Regional Brand Index launched to guide national branding activities

The Chartered Institute of Marketing Ghana has launched the maiden Regional Brand Index report to guide national branding activities. The branding index will provide information on how national branding activities and associated expenditures should be spread across the regions.

It will, among other things serves as the basis for investors and business owners to make business expansion or partnership decisions, provide information for local government to market the regions and guides local hospitality businesses and educational institutions on marketing destinations.

Speaking at the launch, Dr Kasser Tee, the National President of CIMG said unearthing and highlighting the economic and tourism potentials of each of the 16 regional brands in Ghana was to complement and reinvigorate the government’s original Brand Ghana agenda. It would also help give meaning to Ghana’s “Year of Return” as well as the “Beyond the Return” programmes.

Dr Tee said the criteria for the assessment were carefully selected, after rigorous research and consultations with identified stakeholders to identify parameters valuable to local and international visitors. “These are, of course, good pointers to investors seeking opportunities in the various regions of Ghana” he noted.

He urged regions to be deliberate and conscious of their approach to attracting people by identifying their strengths and marketing them. “To gain a better reputation, a regional brand must overtly and covertly communicate to its audience how good the region is. This is how to build strong and resilient regional brands,” he said.

Dr Tee explained that a good regional brand must have a positive image in the minds of the people in the Executive, the Judiciary, and the Legislature, adding that, “a powerful and positive regional brand image provides a crucial competitive advantage.” “It is essential for our regions to understand how they are seen by their public; how their achievements and failures, their assets and their liabilities, their people, their food, and what they produce locally in their regions are reflected in their overall brand image,” he said.

Sharing findings of the report, Mr Isaac Gwumah, the Executive Director Bureau of Marketing and Social Research (BMSR) indicated that the Ashanti region emerged as the top regional brand in the study with the strongest performance in parameters such as culture and heritage, local tourism, and its local people. “Ashanti’s performance registers stronger with domestic tourists and full-time students who are not indigenes.

“The lowest ranked region brand is Ahafo, and it obtains the lowest scores across all parameters evaluated” he indicated. He also disclosed that the Greater Accra Region’s performance which was second ahead of Eastern and Central regions, registered strongly for business owners, full-time workers who are not indigenes and Permanent Residents.

Dr Winfred Nelson, the Acting Director for Development Coordination at the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) said the provision of data and information through the release of such a report was crucial to the work of the NDPC because it helped in decisionmaking, and development planning and research activities.

A regional brand is the sum of all the perceptions of a region, in the minds and hearts of the public. These perceptions include its people, places, culture, language, history, food, fashion, famous personalities, among others. Professor Kwaku Appiah-Adu, the Director for Monitoring and Evaluation for Public Enterprises at the Office of the Vice-President of the Republic of Ghana launched the report. GNA