When Dubai Port World's qualified bid to acquire P&O was vehemently opposed in the US, it exposed in no uncertain terms the global marketing challenge for the corporate sector of the Muslim world. This highly publicized affair simply exposed the challenge being faced by thousands of marketers competing on the global stage, from textile manufacturers in Egypt and Pakistan, to tourism or technology service providers in Indonesia and Malaysia.

With emerging global success stories such as the Emirate Airline, or Orascom Telecom, or Dubai-the city itself an investment and tourism destination-the question is, what can the corporate sector do to consistently overcome the uncontrollable branding challenges?

In other words, how can businesses from the Muslim world control the message before others keep shaping it?

Interbrand-A global leader in Branding

The above question was the premise that kicked off a short conversation with Mr. Jeff Swystun, the Global Director of the leading branding company in the world, Interbrand. Mr. Swystun is responsible for firm strategy, communications and knowledge management, innovation and managing Interbrand's own brand.

Interbrand, certainly knows a thing or two about branding given it is behind many of the leading brands in the world including AT&T, AstraZeneca, Nikon, UBS and even branding of cities and countries (e.g. recent work with Estonia and the Canadian province of Manitoba). Today, it delivers on the sophisticated art of evaluating, creating and managing brand assets globally through its 30 offices in over 20 countries giving it the global reach to conduct research, investigate emerging trends, and introduce brands across markets.

Interbrand is also the consultancy behind the BusinessWeek ranking of the Best Global Brands Report, which presents the ranking of the Top 100 most valuable brands of the world. This ranking, which gives a pure value to corporate brands-known as brand valuation-is perhaps Interbrand's most important contribution to the development of the branding practice. Its sophisticated 5 step discounted Economic Value Added methodology helps companies value their brand assets in a credible and tangible way.
Even with such depth of branding expertise, Interbrand's Mr. Swystun is quick to acknowledge the stark challenges faced by the Muslim world corporate sector, but nevertheless offers some concrete strategies around corporate sectors' role in an emerging practice of 'Place Branding.'

What is Place Branding

Place Branding is a practice that is gaining momentum across the globe with which a country or city collaborates with its stakeholders to deliver a consistent global message around tangible positive attributes. The efforts aim at permeating consistent positive brand associations.

Dubai, India and China recently are certainly on an aggressive path to shape their 'Place Brands' more positively. Other more established Place brands include, Germany (for its precision engineering-BMW, VW, Siemens), Japan (for its consumer electronics dominance -Sony, Panasonic), Swiss (for its Swiss cheese, chocolates), Italy (for its fashion industry), Egypt (for its Pyramids), and the list goes on.

Mr Swystun however, points out that the real endearing differentiation in Place branding is the 'people' and not just the 'place.'

He says, "Place Branding is actually a misnomer, it's actually about people branding. It's about branding the people that represent the region because there are actually very few pure differentiators that you can hang your hat on from a geographic basis."

"When targeting tourism-a lot of places have beaches, and mountains and beautiful sand, whereas when the target is broader economic development-a lot of places have a great rule of government, fair trade and access to infrastructure for businesses. So there is little differentiator in place. Where the differentiator comes about in a geographic region is the people who populate it and what makes them unique. At the end of the day that's the attraction."

Simon Anholt, another leading branding expert known specifically for Place branding, also shares Mr. Swystun's views. Even in his hexagon of six aspects that shape a Nation Brand, he identifies 'Culture' as playing the most prominent role in branding a nation for a fuller more durable understanding of the country and its values. After all, Japan is also known for its art, cuisine and philosophy, and Italy for its artists Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Galileo.

Dubai's Place Brand-a work in progress

Speaking of Dubai, Mr Swystun is impressed by the emerging brand of Dubai but sees some shortcomings, saying, "Dubai is interesting only because it has positive associations, yet still remains totally unarticulated in my mind. It's certainly a place of growth, wealth, beautiful living area-that's all exciting. But, I think they are still missing an overall message. Nothing seems to be resonating, with say in the western world as much about Dubai, except a strong economic message."

"It really boils down to you've got to hit on live, work and play. I think they've hit on the work and play, but to me they are like a transient Hong Kong. I get the