It hasn’t been a week yet since the dramatic rescue of the Chilean miners riveted millions around the world to their TV sets.  We were awestruck by the scene of miners emerging one by one from their entrapment.  For two days, praise was heaped upon Chile’s President Sebastian Piñera, Minister of Mining Laurence Golborne and the international cooperation that brought technology together for a successful result.

It was inspirational and caused even the most cynical pundits to stop in admiration and hope the rescue would encourage us all to rise above the petty things we so often focus on and work together to solve the real problems at hand.  Problems such as the state of our economy, high unemployment, continuing wars abroad, environmental degradation and more, all demand the attention of leaders.  In Chile, we saw leaders come together for a common cause, drop the distractions and create a plan to achieve a positive outcome.  That’s what leaders are supposed to do.  Newspapers and TV stations across the U.S. covered the story and praised the international response.

So what’s happened in the week since the rescue?

Some recent headlines in New York tell us:

• New York Post, October 15:  Son’s Fatal Rage
• New York Post, October 17:  Dead Wives Club
• New York Post, October 19:  Tiger Sex Fake
• New York Daily News:  Every front-page headline since the rescue has covered sports

As always, The New York Times has covered a number of substantive issues but in the country’s largest city, it has the smallest circulation of the three largest daily papers.  The rest of the national print and broadcast media has dropped any mention of the rescue’s impact to the back pages, if it’s mentioned at all.  Other issues being hotly discussed include:  gays in the military, Congressional candidates as witches, whores, bigots, thieves, liars, religious zealots, girly men and manly women.  There has been little discussion of the big issues and problems that we deal with.

The mine rescue, of course, has stimulated some related discussion.  One blog tells how the drill, drill bits, drilling chief, emergency cameras, rescue pod and diet recommendations all came from the US…to cheers I suppose of USA! USA!  Others have noted that the 33 miners and 33 days to dig the shaft both coincide with Christ’s age at death, so surely this was not a victory for leadership, international cooperation and technology but for religious miracles.

It’s all quite frustrating, particularly when most of us from the most conservative to liberal know that we are faced with some of the most challenging problems in our nation’s history.  It’s probably expecting too much of an event such as took place in Chile to get us to pull our heads out of the sand.  In fact, it’s likely that the daunting problems we face are what scare us into looking elsewhere for salvation, to deny that we face a monumental economic challenge that will take more years to recover from than it took to get into and to shove looming problems such as global warming aside.  The U.S. as a nation has become like the person who notices a lump but does nothing for fear that it’s cancer only to learn that survival might have come if the lump had been addressed when discovered.  In truth, most of the problems we face are larger than 33 miners trapped beneath the earth.  Every aspect of that challenge could be dissected and planned with good organizational skills, but it stands as a symbol that should inspire us to demand better.  We don’t need anybody to shout, “the sky is falling.”  There are pieces of it lying all around us.

Tags: Chile, Laurence Golborne, Leadership, Media, Miners, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Times, Outcomes, Sebastian Pinera, Situation Analysis, Strategy

This is the fourth installment in a series on Mistakes Countries Make and How They Can Get It Right.

There are consultants out there who advise foreign governments to make everything they do perfect for their target markets.  They go internal to focus on changing policy, strategy, innovation and investment over a very long period of time.  The result is that governments invest their time on getting their house in order and the problem with that is that the people walking by the house have no idea what’s going on inside.  It’s simply not a case of building the perfect country so that all the investors come running.

There’s no question that real change only takes place when countries change what they do, not just what they say.  But in our marketing driven world, it’s not enough to simply make those changes and expect the world to notice.  In the 90’s we ran national image development campaigns in the U.S. for both Norway and Chile and saw ample evidence that perceptions were changed through use of marketing tools that often are used for common everyday products.

Marketing tools play a key role as long as they represent changes that are real.  Years ago, Michael Porter wrote that strategy is only valid if it represents real operations.  In other words, you can’t sell the store without knowing the goods are on the shelves.

Countries can change policy, strategy, innovation and investment over a very long period but if no one knows about it, export development and FDI will come at a much slower pace than if there is a coordinated marketing campaign that represents the real situation.

Over the years, we’ve done a considerable amount of country positioning work (our preferred term) and continue to do so today. We’ve found governments often make three major mistakes when considering their image or brand abroad:

1. Too many internal assumptions about what foreign markets think and want. For example, New Yorkers will often talk about garbage in the streets while foreigners exalt the skyline, energy of the city and multiple entertainment options. When Americans return from Chile, they can’t stop talking about the beauty of the Andes and the perfect manners of the people who live there.  Chileans on the other hand will talk about smoggy days and can be quite self-critical.  It’s human nature.  We see things in the mirror everyday that others around us see differently.  Countries have to adjust their marketing by what others think.  Effective strategy is found at the intersection of internal capabilities and external needs.
2. Failure to conduct sufficient open-ended research to determine what’s really on people’s minds in other countries. It’s not difficult to give thousands of people closed-ended questions with multiple choice responses or agreement scales and then make our own interpretations based on internal assumptions. The problem is that closed-ended questions create bias because they predefine the range of answers.  As to agreement scales, what’s the difference between one person’s 3 and another’s 4 and why?  Nobody knows but everybody has an opinion.  Real perceptions come by asking open-ended questions that begin with “What”, “Why” and “How”.  Effective positioning campaigns cannot be conducted without knowing what people really think on an unaided basis.
3. Perfect the model before showing it to the public. There is a lot in this blog about this for good reason.  Too many countries invest too much money into defining what they are before going out to the market.  What they often find is that the market has changed and their perfected “image” model is no longer relevant.  It’s better to move earlier into the market and get feed back on what you’re doing and saying so that you can adjust as you go. Today’s online marketing tools enable incredible capabilities to gather communities of interest and shared needs that will provide feedback and become brand advocates.  Nation marketing is now about building relationships through communities, both those that are publicly available and private ones too.

Change has to be real and long-term but I don’t know of any entity, that after instituting real change, didn’t benefit from a well-conceived marketing plan.

Tags: Assumptions, Change, Chile, foreign investment, Governments, Marketing, Michael Porter, Mistakes, Norway, open-ended research, Positioning, Strategy, U.S. Marketplace

The August 5^th mine collapse near Copiapo, Chile seemed like more bad luck for a country already hit by one of the largest earthquakes in history this past February.  Media coverage of the mining disaster has been constant and the way in which the Chilean government and miners have handled the situation has mesmerized millions of people around the world.  In a desperate situation such as this, it’s hard to imagine there could be a silver lining to the story, even providing an advantage in how Chile, as a country and society, is presented to the world.

The situation could change at any time but three recent articles provide an interesting lesson.  On September 1^st, The Wall Street Journal published a story “Chile Mining Minister Is Resourceful in Rescue” (download highlighted version here) in which writer Matt Mofffett wrote about the response from the Chilean government, dominated by former business executives.  Centered around Mining Minister Laurence Golborne, a former retail executive, the story traces Golborne’s early missteps in the crisis to gaining the confidence of the miners and their families.  The story comments on Golborne’s communication skills in dealing “with people from lots of different social strata” and goes on to cite the oft repeated catchphrase for the current government, “Chile Inc.”

That phrase caught the attention of New York Times writer, Ben Schott, who eight days later wrote an entry (titled “Chile Inc.”) in his popular vocabulary blog and reprinted the Journal’s positive comment about Golborne’s handling of the crisis.

Then, on September 10^th, an article appeared in Universal Knowledge@Wharton, the newsletter of the esteemed Wharton School of Business, titled, “Lessons on Leadership and Teamwork – from 700 Meters Below the Earth’s Surface” (download highlighted version here).  The article is an interview with Francisco Javier Garrido, a professor of strategy at various MBA programs in Europe and the Americas.  Garrido makes a few comments on the consistency of the government but talks glowingly of the miners and their leadership skills.

He details their skills in situation analysis, overcoming elementary responses, viewing efforts as a function of goals, teamwork, ethical coherence and integrity and communication skills.  These 33 miners, he notes have taught “the business world that you need to act with flexibility when it comes to achieving your goals.” He further points out, “There are lessons here that transcend the world of business instruction when it comes to [defining] such expressions as “decision making,” “leadership” and “teamwork.”

All three stories have now been frequently quoted in the print and digital media and particularly the ever-growing blogosphere.  Reading them, we’re compelled to ask whether we would respond in a similar fashion.  It is a difficult situation that has positive lessons for us all and causes us to admire the miners, the government and to ask whether Chileans possess some traits that we all might want to emulate.

The question then comes up of whether it’s ethical to use such a story to profile or position a business in Chile or would it be seen as being crassly opportunistic.  If used in a tactical way, it seems inappropriate to promote such a story as saying something positive about a company, sector or country.  To those who read the media coverage, the lessons are clear enough for us to see.  However, it seems acceptable to talk about the miners’ plight the same way these three stories have treated it thus far.  It illustrates how governments can respond to crises and victims can teach us about behaviors and values we can admire.  Finally, it shows us how leadership can operate in the midst of crisis and media can respond positively to not overreact as so often takes place (and we are seeing repeatedly in the U.S.), but to manage for what we all hope will ultimately become a positive outcome.

Tags: Chile, Chile Inc., Events, Flexibility, Governments, Journalists, Leadership, Media, Media responsibility, Miners, Outcomes, Positioning, Situation Analysis, Strategy