Just like we know people by their names, we know hundreds of brands by name. But, like people too, the more you know about a brand, the more it seems to have its own individual personality.
A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly and the off-strategy,” says Scott White, one of the American leading branding consultants and a valued expert, companies like Sun Life Financial and Franklin Sports rely on. Branding is your best and worst product. It is your best and worst employee. It is communicated through award-winning advertising as well as those ads that somehow slipped through the approval cracks and sank anything riding on them. It is your on-hold music and the demeanor of the receptionist who puts that valued client or prospect on hold. It is the carefully crafted comments by a CEO as well as negative buzz by the water cooler or in chat rooms on the Internet. Brand is expressed through written, audio and visual content. It is interpreted through emotional filters every human being has—where anything can happen. Ultimately, you can’t control your brand. You can only hope to guide it.

I want to tell you a story about what football have achieved in branding Ghana which the authorities have not even considered in our attempt to brand the country. I have just arrived in Bangladesh and everybody I am introduced to want to talk about our football and our exploit in South Africa and Egypt. My colleagues do not even know the name of president but were able to tell me all about Essien, Pantsil, Dede Ayew et al without having any problem with pronouncing their names. What other vehicle is more powerful than this in branding the country? We need to use what we have to get what we want. All the adverts on the CNN channel will not achieve what football has achieved for the country. A good example is Cadbury ad on Dhaka TV about chocolate which extols the virtue of Ghana Cocoa and British recipe to get the best chocolate. By this single advert single ad Ghana’s cocoa receives more mileage than what Ghana Cocoa Board has achieved promoting cocoa products. After all we can not even produce the chocolate any more. Kingsbite and all are now scarce commodities. Anyway that is not the essence of my piece on branding.
I hope the people in the Branding Ghana office have added peace as one of the Key Selling Points in branding Ghana? They should know that, one the concept of peace is relative and the Foot soldiers will damage it potential if not already damage. Secondly the Politicians are already toiling with the peace concept. Political climate has been put into hot water and business climate even with all the good work of GIPC has not achieved it desired results yet. Football as marketing vehicle does not require any complicated marketing mix and demographic segmentation. Every person love a game of football and it is not affected by political colouration and it only in the game of football that you see both sexes old and young join in enjoying and celebrating wins and share tears when we loose.
So how do we improve our brand of football more to help Brand Ghana? Imagine what will have happen if Ghana has reached the World Cup Final in South Africa.
Let’s improve our local league by building facilities at the community levels, put more money into grassroots ‘football encouraging school competition. Branding Ghana should spend their budget in sponsoring lower level leagues so that more Essiens’ can be produced and sold. The conveyer belt should never be switch off. The cost of single ad in the International media can support a community to have a park for football and cost of hiring a consultant to design strategy for marketing and branding Ghana can go long way sponsor community competition.
It is time for Ghana to develop on the lines of Brazil in football. The Swedish used Volvo and ABBA to brand their country. Brazil used football and Ghana can also use football.

Joseph Ampomah Adu

Profile update
Joseph works for Management Sciences for Health as Deputy Director Technical on program for Strengthening Pharmaceutical Systems