Brand building: S/Africa moves across continent to understand perceptions about country

South Africa is building its brand from all perspectives. It is a nationalistic and global campaign spearheaded by Brand South Africa, the country’s government-registered, funded but independent agency. Petrus de Kock, the research manager of the agency, was in Nigeria recently to understudy Nigerians perception of South Africa, which is part of the process of deepening their knowledge of what is happening in the market to help them in correcting feelings and building a successful brand. He spoke with Daniel Obi on the project. Excerpt:

Why are you in Nigeria?

We launched a project this year tagged ‘Africa Programme.’ We are deepening relationship with our African peers. We started finding that we need much more nuances and understanding of the dynamics in the markets because economies are growing, the societies are changing and so our work at Brand South Africa. When we market the country we need to understand what is happening in those environments.

That is what brought me here to conduct research on perception of South Africa, looking at South Africa business involvement in the market, looking at our range of relationships to give us a better understanding of who we are as a country in the market and then how to improve in the areas where probably there may be problematic issues in terms of questions in peoples mind of who we are as a country.

How would you describe your relationship with Nigeria?

I think business wise it is very strong. There are a lot of mutual interest. I think there are about 150 South African companies more active in the Nigerian market and others that strive to get involved in the market. There is something that we need to understand, if we need to get a better approach to the Nigerian market and what are the challenges. In the long term, even at the leadership level we talk about intra-African trade and African integration, but ultimately it is a perception because there is a big barrier of what we think of each other in the continent. This is what we are trying to understand better, if there are blockages in the relationships what are they and what do we need to do to improve that.

In the past, South Africa appears to have displayed some unfriendly attitude towards Nigeria. Is brand South Africa an attempt to correct or re-launder its image among Nigerians

There are domestic issues in South Africa just like any other country, and we must start communicating developmental challenges in South Africa, because often you find that the issue of xenophobia often springs up in poorer communities. It is a question of competition at the local level. I don’t think that South Africans are against Nigerians or against other Africans, but at the local level we have some huge challenges in developing our societies, creating economic opportunities.

Some people may feel threatened in some communities because they feel that their livelihood is affected by African brothers and sisters which is untrue. I think many Nigerians in South Africa are adding tremendous value to our country. From my personal point of view, I have worked with a lot of Nigerians, and I have tremendous respect for education and professionalism Nigerians exhibit. Also what we need to tell as a country is to tell the positive story of what Nigeria did for our liberation struggle. That is something we need to educate our people that the rest of the continent assisted us to reach the point we are today.

Can you therefore tell me more about your re-branding efforts

It is not really re-branding but to get a better understanding of how we are perceived as a brand. It is like any other brand, it is important to constantly do a health check on how you are perceived by the people. At strategic level and our government strategies, department of international relations, department of trade and industry and several other government entities are looking very deeply into our African strategy as a country. In order to make that succeed we need to know where the opportunities and challenges are. Our economic survival in the long term depends on how we link into the African market. Our economy still has a lot of dynamism and we have a saturated market in many sectors and so our investors have to look for opportunities in the continent and that is part of the logic why we are embarking on this drive.

It appears that South Africans move out for investments than other African countries coming into South Africa; is this part of the branding scheme

It is part of our strategy. The number of intra-African trade is shockingly low. For us, and which should be the focus of other countries, should be our next challenge as Africans on how to improve those relations to enable us to develop our own societies and economies. The challenge of African investments into South African market is that we got many developed sectors and it is difficult to enter into those markets. For instance, there is huge opportunity in mining in Mozambique but when you come to South Africa, the sector is over 100 years old and is well established. The opportunity in South Africa is there but it is more in services, technology, sophisticated new sectors. In other countries those sectors are still at low level of development. Businesses need capital. It is much more difficult not because people are being excluded but from an economic market perspective. It is much more complicated to come and assert yourself in South Africa.

There will be this feeling that the wake-up call of branding South Africa is on the background that Nigeria has overtaken South Africa as the largest economy on the continent; what is your comment

First, we want to congratulate Nigeria on this on the simple reason that growth and development in the African environment are good for all of us. Nigeria is a population of 170 million people and South Africa is 52 million. Nigeria is incredibly an entrepreneurial society and much more entrepreneurial than South Africa. For us, it is not so much of who is the big one. It is a case of what we can do together to move not only ourselves but our region. Nigeria is a significant player in the West African region and South Africa in the Southern African region.

Why hasn’t the brand building come much earlier than now

It is because we had a lot of home work to do. If you think of the complicated process of dismantling the apartheid regime. The first 10 years of our freedom, our democracy was establishing a new order. It is now that we can start paying attention to other issues as a country. But this is another issue. To me, deeper work on the exact story of what Nigeria did in terms of liberation struggle of South Africa needs to be done. This is a big story to be told. It is important to tell the story to educate our people as our society was isolated. I think our people are not educated when it comes to the role of other African countries in our liberation struggle.

Branding is an experience. As you engage in this drive of branding South Africa what are those convincing things on ground

The reality that underpins the South African brand is infrastructure. If you look at our airports, ports, infrastructure. In terms of infrastructure, we have incredible story to tell. If you look at the diversification of the South African economy, we have done incredibly well in that front. We also speak to nation capacity – skill and offering. Very important element of the South African brand is the people in different talents and the strong democracy. These are some of the key elements we use that provide the reality we base the brand on. We are not only doing this in African market, we are meeting with expatriate associations, strong Nigerian community, going into conversations with other state communities in South Africa to create conversation on the branding.

Daniel Obi