Students unite behind brand Australia

By MiNDFOOD

Students unite behind brand Australia

The Australian Government has started a new initiative to develop a stronger brand Australia. The initiative is all about better positioning Australia to enhance the country’s global competitiveness.

The first Australian accredited incubator and Sydney-based education college ‘The Academy of Entrepreneurs’ has launched a Corporate Challenge in collaboration with the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) in response to this new initiative.

This, after 2017 research has found that the current nation branding is fragmented with no unified representation of Australia internationally. It showed that the number of individual brands in the global marketplace was diluting the effectiveness of the collective promotion of Australia.

The students of the Academy of Entrepreneurs presented their Brand Australia proposals to Fiona De Jong, Head of Australia’s Nation Brand at Austrade after being mentored through the Corporate Challenge by two creative industry leaders, both entrepreneurs in their own right, Duncan Harriss, Managing Director of award-winning integrated production company Limehouse Creative and Dan Aldridge, Creative Director, BBC Studios Australia and Hyperkid.

Over five weeks, 61 students and budding entrepreneurs from over 40 nationalities workshopped ideas and creative concepts to rebrand Australia. Students learned branding and advertising 101, analysed what Australia has to offer as a nation and critiqued other successful global nation brand campaigns.

“I had the opportunity to hear the top four pitches from extraordinary entrepreneurs of Australia. I was blown away by the creativity, and the expression and the imagination of these incredible young people in our country. Each of the ideas was executed in different ways but collectively articulated some really special attributes of this country and that’s what this whole project was about,” says De Jong.

“What brief could be more exciting than helping rebrand and better brand Australia! The Nation Brand initiative is one that resonates with our own industry and citizens of course but perhaps more importantly, one that needs to be heard across the world by potential investors and talent to convince them Australia is the place to come to realise their dreams. We believe that Australia is the perfect place to test and launch a start-up; because we are a multicultural, young, innovative nation with a strong economy. Entrepreneurs are a key voice, a current and future demographic and engine of Australia,” says Harriss.

Founder and CEO of The Academy of Entrepreneurs, Paula Mills notes that it’s interesting to see how most visitors and students visit Australia for the laid-back lifestyle and its natural beauty, but that most end up wanting to stay due to Australia’s young, multicultural, welcoming and strong economy. “For that reason, I pitched to Austrade the idea of letting our students share their experiences and ideas, so we could together build a campaign and attract more young talent into Australia,” he says.

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