Page 30 - ICE BUSINESS TIMES March 2020

Column

Dave McCaughan Faiyaz Ahmed

BRANDING

BANGLADESH

What to do about the brand that is and could be A few months ago one of us,
Bangladesh? Interesting topic right ? Get’s your Dave, being a regular visitor to
attention, and no doubt like everyone else we the country wrote a column here
have talked to in the country you no doubt have in the pages of ICE Business
an opinion. Everyone has an idea on what the Times that it was very strange
brand might stand for, and what is a version of that a country that housed one of
reality now, and what we should do to help the world’s leading garment
brand Bangladesh improve. It is an important industries could not provide a
subject. A stronger brand means that potential T-shirt with a design that a
investors, business partners, tourists, govern- tourist would want to buy at the
ments would all feel more comfortable. You can airport. A t-shirt that projected an
create tourism or investor campaigns and image of brand Bangladesh. The
domestic rallies to make people feel good. But a need for a new t-shirt was not the
brand is a lot more than a slogan. real story. Rather, as some picked
up, it was a way of highlighting
that an amazing country like this
one needs to do more to project
what its brand is and why people around the world would want to
have a piece of what it is offering. Fortunately the article did evoke
some discussion and we hope to continue to help get more people
involved in thinking about the issue.
Together with the support of ICE Business Times our group, Marketing
Futures has started something we call Lead Talk. These are informal
dinners for groups of leading marketers in Bangladesh where we pick
a subject and brainstorm ideas. Earlier this year we held such a
gathering in Dhaka with a dozen marketers from a range of compa-
nies and asked them to discuss the “Bangladesh Brand Issue”. It was
THE WRITERS a very lively and interesting few hours. Of course everyone had their
* Dave McCaughan
Co-Founder, Marketing Futures and own gripe as to what was not being done and ideas on what could be
Chief Strategy Officer, Ai.agency promoted.
davidcmccaughan@gmail.com The consensus though was consistent in highlighting that the world
** Faiyaz Ahmed just does not know much about Bangladesh, and what get’s headlines
Co-Founder, Marketing Futures,
faiyaz.prb@gmail.com is usually bad. The group could list many attributes and claims as to

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