The ICC Cricket World Cup provided some much-valued positive public relations for our nation. Live TV broadcasts have shown the Bangladeshi team, once a minnow of the international game, holding their own against such luminaries as South Africa and West Indies.
Bangladesh has proven to be one of the best-supported teams at the tournament. Even at the match against England, some people suggest that Bangladeshi supporters almost outnumbered their English counterparts.
Bangladeshi supporters were seen on TV screens in their thousands, passionate and vocal as ever, and proudly following their team. This is all positive news for Bangladesh, and represents the country in the best possible light.
Here’s another question though: How do Westerners generally view modern-day Bangladesh? By this, I mean not just its people but the country itself.
One only need to follow a few international media outlets to understand that outside perceptions of Bangladesh are often negative. It’s the inclination of media outlets to focus on the negative, for we all know that bad news sells.
Therefore, we see stories about unsafe garment factories, despite the fact that Bangladesh now has the safest ready-made garment industry in the world.
We see stories of worker protests about low wages and poor working conditions, despite the fact that the vast majority of Bangladesh’s 4,000 or so RMG factories are harmonious, settled, and successful environments.
We see images of old, antiquated RMG factories, which fail to recognize that many of our leading RMG factories have been undertaking a process of major industrial upgrading these past few years.
Yet, we all know there is a lot of good in Bangladesh and, at the current time, plenty of positivity to shout about. Bangladesh simply needs better PR and marketing. But, how can we change the narrative on these issues?
How do we brand Bangladesh?
A key challenge here relates to language and culture. At present, the messages being disseminated by our leaders often become lost in translation as they reach the Western world. So often, our leaders are misquoted or misrepresented by the international media, or their comments are taken out of context.
There is actually an argument here for bringing in help from the West. Could an external, English-speaking agency be used to help re-brand modern Bangladesh?
Such an agency, working in close dialogue with our leaders, might be better placed to get across the country’s modern values while disseminating these to a wide global audience.
This perhaps might sound like a radical proposal, but it could also be seen as a pragmatic way forward.
A small investment in this area could yield untold benefits in terms of bolstering Bangladesh’s image on the global stage and, for instance, dramatically improving the country’s standing as an option for inward investment projects.
There are other factors to consider when creating a brand for modern Bangladesh, and we can go through these one at a time. The logical question is who is the audience for this brand? One answer to this question is -- the whole world.
If we want to get down to specifics, however, we are thinking in b2b terms. In this sense, our biggest buyers, the organizations which bring the most money into Bangladesh, are international apparel brands and retailers. Specifically, we are dealing with the buying departments and sustainability teams of brands and retailers.
One thing which would help Bangladesh enormously would be if our government and/or industry leaders were to reach out to our customers and ask them: How do they perceive Bangladesh? What do they like and in which areas would they like to see improvements made?
Any business should know their audience and the same applies to modern Bangladesh. We need to know more, much more, about how our audience perceives our industry and, in this sense, an extensive market research project would need to be part of any branding undertaking.
While on this branding journey, it is also useful to look at how our competitors’ brand themselves. In many cases, we can actually learn from the mistakes of others.
Look, for example, at the “branding” undertaken by Ethiopia as a low-cost textile sourcing destination in recent years. A number of media outlets have recently criticized the country -- and brands entering it -- accusing them as being part of a “race to the bottom.”
This is actually a branding issue, as the country explicitly marketed and branded itself on the back of its low-cost labour. On the face of it, this might have attracted brands.
However, the cheap labour tag, once established, can become difficult to shake off; it also can act as a magnet for negative press attention. Ethiopia, then, offers a lesson to Bangladesh in terms of how we brand ourselves.
Do we too want to be branded as the country which competes solely on price? Or can we not aspire to something higher than that? A country where price, quality, and sustainability converge at a sweet spot which allows all actors in the supply chain to get a fair deal.
These are critical issues. Those of us who work in the industry know that Bangladesh is perfectly placed to do all of these things. With the right support from brands, it can deliver high-quality products on time, produced sustainably, and all while paying workers a fair price.
Of course, we know this, but how can we create a brand which gets these values across in a powerful, memorable way? And through which channels would we disseminate these messages? Digitally via social media? In print? And over what time-frame?
These are all questions for another day but there is no doubt we all, as an industry and a country, need to be giving some serious thoughts to them.
What is in no doubt, however, is that investing in the branding of Bangladesh apparel industry could pay for itself multiple times over. The return on a relatively small investment here could be huge in terms of new and repeat business, and inward investment opportunities.
Mostafiz Uddin is the Managing Director of Denim Expert Limited. He is also the Founder and CEO of Bangladesh Denim Expo and Bangladesh Apparel Exchange (BAE). He can be reached at [email protected].
