Image, authenticity and identity in Latin America

We live in an interconnected, hyper-connected world. Local events take global proportions. Latin America is experiencing a moment of transition: political and economic crises, major changes in Argentina, tottering democracy in Venezuela and impeachment in Brazil.These turbulent times are always great opportunities for reflection and self-evaluation. How does each country behave in this scenario, or, how is it perceived by the international community? Does it have a strong enough image, able to go through this phase with the necessary resilience?We know that reputation is a major asset of place branding and probably your biggest success indicator. This indicator also applies to cities and states, but it is particularly relevant when dealing with countries.According to the Reputation Institute, which publishes City Rep Track, an index of the cities with the best reputation in the world, Brazil, as represented by São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, appears with a score between 0 and 40 points, which is a "poor reputation”. The City Rep Track lists two types of reputation in its framework: the emotional and rational reputation. Rational reputation is the "hard" power of place, such as economics, governance and the environment, and emotional is the "soft" aspects like esteem, admiration, feeling and confidence.When a rating agency downgrades the rating of a country, it automatically affects the rational reputation, giving a clear signal to the global market that the place is no longer the best destination for their money, but this evaluation tends to circulate in less open environments, usually restricted to the discussion of experts and economists.A cover of an important international magazine such as The Economist, in turn, has a slightly more devastating impact. Whilst its audience includes experts it also covers a large number of readers worldwide, sometimes more interested in international politics than economy itself. A magazine is something that has a cover, a picture and a text, so a strong visual impact, as opposed to an economic report.In City Nation Place I heard a phrase from Chris Fair of Resonance Consulting, who said: "Social media shapes our perception of reality!"If social media, with all its problems, has this enormous capacity to influence, then "traditional" media may be even more devastating, because it is considered a more trustworthy and factual environment than the web.Trust is much more connected to what is done than to what is spoken: trust is the result of actions, or rather of a combination of actions and images, content and form but cannot be built simply through images. One of the key discussions in branding and by extension in place branding is about authenticity - it is necessary to do more than just "look like good" – and in that way authenticity is directly linked to identity.In Latin America these identity issues are little discussed, and when they are, the discussion can be superficial. Our subcontinent has common behavioral characteristics, even with two very different heritages of colonization, Spanish and Portuguese, and at the same time also has completely different characteristics across nations. When we approach our identity from a more superficial point of view, our branding can be ineffective: for example, we can say that a country is "happy", but at the same time we can use this definition to all of Latin American countries and it would not be incorrect.The discussion goes through the proposed objective, to "sell" a country with an internationally adherent idea or promote nationally authenticity characteristics? At this point the question is: happy yes, but how ?In this way more layers of meaning are needed, and more research. Given the diversity of cultures of a big country like Brazil, for example, we can say that Brazil is “happy”, but is it as happy as Colombia? In part yes, but mostly not. It is precisely in this difference that we find the authenticity, reflecting not only a marketable idea, but a set of attributes and the identity of a nation.What I observe is that while we are still trying to understand our culture, we are in search of our identity. While this search takes some time and effort, we are happy to sell a caricatured and standardized image.It needs much more than that. We need to do more than just "create" a powerful image to attract tourists and visitors - it is essential to understand that reputation is also part of the whole nation’s sense of belonging.Belonging creates pride, pride leads to a more positive reputation: after all, we are all part of both, the problem and the solution.

Image, authenticity and identity in Latin America

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Image, authenticity and identity in Latin America

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