The effect of a country’s national image on the brands based there and the economy as a whole is now widely acknowledged. In a global marketplace, it is one of the most important assets of any state.
Brand Finance specializes in the evaluation of intangible assets such as brands, including ‘nation brands’. For several years, we have published the Brand Finance Nation Brands report, in which we rank countries by the value and strength of their nation brand.
The 2014 study will be officially released December 9th. Delegates will arrive from 6pm to hear five short speeches followed by a panel discussion and networking with drinks and canapés. For the full programme, see the 'Programme' tab above.
Speakers incldue:
Pekka Isosomppi - Press Counsellor, Embassy of Finland to the United Kingdom
Conrad Bird - Director, The GREAT Britain Campaign, Office of the Prime Minister
Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI, Leonardo Simonelli Santi - President, The Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the UK
John Battersby - UK Country Manager, Brand South Africa
David Haigh - Chief Executive, Brand Finance plc
Ambassadors, investors, journalists and senior marketers from a variety of industries as well as the heads of national trade delegations, investment bodies and tourist authorities.
18:00 – Welcome drinks and registration
18:30 - Speeches
19:45 – Panel Discussion
20:15 – Networking, drinks and canapés.
21:00 – Event concludes
David is the Chairman and CEO of Brand Finance Plc – the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy. He has worked in the area of branded business, brand, and intangible asset valuation since 1991. He specialised entirely in the field after becoming the Director of Brand Valuation for Interbrand in 1995. He subsequently left Interbrand in 1996 to launch Brand Finance which is celebrating 25 years in business this year.
David represented the British Standards Institution in the working parties responsible for crafting international industry standards: ISO 10668 on Brand Valuation in 2010 and ISO 20671 on Brand Evaluation in 2019.
David is a passionate writer and has authored many articles on brand valuation, published in numerous marketing and finance newspapers and magazines, such as: Financial Times, Accountancy Age, and Marketing Week. He has also lectured on the topic of brand valuation for Harvard, Chicago, and London Business Schools.
David graduated from Bristol University with an English degree, qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London, and obtained a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). He is a Fellow of The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and has a practising certificate with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).
Conrad Bird is Director of Campaigns & Marketing for the Cabinet Office and was formerly Director of Campaigns & Marketing for the Department for International Trade, and prior to that Director of the GREAT Britain campaign, based at 10 Downing Street. While at No 10, Conrad’s role was extended to include responsibility for delivering major cross-government campaigns, as well as ensuring Government spending on communications was efficient and cost-effective.
Previously Conrad worked at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office as Head of Public Diplomacy and Strategic Campaigns. He was responsible for a wide range of policies and campaigns, including soft power, the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, and campaigns in the Middle East, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Conrad joined the Government in 2002, initially working with the Central Office of Information on issues that included teenage drugs, consumer rights and international export. He moved to the Cabinet Office to work with the first Permanent Secretary of Government Communication as Director of Strategic Communications. Here he launched ‘Engage’, a new approach to Government Communication, and was responsible for campaigns to counter-terrorism and animal rights extremism.
Before joining the Civil Service Conrad spent 18 years in advertising, working with a number of agencies on national and international business. During this time he also set up an award-winning communication consultancy which he successfully ran for eight years.
Pekka is the Ambassador of Finland to the United Kingdom and Chair for Team Finland in Great Britain. The Team Finland network promotes Finland and its interests abroad: the internationalisation of Finnish enterprises, investments in Finland, and the country brand.
Pekka Huhtaniemi joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1972. His career includes postings to the Finnish Embassy in Brussels, Finland's Permanent MIssion to the UN in New York and the Permanent Mission of Finland in Geneva. He has served as Ambassador at the Finnish Mission in Geneva and the Finnish Embassy in Oslo. Huhtaniemi worked as Special Adviser on international affairs to the Prime Minister in the 1990s and as the first Head of Cabinet for the Finnish EU Commissioner in 1995-98. At the Ministry, Huhtaniemi has worked, for example, as Deputy Director General of the Department for External Economic Relations.
Since January 2004, John has been the UK Country Manager of Brand South Africa, a public-private partnership mandated to position South Africa as one of the highly considered, non-traditional markets in terms of world trade, investment and tourism by 2010. He is a former editor of the Sunday Independent and foreign correspondent in Africa and the Middle East for the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor respectively.
John is a trustee of the Canon Collins Educational and Legal Assistance Trust, co-author of: Nelson Mandela: A Life in Photographs (Sterling 2010). and author of the Afterword in the revised edition of Mandela: The Authorised Biography by Anthony Sampson (Harper Collins, 2011).