Just wanted to share a good link. Paul Rockower, who I mentioned in my post on Gastrodiplomacy, recently had a piece on the very subject published in the online magazine called Nation Branding, where he writes about Taiwan’s efforts to incorporate gastrodiplomacy into their diplomatic relations. Rockower is currentlya Visiting Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, researching Taiwan’s Public Diplomacy.
“At home in Taiwan, the government is planning on establishing a new Taiwanese food foundation- a culinary think tank that will assist coffee shops and restaurant chains that promote Taiwanese foods abroad. The creation of such an institute could not come at a better time. Recently NPR’s Morning Edition featured a story of the immense popularity of Taiwan’s coffee store 85C, which recently set up shop in Irvine, California.”
woohoo, something of importance to the world is happening in Irvine, California (may be the only reason I chose that particular excerpt)!
In all seriousness, however, the fact that the Taiwanese government has chosen to put their effort and even investment into the creation of such a foundation is a good indicator that gastrodiplomacy is an important means of cultural communication.
Posted 6 days, 3 hours ago at 5:25 pm. Add a comment
I recently read this great article, “Brands as People, People as Brands” on the Mr. Youth company blog called “grownup thinking.” It’s a re-post from promomagazine.com. In this particular article, Matt Britton, the founder and CEO of Mr. Youth, writes about how brands are becoming more humanized, because of the high relationship emphasis of the Facebooking, networking consumer generation. He mentions how Honda and Ford are using Twitter to humanize their brand by creating personas rather than simply using company names to Tweet in an approachable manner.
Moi + Baguette + Cheese (Place des Voges, Paris, 2008)
Food is kind of a big deal. Whether you have it or you don’t. Whether you rock at it or you fall under the radar. For some nations, food a defining factor.
I say Italy, you say pizza, pasta and cannoli (and may only be after The Godfather)
I say Japan, you say sushi.
I say China, you think about your college diet.
As I said before, food is kind of a big deal. After all, it’s our lifeline and what better to use to define a nation than the way it manages this essential and sometimes even oh so satisfying lifeline.
Wikipedia even has an entry titled “national dish.” Sadly, though, most of the dishes mentioned on it are virtually unknown foreign words to the world’s population unless they are the expected and mainstreamed bratwurst, pizza, pasta, sushi, tapas, etc. Some of the entries will surprise you as well and some of them may no longer be true. Through globalization, we are all changing our national identities and that most certainly involves a culinary aspect as well. Continue Reading…
“Nobody, however, who has paid any attention to the features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition which tends rapidly to the accomplishment of that great end to which indeed, all history points — the realization of the unity of mankind.” – Prince Albert (Theodore Martin, The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, Volume 2 (New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1880).
Prince Albert said this in 1851. Today, almost 160 years later, we still hear the echoes of these words in our international conversation.
Since we were talking about some healthy international competition in my last post, let’s knock off two cultural exchange birds with one proverbial nation branding stone.
While the Olympic tradition is an athletic exchange between nations, where they have the opportunity to present their countries’ best athletes on one international arena, world expos/exhibitions provide the same opportunity for business and technology.
Here are some links the latest film/concert/etc previews reviews I have published up on Encore Magazine, including some from the Newport Beach Film Festival:
Sticking to the theme of my last post about nation branding, I wanted to talk about a specific example. The Olympics have always been a symbol of renewal, peace and international collaboration and for many countries and cities, hosting has turned into a means of rediscovering themselves, pumping up their economy and essentially, redefining their brand. I was recently browsing the Sochi 2014 brand site via the Interbrand company site and they are all about branding not only the event itself, but the “Russia of the future.” And frankly, it’s pretty cool…
In Marketing Week this week, Mark Ritson, who is an Associate Professor of Marketing, writes about country branding. His take on it is summarized in the headline of his article “Countries are countries, not brands.”
Written in reaction to South Africa’s preparation for the FIFA World Cup, the article not only looks down upon the country for trying to build a stronger country brand with this opportunity, but other nations who have viewed themselves as a brand and the branding agencies that were hired by them to do it. Continue Reading…
Talk about checks and balances…and Open Government, for that matter.
Google Inc., which has been in the news for quite a few censorship and government scandals recently, has launched an online tool which tracks government requests to remove content or reveal personal information about users. While they aren’t turning down governments for some of these requests, they are making that information publicly available, which is a pretty cool check on government, even if it only shares the numbers and not details about the specific requests. They do, however, list out if requests were fully or partially complied with, whether there was a court order, and what kinds of requests they were, such as “blogger,” “Google Video,” or anything else under the sun really. Continue Reading…
Posted 3 months, 1 week ago at 4:49 pm. Add a comment
So Hugo Chavez has been out threatening to start his own blog, saying he will build his “own trench on the Internet” to fight against the oh so evil Venezuelan activist Twitter users. How dare they tweet? “Tweeting” may be a potty word in Venezuela, but to me it just echoes of the good ol’ days of Looney Tunes…
When I started my blog (or many numerous blogs), I didn’t realize I was building trenches a la Don Draper in the Korean War, but thanks to Mr. Chavez, I now know that I am sitting here and fighting all my own little wars with the magical powers of my sword-like pen or keyboard and firing with the words of each blog post.
While it may be presumptuous to refer to myself as a “great mind,” I have never really had any qualms about my freakishly healthy ego. That said, there are two articles these I read recently and very much enjoyed that highlight the very importance of what I have been writing about here.
“When, after the first world war, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the advent of the so-called New Diplomacy, whereby secrecy and the balance of power would be replaced by open covenants and collective security, many people regarded such things as the dreams of an idealist preacher.”
Moi + Baguette + Cheese (Place des Voges, Paris, 2008)
Here are some links the latest film/concert/etc previews reviews I have published up on Encore Magazine, including some from the Newport Beach Film Festival:
