I would like to start with something today that is linked to diplomacy on one hand, to protocol on the other side, but mainly to... one big challenge today and what is it about? It is about cross-cultural communication because it is a big challenge. We are working today and we are are all in a very diversified world.
It's meaning that we have a lot of challenges in communication. We are facing a lot of possibilities also to fail in that challenges, because actually cross-cultural communication is about, as Ines already said, not only ourselves, but about ourselves. others. And the question is how are we going to be able to face this cross-cultural communication.
And sometimes it is a big success. Naturally we go for it. Sometimes it is not. So we are having both sides and we are going to link this today to something called country branding.
Country branding, in country branding you have country and you have brand. So we are going to discuss also the fact of what makes a brand successful, what makes a culture successful. What makes actually communication between culture successful?
This is something that is very sensitive and that is a big big challenge because as soon as we cut this type of communication as soon we actually also cannot face this. We are on one moment in the kind of a gap, gap of communication. And gap of communication is meaning that we cannot increase the possibilities that we have to make our life more rich.
And I think that what is nice today in our world is the fact that we are in a diversified world. If we have to pass a message, and this is something that I would like really to speak about today, if we really want to pass a message to other cultures, we have to be able to face this concept of cultural diplomacy. What is cultural diplomacy?
Cultural diplomacy is when I can speak with another culture without being rejected, This is actually cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy is a success in different types of communication that is linked to different types of culture. What is the culture of today's world? We can ask this question. What is the culture of today's world?
It's difficult to answer. Because the world is composed by actually different types of culture. We are speaking about globalization, we are speaking about how the people are going to meet in the future. I think one of the things that is a very nice concept and that also His Majesty Sultan Qaboos was developing and I think it's a very very important thing is peace. He is a wise man and he is known in the world and he could pass this message of peace.
And I think this is a very, very important thing when it comes to cross-cultural communication. How are we going to be able to provide his message of peace to the world through cross-cultural communication? I think this is a very big challenge because diversity is the enemy sometimes of unity but unity can also be the enemy of diversity.
And especially when it comes to unity and diversity, how are we going to be able to create the peace for the future through the different cultures that are existing? And this is a very, very, very big challenge because diversity we have, unity, I have some doubts. The theory of the peace we have, reality when it comes to cross-cultural communication, I doubt. And this question when it comes to country branding, when it comes to cultural branding, is something very very very important.
So the issue is what kind of message are we going to pass to the world through our own culture? I mean... We can pass a message of good communication or we can pass a message of bad communication. What kind of message do we decide to go for? Sometimes it's not easy.
when we face other people we are already facing one thing that is stereotype you know all now that I am French yes you know how the French are sometimes perceived after Charlie Hebdo and what happened I can say that we are not so well perceived sometimes strangely we are very positively perceived and also does not totally fit with the reality so what we can say is that we have to redefine ourselves all the time we have to actually adapt to the world also to the mistakes that we do because I don't think and I even if my country is not today here I would like also to apologize to what happened in France because I think it was not such a nice thing in the name of my country and actually I can also say that today for this world we don't need this kind of things so what I see and this is a very very also important thing is that and Ines already spoke about it but I would like really also to reinforce our message in a way that the only thing that counts even more than culture is what are our values what are our values for the future and not everybody is providing and not every culture is providing the same type of value. Some cultures are providing a certain type of values, some countries are providing another type of values. But what are the values that we want to provide to other cultures? It is an important issue, a very important issue, because you can always speak and brand is about image. We can speak about image, yes?
But the image has to fit with the reality. So we can provide something, but the question is what is the reality? If I provide a value, am I going to really represent that value? Yes or no? And if I am only an image, I don't think that this image you actually will believe in.
If I fit with actually a type of a reality that is corresponding to a value, it's different. The question is, am I believing in values or am I pretending I believe in values? That's totally different because it makes the difference between.
between image and reality. And in brand, this is very, very important, because a good brand is actually the moment when the image and the reality are really together, are coming together and on that moment we can say yes, we exist. Yes, we are the ones who are really existing.
If this is not happening, brand is just an image. And we don't need images today because we had images enough already, maybe in the 70s when it was the moment of the new TVs and all these kind of things, it was an interesting fact. Today, I mean, everybody has a TV, everybody is looking for something different. And I think that what we need is that image and reality are coming together.
and for that it's a big challenge it is a big challenge and I would like to actually also speak about what is country branding what is country branding because we have sorry we have country branding for example here you have an example how people was presenting an image you have region branding you can go and valorize a region for example as a culture you have city branding you can go for a city you have straight branding you can even valorize a street all this is branding but every Everything that is here is linked to this cross-cultural success, full communication. If this does not work, everything fails. And actually, unfortunately, we are all depending, or fortunately, on our culture.
I cannot become someone else. I can adapt, I can change, I can extend my limits, but I will never become someone else. I am what I am. You are what you are.
We are what we are. And I think in that, it's very important also to understand that we, and this is a bit something where when we... we come to the processes of mondialization, globalization, what are the limits of the extensive way of adapting?
Where should we adapt when we cannot adapt? Sometimes we have to adapt. Sometimes we say, sorry, no, I cannot adapt to that. I don't want to adapt to that because my values are going down. If I adapt to this, my values are going down.
So, actually, this is the challenge, how to choose to what we are going to adapt. And I would like to show you now three case studies in how three countries, one of these countries is Oman, the other one is India, and the other one is actually Japan, how three different countries, because they are very different in culture, decided to make country branding. I think this is something that can be interesting.
You will see three videos now. We are going to start with the video that is linked to India. It was a video that was actually created to show the actual statements of leadership in India.
in that video different aspects, different values that are represented. It's very interesting because this video is showing to you, to me, to all of us, how India today officially wants to go for a specific leadership. We are doing the same after with Japan. You will see that the values are differently presented, and we are going also to see how Oman did it.