Jose Filipe Torres

On February 15, Portuguese entrepreneur Jose Torres, a world-renowned expert on country branding, gave a talk at Digital October as part of the Knowledge Stream project. He told guests about the benefits countries gain from looking after their image.

At the age of 18, Jose started working as a paper cutter at the Novo Design advertising agency. The company’s management noticed his eye for design and sent him to study abroad. He went on to graduate from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design and Parsons The New School For Design in New York. In 2003, Jose founded his own company called Bloom Consulting, which was mainly focused on the nation branding. The company’s headquarters are located in Madrid and it has offices in a number of other countries. Its clients include the governments of Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Latvia and Poland. Large international corporations such as IKEA and McDonald’s have also used Bloom Consulting’s services.

As a specialist in branding countries, he is always been asked to combine the incompatible. On the one hand, he must portray a country as an attractive tourist destination. On the other hand, he must portray it as a serious business partner for investors and other governments. The art of creating a national brand lies in preserving this balance.

The company has compiled its own rating of countries as of 2011. The countries are ranked separately according to their appeal to tourists and foreign businessmen. Russia has achieved decent results, reaching 10^th place in the world in terms of tourism, the country was ranked 20^th (the highest out of the former Soviet states). The U.S.A. was top of both ratings.

In his lecture, Jose Torres devoted special attention to the story of branding cities. The key example of his talk was development of territorial branding in Brazil. He also spoke about how a good idea can fix the national economy.