The country’s biggest annual PR summit passed by last week, and although shorter than usual, was full of exciting talks and anecdotes.
With an extra focus on sustainability alongside this year’s partner the Arab Sustainable Development Week (ASDW), the Narrative Summit of 2019 promoted some great causes and provided some great content and quotes through the day.
“Narrative summit is definitely playing an important role in being a key pillar for heightening interests in the nation branding initiative, and really how nation branding is really a multi-stakeholder approach that requires not only the government sector, but also the private sector as well as the general public at large. We all have a stake in the brand of our nation and therefore playing an active role in that becomes very important. Holding these annual summits definitely an eye opener; it brings policy makers in direct contact with the private sector and though leaders, provoking ideas and the theme of this year’s conference of nation branding and sustainable development is right on target…
This is the right time for Egypt and the region to start thinking and acting on nation branding initiatives and for Narrative summit in shaping the story and the nation by articulating different methodologies, strategies and success stories and best practices,” said Dr. Salah Hassan, Professor of brand management at George Washington University, and speaker at this year’s summit.
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Here are some of our favorite quotes from Narrative Summit 2019.
“Egyptian women make up 45% of the workforce in the government, which is higher than the 32% global average.” – Dr. Hala El Saeed, Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform
“Coca Cola collaborates with a number of NGOs to rebuild 120 villages, and their healthcare and educational facilities, and has manages to connect 500,000 people to clean water networks with the help of those NGOs.” – Ahmed Rady, GM Coca Cola Egypt
“In general, the creation of high-quality content is incredibly important…the thing is, with content creation and promoting a strong nation brand, you need images that inspire. You need images that make people go ‘Wow, I want to go there’ and the problem is that globally, a lot of countries don’t know how to do that.
It takes a very specific skill to be able to know how to capture a place so that an international tourist can look at it and decide ‘that’s a place I want to go, I need to go there now’…” – Sarah Gallo, The Five Foot Traveler, Destination Marketer and Travel Expert, exclusively to Think Marketing
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“…I think that working with different types of media for different types of goals… I’m not saying that television or radio should be dismissed but I think that Influencer marketing has a place to work alongside them to reach younger audiences, to reach more niche audiences as well.…
Yes influencer marketing is good at selling stuff but can also be used by [for example] NATO to help countries understand the benefits of belonging to the North American Treaty Organization and can also be helpful in building nation brands as well…So, the value of influencer marketing is that you can sort of [hop over] media and speak directly to your audience. That is its power and definitely Egypt can harness that power, not by forgetting traditional media but by working alongside them…” – Scott Guthrie, Influencer Marketing Consultant, exclusively to Think Marketing
“…as the saying goes, we need to celebrate those first steps, those first efforts; because recognition and self-esteem, these are fundamental needs that we all have. The more we recognize people, the more they will repeat their effort, and as they repeat, they may start to become more successful. We don’t just celebrate the first two steps; we keep raising the bar for recognition.
Every time they do something, raise the bar a little higher and if you do that, people’s performance will follow that bar until they achieve their goals.” – Gordon Tredgold, International business speaker, coach and consultant
Stay Tuned for our Interviews with Sarah Gallo and Scott Guthrie, coming soon.
