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| By: Israel Insider staff and partners |
| Published: November 22, 2006 |
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Israel ranked rock bottom in the Q3 2006 Anholt Nation Brands Index (NBI). Authored by self-promoter brand expert Simon Anholt, the Index surveyed 25,903 online consumers across 35
countries about their perceptions of those countries across six areas of national competence: Investment and Immigration, Exports, Culture and Heritage, People, Governance and Tourism.
"Israel?s brand is by a considerable margin the most negative we have ever measured in the NBI, and comes bottom of the ranking on almost every question," Anholt claimed.
Anholt appears to be taking issue with Israel's recent rebranding efforts. In the light of the recent announcement that a team has been tasked with re-branding Israel, he comments that to succeed in permanently changing the country's image, the country has to be prepared to change its behavior. He concluded: "If Israel's intention is to promote itself as a desirable place to live and invest in, the challenge appears to be a steep one."
The Nation Brands Index was unforgiving with regard to the Jewish State in every regard:
* Israel came last in each area -- by a long margin
* Americans ranked Israel just slightly above China in terms of its conduct in the areas of international peace and security
* Of the 36 countries ranked, there is nowhere that respondents would like to visit less than Israel
* Israel's people were also voted the most unwelcoming in the world
However, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project, a pro-Israel media relations firm, objected strenuously to the methodology of the study. The branding report, she said, "failed to point out that Israel was at war at the time of the study and that Israel was the ONLY country in the study that was at war at that time."
"Of course people didn't think it was a good idea to come to Israel at that time," Mizrahi said, in a note to the brand survey representatives. "Heck - not a lot of people from around the world wanted to come to NY city right after 9-11, did they? Shouldn't you have pointed out that such a study is a snapshot of people's opinions at the time -- and that this was a highly unusual time? Multiple very reliable polls show that support for Israel in the US went UP
during the war. At the same time, support for the Palestinians, Iran and Hezbollah went DOWN across Europe at that time." |
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