Jessica Helmi, a researcher of RMIT University, featured as a guest lecture for School of Business Management Institute of Technology Bandung’s (SBM ITB) Brand Management course of student batch 2022, On Monday (27/9/2021). Helmi shared her extensive experience in brand management, especially “Place Branding”, which is also the title of her presentation.
To introduce the audience to branding, Helmi highlighted the way brands give products their identity, rising prices, and a sense of trust and integrity. A brand is “a promise to customers”, as Helmi said, where brands set a certain standard for customers. For example, a simply decorated bowl could sell for about $10, but once the name ‘Hermes’ is placed, the bowl’s price could skyrocket up to $300.
Brands could affect many aspects, including products, services, people, and organizations. On products, names such as Nike and Adidas establish a high expectation of good quality sportswear. Hospitals can apply branding on their services, making patients feel comfortable being under their care. Celebrities, such as Drake, set an expectation on the quality of music he produces.
Another branch of branding is called place branding. In the presentation, Helmi emphasised the distinct complexity and difference between place branding and other types of branding. As an example, Helmi shows how Australia improved its place branding through their campaign called Australia Unlimited.
In the past, Australia has maintained its image as an ideal holiday and leisure destination, therefore, helping its tourism business massively. However, it has not benefited other business sectors, especially in trade, academics, and investments.
“Through Australia Unlimited, they hope to attract more business partners, international students, and traders by emphasising on their ‘intelligence’ image. Intelligence suggests the image of their business environment, quality of products and services, and government competence. By doing so, they can prove to the international field that Australia is reliable in handling business and would become a good business partner,” said Helmi.
In addition, Helmi explains the theory of place branding, such as Anholt’s Nation Brand Hexagon, which assesses countries’ 6 categories for international branding. Place branding is also involved in reputation management, marketing, and positioning – all of which factors to a good place branding. Helmi ended her presentation with the importance of place branding to stakeholders, followed by a question and answer session.