What authorities need country marketing for?

It could have been Lord Bell’s idea or the Belarusian authorities themselves realized that foreign PR experts regardless of how reasonable and creative they are cannot change rapidly the façade image of Belarus. Therefore the Belarusian authorities decided to start action on their own.

In the end of 2008 the Prime Minister of Belarus Sergey Sidorsky signed a regulation about the creation of an inter-institutional Working Group for elaboration of an action plan on development of the country marketing. Unexpectedly independent experts, such as an economist and the Head of the Mizes Centre, Deputy Chairman of the United Civic Party Yaroslav Romanchuk, the Head of the Novak Laboratory, a Sociology Professor Andrey Vardomatsky, an expert on public relations Roman Kostitsyn, an expert on advertisement and PR Piotr Popelushko and a marketing expert Anatoly Akantinov, were also invited to take part in the meetings of the Group. The Working Group is headed by the Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Yevdochenko and his Deputy is the First Deputy Minister of Economy Piotr Zhabko. The overall number of the members of the Group is 14, apart from the mentioned above, mostly high-level officials.

What is country marketing?

In the beginning of January the first meeting of the Group took place, in the course of which the main task was formulated: to elaborate an action plan of development of the country’s marketing strategy, to recommend directions for mutual activities with the strategic foreign investors taking into account rural development, to propose concrete measures on informing foreign investors about the investment opportunities in Belarus.  

The group of independent experts prepared a comprehensive document “Action Plan on Country’s Marketing. Conceptual Aspects”. It states that a country marketing is not a marketing of concrete companies or goods, rather of the economic, technical, scientific potential and opportunities of a country. Yaroslav Romanchuk explained that the main point is to promote “new decisions, new people, new approaches and ideas. In order that such promotion was successful the specifics of the country and its governance should be understood”.

Andrey Vardamatsky adds, “a county marketing is a set of strategic and practical measures that would promote various benefits a country has, meaning economic, investment, infrastructural, natural, human and scientific. It means that the country’s benefits will be integrated into the international and regional markets, it also means that the country will be integrated into the commonly accepted world norms and standards”.

Bizons and natural beauty will not attract investors…

Independent experts believe that today Belarus has a very negative image in the world which is not favourable for business, investment and property rights protection, there is also a deficit of trust of the strategic investors with regard to the public authorities. There are no contacts, however there is a powerful bureaucratic machine and weak market economy institutions. Therefore first of all, there is a need in changing the investment climate.

Belarus has no oil or gas, deposits of valuable minerals, there are no mountains or sea. One cannot promote market economy referring to bizons and to the natural beauty of forests and lakes. Investors and tourists are attracted by the conditions of doing business. Moreover, independent experts think that Belarusian society stands out with relatively homogenous social structure. There are no ethnical or religious conflicts, Belarus has excellent geopolitical situation, it has well-developed infrastructure, highly-educated population, high level of development of science. In addition to that there is a high level of centralization of the political decision-making in Belarus, i.e. if an order is coming from the highest echelons of authority, it is implemented efficiently and rapidly.

There are many authoritative indexes, ratings and criteria in the world related to identification of the level of the investment climate: Economic Freedom Index, Assessment of the Quality of the Business Climate and Quality of State Governance, Country’s Investment Risk Index, Property Rights Protection Index. Also experts pointed out that investment does not include financial resources and technical issues only. Political freedoms and freedom of the Media are also very important. Bearing in mind each of these points their action plan proposed concrete actions and measures aiming at the improvement of the place of Belarus in the world.

The structure of the document “Action Plan on Country’s Marketing. Conceptual Aspects” is as follows: 1. Preamble, which assessed the current situation and identified the term “country’s marketing”; 2. outline of the communication sphere of the country’s marketing strategy; 3. description of researches that should be conducted within the frameworks of the complex programme of the country’s marketing; 4. concrete proposals and actions that the state authorities should undertake in the first place in order to implement the action plan in the view of the group of experts. The document turned out to be rather brief with a large number of annexes with reference data, tables and various indexes.

Is participation of independent experts in elaboration of the country’s marketing strategy a profanation?

In the course of the second meeting of the Commission on 26 January the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Yevdochenko presented his draft of the action plan of the country’s marketing. De facto the majority of the proposals of the group headed by Yaroslav Romanchuk were ignored. Mr Romanchuk said that the document drafted by the officials had a number of serious drawbacks which would make the activities on effective country marketing impossible. Without providing convincing arguments to defend his draft, Mr Evdochenko proposed to submit all proposals on behalf of the entire group without taking into account the proposals made by the independent experts. Yaroslav Romanchuk made a conclusion that membership in this group of alternative experts was a profanation only and he made a decision to leave the group. He addressed a letter to the Prime Minister Sergey Sidorsky and to the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Natalia Petkevich. The letter stated as follows: “In the course of the work of the Commission, its Head Andrey Yevdochenko held only two meetings. The first meeting was to get acquainted and had one issue on the agenda. There was no communication and information flow provided between the members of the group. A regalement of work and decision making process has not been approved. My request to provide everyone with contact information of all the members of the group was rejected. Four colleagues of mine and myself, all members of the Commission, have prepared and submitted to the Foreign Ministry a concept paper. In the course of the meetings there was not a single attempt to discuss our proposals…”

In the following month and a half there was not a single meeting of the Committee and there were no attempts to discuss the future activities. A Sociology Professor Andrey Evdachenko believes that the government had no serious intentions to work for the improvement of the image of the country…

Ludmila Korsak