chief academic advisor to the Global Soft Power Index, Dr Paul Temporal from the University of Oxford, is the same person who helped develop the "Malaysia-Truly Asia" tourism brand strategy in 1999.

The index provides an overall score of a nation's soft power-a term popularised by Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University in the 1980s-by evaluating both Reputation and Influence. It measures a wide range of Nation Brand Attributes to analyse their role in driving performance in both these key-performance indicators (KPIS). The third KPI-Familiarityenables respondents to form their perceptions initially. To summarise, Konrad Jagodzinski, place branding director at Brand Finance, defines Soft Power as the art of influencing the behaviour and preferences of states, corporations, communities and the public in the international arena "through attraction or persuasion rather than coercion."

ASIA EMERGES AS A TITAN OF SOFT POWER