We’ve written a lot in this blog about touristic marketing and how destinations tend to emphasize their “differential qualities” when presenting themselves to the travel market. Surely, most of marketing conceptualizations, for their ambition, circle around the idea of “country brand”. It’s about presenting a whole country from a series of particular attributes. In Argentina, at least, this process is old, and next week the plan of coutry brand that will be used for the travel market will be made public. The issue is not simple, as a recently published The New York Times note states. At least some country brands I’ve seen around tend to remark certain too general qualities and then work other differentiative attributes with each destination.

Brazil’s country brand idea is to enhace its diversity through the use of colors. This “diversity” is associated to joy and peace, since if there’s something the touristic market hates is conflict. I know what you’re thinking: Brazil’s diversity is far from not having conflictive issues, as in anywhere else in the world. But, let’s not focus on the political view, at least this once, and let’s go to another interesting topic: the use of the brazilian country brand in graphic publicity. At least here in Buenos Aires they wallpapered half of the city with promotions of their destinations. And here’s an issue: the first times I saw it, I didn’t quite understand what were the painted faces about. First, I thought it had something to do with soccer; then, I noticed the colors matched the flags of the people in the ads. Several days later, I realized it was the touristic logo of Brazil painted on the faces…

I wonder how many people took as long as I did to realize this detail -and how many still don’t understand this ads…

More about the topic of Brazil’s country brand can be found in this country’s official tourism site.