Simon Anholt
Simon Anholt is widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on the images and identities of countries, cities and regions.
He originally coined the term “nation brand” in a 1998 paper.
He served for nine years as Vice-Chair of the UK Foreign Office’s Public Diplomacy Board, responsible for managing the image and ‘soft power’ of the United Kingdom.
Anholt has published six books about countries, their images and their role in the world. His latest book, The Good Country Equation, was described by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, as “a masterpiece”.
Anholt’s TED talk Which country does the most good for the world? is the all-time most viewed TED talk on Governance, with over 12 million views on TED.com and YouTube.
He was awarded the 2009 Nobels Colloquia Prize by a committee of 20 Nobel Prize-winning economists for his contribution to the fields of international relations and economic development.
His work has been cited 18,464 times according to Google Scholar, making him by far the most-cited author in the fields of place branding and public diplomacy.
Robert Govers
Robert Govers is a Senior Partner at Anholt & Co. where he has worked on numerous assignments with the Governments of Chile, Iceland, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan and Qatar.
He has also advised many other administrations worldwide including the national and regional governments of Luxembourg, three provinces in the Netherlands, and the cities of Ghent, Ostend and Bruges.
Dr. Govers is founding chairman of the International Place Branding Association and has been an adjunct or visiting scholar in Beijing, Hyderabad, Leuven, Rotterdam, London, Milan, and Dubai. He also teaches place branding on the UNESCO World Heritage at Work Master’s programme in Turin, Italy.
He has written numerous papers and (co-) authored/edited five books on the topic of place branding. His award-winning book Imaginative Communities has been published in English, Portuguese and Spanish. He is a frequent contributor to other publications including Apolitical, the World Economic Forum Agenda and The Economist Intelligence Unit Perspectives.
Robert Govers has held positions in South Africa, the Netherlands, Belgium and Dubai and has a PhD and Master’s degree from Erasmus University, Rotterdam School of Management.
A wider conception of national image
The Good Country Index, devised by Anholt and Govers in 2014, ranks over 160 countries according to their contribution to the common good of humanity. The GCI was developed in response to earlier research by Anholt and Govers which proved that the primary driver of a positive national image is the perception that a country contributes consistently and imaginatively to resolving international issues.
Unlike the Anholt Nation Brands Index®, the Good Country Index doesn’t measure perceptions: it measures the reality of national behaviour, using 35 robust datasets provided by the United Nations and other international organisations.
The Good Country Index is one of only three external data sources referenced in the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary Report, and is used by the U.S. Government in the Annual Report of its Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Further work is being conducted, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program, to combine data from the GCI and the Human Development Index.
To go directly to the Good Country Index data, click here.