BRANDING GREECE

 At this second post of GreetGreece we will make a tribute to the Presentation on Branding Greece which was delivered at the 11th International Aristotelis Conference in Thessaloniki on 11 November 2011 by Peter Economides. A very interesting topic which can increase the popularity of the Greek tourism. GreetGreece will present you this topic in a simple and understandable way trying to make it known to more people.

The word brand at the way used to the presentation means what people think of you and branding is the procedure of controlling brand. Greece according to the presenter is one of the biggest brands worldwide which has never been branded. Many people around the globe have shown their aspiration to the Greek civilisation and the Greek tourism. Greece is the heart, the soul and the spirit of the Mediterranean and this need to be acknowledged from everyone, we need to own it and we need to express it worldwide, as a nation we require to motivate and be motivated by this. As said by the association of Greek tourism enterprises (SETE) the international arrivals from tourists the last decade were decreased by 20 percent for Greece whereas it was a significant increase of 15% for turkey and 6% for Croatia and as a result we need to reconsider and reorganise our position within the competitors environment by rebranding our nation as a top tourism destination. The tourism industry for Greece plays a significant role to the general economy and we own to use it for further development.

By answering key questions such as what is brand and if we can talk about a nation as brand we can notice that brand or branding is nothing more than the set of impressions that are kept in people minds.  Branding is the impression to your mind about things you have heard, things you have said and things that have happed about something.  This finale impression is what branding is trying to handle. Branding is the process of managing impressions; well-built brands create strong and reliable impressions, it should be the goal of every brand to be the protagonist of its category. if u use Google search engine as a brand barometer you will find out that the searches ''Greece crisis'' and ‘’Greece corruption’’ have more popularity than’’ Greece acropolis’’ and  ‘’ancient Greece’’ which gives the impression worldwide that Greece is the nation of crisis and not the mother of democracy and a top tourism destinations as it has to be.
We Greeks have to stop selling our tourism trying to make a short-term profit and we have to start managing the impressions and change the way and what others think about as. We have a long and successful history and we need to build on our future, the tourism industry can help a lot to the development of the economy.