BM - The Book

THE DEPICTION OF MALAYSIAN IDENTITY

THROUGH NATION BRA

NDING

A Case Stud

y in Mala

ysian T

ourism Print

Campaig

n

BRAND MALA

YSIA

NegarakuTanah tumpahnya darahku

Rakyat hidupBersatu dan majuRahmat bahagiaTuhan kurniakan

Raja kitaSelamat bertakhta

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Assalamualaikum w.b.t

Praised upon The Creator, Allah s.w.t. for all the blessings that He has show-ered me all this while, for without Him, I am unable to finish this study. To my mom and my beloved family, thank you for your endless support. Seeing the smile on your faces is the greatest motivation that I could ever wish for. To all my friends, thank you for being there, through all my ups and downs all through this study. Thank you for lend-ing me your ears and shoulders to me. Thank you all for the support, help and favor given throughout this study.

To my supervisor, Dr. Azhar bin Abd Jamil, thank you for your guidance and patience throughout this study.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you and thank you. Without the support and favor given to me, this study will not be able to be completed.

I dedicate this study to my pillar of strength, my niece and nephew, Aini Sakina and Noah Elias.

Thank you.

Acknowledgement

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Table of ContentAbstract 8

Introduction 11

Literature Review 22

Analysis & Development 32

Testing & Evaluation 88

Discussion of Findings 92

Conclusion & Recommendation 128

References 134

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combina-tion of them with intentions to uniquely identify goods or ser-vices and to differentiate them from those of competition. Nation branding, on the other hand, in-volves producing a unique iden-tity for a particular nation. It also represents geographical, culture, traditions, language and politics by applying the common brand-ing elements and marketing com-munication techniques in pro-moting the brand of its country. Malaysia is known for its diversity in culture due to its multiple races and its wealth in natural resourc-es. This research is focus on Ma-laysia because Malaysia is one of the Southeast Asia key nations and the national identity or brand identity for Malaysia in tourism is not solid and strong. By studying the nation-branding guidelines and visual identity guidelines from

selected countries through visual analysis and semiotic analysis, the objective is to learn, identify and find the common branding elements, brand strategies and brand values that are commonly used and apply it to strategize a different direction for Malaysian Tourism as a unique brand of its own. Hence, strengthening the identity for Malaysian Tourism and provide the responsible sec-tors, specifically Media, Public Re-lations and Creative Sectors the latest branding framework and strategy to solidify branding on Malaysian Tourism.

Abstract Malaysia is a sight to behold. It is a nation situated in Southeast Asia in between Thailand and Singapore. The Malaysian land is divided into two different parts, West Malaysia or also known as Peninsular Malaysia and East Ma-laysia, which located in the island of Borneo. With 329,758 km2, Malaysia is federation which con-sists of 13 states and 3 federal ter-ritories.

Apart from the diversities of its culture and colorful histories, Malaysia also possesses numer-ous unique, exotic and authentic wonders of nature. With these assets that Malaysia has, citizens of the world are easily attracted to the beauty of Malaysia.

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Malaysian Population

IntroductionThis section describes the background, structure and the scope of the study. It also provides the significant information in describing and defining the area of the study.

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The word nation is defined as a large group of people with the same race and language, and country is the area of land that is occupied by a particular nation (Ying, 2005). Every nation rests on a base of their uniqueness, drives and individual history. Hence, the idea of consider-ing a nation as a brand is not a far-fetched idea because a brand is a ‘name’, term, symbol or design, or a combination of them with inten-tions to identify and differentiate the goods and services from those of competition (Kotler, 2003) with the purpose of creating communication with a consumer, and to inspire con-sistency and trust to consumer (Asli, Tasci & Kozak, 2008).

Nation-branding or destination-branding in the tourism sector is in-creasing globally (Asli, Tasci & Kozak, 2008) as a way to promote a coun-try as a destination not only for tour-ism, but also for inward investment, job creation and settlement (Ying, 2005). Nation-branding is also a pro-cess that concerns applying brand-ing and marketing communications to promote a nation’s identity.

A nation’s identity is depicted as a whole, encompassing its culture, tra-ditions, language and politic. In order to establish it, it must embrace the history, culture, and the sociologi-cal uniqueness possessed by a par-ticular nation with intention to ease potential purchasers to buy into the location either as a tourist des-tination, place to invest or a source of desirable products and services (Hall, 2003).Therefore, the concept of nation-branding at its simplest is creating a selling proposition (Hall, 2003), to promote the country as the destination for tourism and to differ-entiate it from those of competition.

All the examples of the Malaysian Tourism cur-rent print advertisements are taken at The Official Website for Malaysian Tourism.

Every nation has their uniqueness, drives and individual history. This in-cludes Malaysia, which is unique with regards to its diversity in its culture and Malaysia is a lucky country due to its richness in natural resources. Based on the preliminary observa-tion done for this study, the identity that Malaysia projected in their cur-rent tourism print campaign is not solid. Therefore, this study focuses in identifying an identity and other possibilities (areas, approach or di-rections) for Malaysian Tourism to solidify and strengthen the Malaysian identity in the tourism sector.

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By identifying and establish-ing an identity, particularly in Malaysian tourism sector, the tourism sector of Malay-sia is able to provide a stand-ard promotional materials, strategy and values to so-lidify Malaysian tourism as a brand on its own. And also to ease the Malaysian tourism sector to tap into other area, approach and directions.

This study will also provide the latest framework and guidelines that can be used in creating a solid brand identity for Malaysian tour-ism, because from the sta-tistics provided by Tourism Malaysia, the numbers of tourists in Malaysia are in-creasing significantly since 1998 to 2010.

From Figure 1, it can be con-cluded that from the increment percentage, the Malaysian tourism sector has a significant increment percentage annu-ally, and by identifying and es-tablishing the nation brand for Malaysia, the increment per-centage with regards to the number of tourists that come to Malaysia and revenue from the tourism sector for Malaysia will be boosted.

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The aims and objectives of this study are: a) to identify and es-tablish the common branding ele-ments, brand strategies and brand values that are commonly used for nation-branding and b) to create and provide responsible sectors the latest branding framework and directions in promoting Malaysian tourism sector.

The hypotheses derived for this study are: a) Malaysians are not aware of the uniqueness that Malaysia have and b) promoting other areas that have not been tapped are prominently preferable by Malaysians.

This study will only focus only on study-ing Tourism Malaysia promotional print advertisements campaign, establishing and identity for Malaysian tourism sec-tor and analyzing promotional advertise-ments from the Commonwealth country members. This study will not interfere with the Malaysian policies international and domestic relations endorsed by the government of Malaysia.

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Literature ReviewThis chapter describes and identifies the framework for this study from the data gathered from all current, similar research areas, and other legitimate secondary data.

In general, branding is being used to define goods or services and also to differentiate from those of competi-tion (Kotler, 2003). Nation-branding can be synonymously understood as creating a visual identity for a na-tion. Hence, branding elements in nation-branding is one the impor-tant factors in establishing an iden-tity for a nation.

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It can be concluded that the common branding elements used are logo, color, typography and visual, which can be cat-egorized into two categories, photography and supporting graphics.24

Brand strategy, generally, can be defined by answering the question ‘what are you trying to promote?’, by which in na-tion-branding it can be gener-ally defined by a unique subject matter that a nation is trying to promote in its tourism cam-paign in order to attract tourists to visit their country.

Therefore, a generalization can be made by looking at the common brand strategies be-ing used are spirit of the place, spirit of the people, culture and also history.

Branding values can be under-stood as the tone of voice con-veyed visually in the campaign.

Hence, it can be said that the typical or common brand per-sonalities or brand values are friendly, romantic which can also be described as dreamy or colorful, authentic and re-laxed.

From the review of literatures related to this study, general conclusion on the common brand elements that are used in nation-branding are logo, color, typography, photography and graphics.

And the promotional strate-gies typically used are spirit of the people, spirit of the places, culture or history with a combi-nation of either friendliness, ro-mantic, authenticity or relaxed as the brand values.

This generalization will be used as the framework to analyze the print campaign, particularly print advertisements of avail-able commonwealth country members to identify the fre-quencies of its application.

Branding Elements

Branding Strategies &Branding Values

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Analysis & Development

Analysis

This chapter describes the processes involved in creating the initial outcome of the study that will be used in testing and evaluation phase.

The analysis of print advertisements from selected Commonwealth country mem-bers, qualitative method will be used.

Semiotic analysis has been chosen as the best instrument to be used to analyze the print advertisements is because, with re-gards to the definition of semiotic, which means the science of signs (Babbie, 2010), it can be applied and associated with the analysis of content. And in order to under-stand the meaning of a particular content, semiotic is the best instrument to be used because a specific framework or meaning can be linked together with the content to understand further of what the content is conveying.

The framework for this semiotic analysis is taken from the generalization that has been made in Literature Review. And to study the quality of each print advertise-ment, 5-point Likert scale will be used for each of the framework for both the brand strategies and brand values.

The data collected from this semiotic analysis will be used as the framework and directions to create the initial new print advertisements to promote Malaysian tourism and these prototypes will then be tested during the second half of the re-search, by using quantitative method.32

The analysis of the tourism-based print advertisements of selected Commonwealth coun-try members is done. This anal-ysis process is done based on the frameworks of branding ele-ments, brand strategy and brand values that have been initially concluded in Literature Review.

CARIBBEAN &NORTH AMERICA

ASIA

AFRICA

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EUROPE OCEANIA

SOUTH AMERICA

From the analysis done, it can be generalized that majority of the tourism-based print advertise-ments from the selected Com-monwealth country members are using Logo, Color Typography, Pho-tography and Supporting Vector Graphics as the compulsary brand elements that are embedded in the advertisements.

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From the analysis done, it can be concluded the brand strate-gy that is majorly used is Spirit of the Place, with the percent-age of 92.3% and only 7.7% low-ly used this strategy.

The second strategy, Spirit of the People, 65.4% is lowly pro-moted in the advertisements. Only 19.4% uses this strategy in a highly manner and the re-maining 15.4% moderately pro-moted their tourism industry through this strategy.

Only 7.7% uses culture as the strategy to promote their tour-ism, 15.4% moderately used this and majority of the countries, 76.9% of them rarely use culture to promote their tourism.

Only 11.5% of the countries use history as their brand strategy to promote their tourism sector and majority of the countries with the percentage of 88.5% barely used history to promote their tourism sector.40

From the analysis of the adver-tisements as well, the brand value, friendly, is being used lowly with the percentage of 65.4%. 15.4% uses this value moderately and 19.4% uses friendly as their brand value to promote their tourism sector.

As for the second brand value, ro-mantic, only 7.8% uses this as its primary brand value. 15.4% mod-erately conveyed this value in the print advertisements and 80.7%, which is the majority, rarely con-vey romance in the print advertise-ments.

46.2% rarely convey the value of relaxed in its tourism print adver-tisements. 38.4% moderately con-vey this value and only 15.4% uses relaxed as the main brand value in promoting its tourism sector. Most of the countries with the percent-age of 65.4% use authenticity as their brand value. 15.4% moderately use authenticity as their brand val-ue while the rest, 19.4% did not use the authentic value in their tourism campaign.

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As a conclusion from this analy-sis, most of the countries are us-ing spirit of the place as the main strategy to promote the tourism sector. The second most common strategy being promoted is the spirit of the people for a particular country. The third most common strategy is history and the least strategy being used is culture.

As for brand values, the most val-ue being conveyed and used is authenticity, followed by friendli-ness and relaxed. And the value that is being conveyed the least is romance.

Four new tourism campaign series have been outlined as options to promote Malaysian tourism and also be used as the new advertise-ments for promoting Malaysian tourism in the later years. These campaign series are using the combination of all the brand strat-egy and values, from the typically used strategy and values to the strategy and values that are least used.

Development

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For campaign series 1, it has been outlined to promote the natural wonders of Malaysia. Malaysia is a country with numerous wonders of nature and thus, this series pays a tribute to Malaysia’s unique, ex-otic and authentic wonders of na-ture. With the strategy of promot-ing the spirit of the place through the use authenticity and romance as its values, this series covers 10 Malaysian natural wonders.

Campaign Series 1Malaysia’s Natural Wonders

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Campaign series 2 is inspired from historical landmarks and unique infrastructure that Malay-sia has to offer. With the purpose of attracting tourists to witness Malaysia’s iconic landmarks, the researcher adapted the strategy of promoting the spirit of the peo-ple and history for this campaign. The brand value conveyed by the researcher for this campaign is authenticity. There are a total of 8 advertisements for this series

Campaign Series 2Malaysia’s Iconic Landmarks

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Campaign Series 3 outlines the purpose of promoting Malaysia’s prominent uniqueness, the di-versity of Malaysian culture and ethnics. In this series, religious monuments are used to convey the diversity in Malaysian culture. Adapting the strategy of promot-ing spirit of the people and cul-ture, the researcher combines these strategies with authenticity and romance as the primary val-ues in this series. A total of 11 ad-vertisements are developed for this series.

Campaign Series 3Malaysia’s Religious Monuments

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The last campaign, which is the fourth campaign is a teaser-based campaign to outline all the prominent and unique mat-ters that Malaysia have. With the strategy of promoting the spirit of the place as well as the spirit of the people, the research has integrated the values of friendliness and re-laxed for this series. A sum of 11 advertise-ments that covers various uniqueness of Malaysia has been developed for this se-ries. This campaign has also been specifi-cally named as “Did You Know? Malaysia’s Facts and Figures” campaign.

Campaign Series 4DID YOU KNOW? : Malaysia’s Facts & Figures

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All the images for the develop-ment of these campaigns are taken originally from the Inter-net and all of them are under the license from Creative Com-mons 3.0 Attribution – Share Alike License which states that the researcher has the right to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work for commercial use under the condition that the work must be acknowledged in a manner specified by the author or the licensor and the distribution of the new work must also be shared or distrib-uted using the same license as the original work (Creative Commons).

All of the campaign series will be used as the test data by the researcher during testing and evaluation phase to find the findings in order to create the new print advertisements campaign to promote Malay-sian tourism.

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After the development of the initial products is done, they will then be used as test subjects to discover and estab-lish the findings to prove both the ob-jectives and hypotheses of this study.

The test, will be using quantitative method via survey instrument. A ques-tionnaire survey will be distributed to a total of 150 respondents. The target samplings, the respondents, are ran-dom Malaysians.

The purpose of the questionnaire is to inquire the respondents their prefer-ences on which matters or subjects that are preferably prominent to be pro-moted and also to ask the amendments that are needed in order to standardize the overall look and feel of the final out-come for this study.

In this questionnaire, a total of 16 ques-tions will be asked to respondents and this questionnaire is divided into two parts; 1) respondents’ demographics which consists of age, occupation and gender and 2) respondents’ preferences with regards to the look and feel of the print advertisements. All of the ques-tions are close-ended questions and will be distributed randomly through the conventional method of questionnaire distribution, in other words, face to face distribution.

Apart from distributing the question-naire manually, or face to face survey, online questionnaire distribution via so-cial networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter will also be used, to speed up the gathering of 150 respondents in order to meet the dateline of the study period.

Testing & EvaluationThis chapter describes the testing and evaluation phase of the study.

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Discussion of FindingsThis chapter describes the analysis of data from the test done and the findings and discussions relevant to the study.

In Design & Development, the initial outcomes for this study have been established, designed and created. There are four initial campaign series that have been created for testing to discover the findings and outcome in or-der to create a new set of print advertisements for creating a campaign to promote Malaysian tourism.

The testing of the product will be done by using quantitative method through survey instru-ment. The test has been done and a total of 150 respondents participated in the test via con-ventional method or face to face distribution and online distribu-tion of questions. The analysis of the test results are discussed in this chapter.

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Respondents’Demographics80 respondents or 53.3% of the re-spondents are male respondents and the remaining 70 respondents or 46.7% of the respondents are fe-male respondents.

Majority of the respondents (130 respondents or 86.7%) are at the age of 20-29. Meanwhile, only 17 respondents (11.3%) are aged from 30 to 39 and only 3 respondents (2%) are younger than 20 years old.

Most of the respondents (63 re-spondents, 42.3%) are working in a private sector. 50 of the re-spondents (33.6%) are students. 16 respondents (10.7%) are work-ing in education sector, 13 or 8.7% respondents are in government sector and only 7 or 4.7% of the re-spondents are self-employed.

It can be generalized that a sum of 11 print advertisements are chosen in all four cam-paign series.

And the distributions are three print advertisements in campaign series 1 by 21% re-spondents, three print adver-tisements in campaign series 2 are chosen by 26.7% of the respondents.

Another three print advertise-ments are chosen in cam-paign series 3 by 26.7% re-spondents as well and only 26% of the respondents chose a total of two print advertise-ments in campaign series 4.94

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100

104

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Most of the respondents (61 respond-ents, 40.7%) chose Logo number 2 (Asli Malaysia) as the main logo for the campaign. Followed by Logo 4 (25.5%, 38 respondents), Logo 1 (18.1%, 27 re-spondents) and Logo 3 (15.4%, 23 re-spondents).

And majority (53 respondents, 35.8%) of the respondents prefer bottom right to be the area to place the logo. On the other hand, 43 respondents or 29.1% prefer the logo to be on the top right of the advertisement. 30 respondents (20.3%) prefer the logo to be placed on the bottom left of the advertise-ment and 14.9% (22 respondents) pre-fer the logo to be on the top left of the advertisement.

Logo of Choice

Layout of ChoiceLayout 3 has been picked by major-ity of respondents (82 respondents, 55%). Followed by Layout 1 (26 re-spondents, 17.4%), Layout 2 (19 re-spondents, 12.8%) and Layout 5 (8 re-spondents, 5.4%). Both Layout 4 and Layout 6 are the least selected with the same number of respondents (7 respondents, 4.7%).

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Layout Arrangement Placement of Map

Respondents’ AwarenessCopywriting

48 respondents (32.7%) have chosen top left as the area for the title. This is followed by center (37 respondents, 25.2%), top right (33 respondents, 22.4%), bottom right (18 re-spondents, 12.2%), bottom left (9 respondents, 6.1%) and oth-ers (2 respondents, 1.4%).

And 43 respondents (28.7%) prefer bottom right area as the area for tagline. This is followed by bottom left (37 respondents, 24.7%), center (20%, 30 re-spondents), top right (13.3%, 20 respondents), top left (12.7%, 19 respondents) and other area (1 respondent, 0.7%).

112 respondents (Agree – 60 respond-ents, 40.3%, Strongly Agree – 52 re-spondents, 34.9%) agree that the caption is a necessity in the adver-tisement and 10 respondents disa-gree (Disagree – 2 respondents, 1.3%, Strongly Disagree – 8 respondents, 5.4%) that caption text is a necessity to be put in the advertisement.

The remaining 27 respondents (18.1%) are not sure on the necessity of the caption text in the advertisement.

A total of 95 respondents (Agree – 64 respondents, 43.8%, Strongly Agree – 31 respondents, 21.2%) agree that caption texts in the advertisements are to be standardized.

Only 28 respondents (Disagree – 10.3%, 15 respondents, Strongly Disa-gree – 8.9%, 13 respondents) disagree on the standardization of caption text in the advertisements. The re-maining 23 respondents (15.8%) are not sure on the matter of standard-izing the caption text.

In Table 6.12, a total of 86 re-spondents (57.7%) agree on the necessity of putting a map in the advertisements. 33 re-spondents (22.1%) disagree on the necessity of map and the remaining 30 respondents (20.1%) are not sure on the ne-cessity of map in the adver-tisements.

The sum of 138 respondents (92%) are aware on the places/matters promoted in the cam-paign series advertisements and only 4 respondents (2.6%) are not aware of the places/matters promoted in the cam-paign series advertisements. The remaining 8 respondents (5.3%) respondents are not sure on the existence of the places/matters promoted.

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DiscussionAs mentioned in Introduction, the ob-jectives of this study are:

• To identify and establish the com-mon branding elements that are being used in the nation-branding or destination-branding• To identify and establish brand strategies and brand values that are typically used for nation-branding and destination branding• To create and provide the respon-sible sectors the latest branding framework and directions in pro-moting Malaysian tourism sector

For the first objective of this study, it can be concluded that after the analy-sis of the tourism-based print adver-tisements by selected Commonwealth country members, the common brand-ing elements that are being used are logo, color, typography, and visuals which can be categorized as photog-raphy and supporting vector graphics.

Therefore, the new Malaysian tourism print campaign will be using all the five branding elements in branding Malay-sia for the purpose of promoting the Malaysian tourism.

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And for the second objective, the brand strategies that are typically used are spirit of the people, spirit of the place, cul-ture and history.

And the new Malaysian tour-ism print campaign will be using the combination of these strategies in distributed campaign series.

And as for the common brand values being used, they are ‘authenticity’, ‘friendliness’, ‘relaxed’ and ‘romantic’.

From this study, it can be concluded that the new Ma-laysian tourism print cam-paign will be using all the four values and they are being distributed in four miniseries in the overall campaign.

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The hypotheses for this re-search are as follows:

• Malaysians are not aware of the unique treasures that Malaysia have• Promoting Malaysia’s oth-er areas that have not been tapped are prominently preferable by Malaysians.

The first hypothesis, it is prov-en that it is a null hypothesis because from the test being done, 92% from respondents are aware of the unique plac-es/treasures that Malaysia has and therefore, the hypothesis of assuming that Malaysians are unaware of its uniqueness is not true.

The current strategy being used to promote Malaysian tourism is pro-moting the spirit of the place that Malaysia has.

But during the development of the initial products, different strategies are used in order to find out the Ma-laysian preferences.

The outcome is that, Malaysians pre-fer a different strategy as compared to promoting only spirit of the place.

Malaysians prefer that our spirit of the people, culture and history to be promoted more instead of spirit of the place.

Therefore the assumption made in the second hypothesis is true and the recommendation in promoting Malaysian tourism will be mentioned in Conclusion and Recommendation.

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The new Malaysian tourism print campaign will be us-ing logo, color typography, photography, and support-ing graphics as its brand el-ements, ‘spirit of the people’, ‘spirit of the place’, ‘culture’ and ‘history’ as its brand strategies and ‘friendliness’, ‘authenticity’, ‘relaxed’ and ‘romantic’ as it brand values.

Conclusion & Recommendation

This chapter states the conclusion of the study as well as providing recommendation for future re-searcher to improve this study or use this study as a benchmark for future related study.

From this study, generalizations can be made that the common branding tools or elements be-ing used in nation-branding with regards to the tourism sector are logo, color, typography, pho-tographic images and support-ing graphics.

With a combination of promot-ing the spirit of the people, spirit of the place culture and history of a particular nation as brand strategies through the brand values of friendliness, romance, relaxed and authenticity.

As for the depiction of the Ma-laysian identity through nation-branding with regards to the Ma-laysian tourism sector, this study, has established and created a new tourism campaign that can be used as an initial framework as well as guidelines for further development and improvement in the depiction of the Malaysian identity in the tourism sector or in any sector, nonetheless with the purpose of boosting the in-come or revenue obtained in the tourism sector.

Conclusion

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The general descriptions of this new tourism campaign for Malaysia are as follows:

• This new tourism campaign will be named as the ASLI Malaysia Cam-paign and all the elements of brand-ing with regards to nation-branding is being used in this campaign

• This campaign will use the strate-gies to promote the spirit of the peo-ple, spirit of the place, culture and history as its brand strategy and it will be distributed with regards to its appropriate series of advertise-ments

• This campaign will used the values or tones that convey friendliness, ro-mance, relaxed and authenticity as the core brand values which will be distributed with regards to its ap-propriate series of advertisements.

The detailed and further description of the new Malaysian tourism campaign that has been developed based on the findings in this research can be referred in the next chapter.

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As mentioned in the Con-clusion section, this study will be able to provide fu-ture researchers the initial framework that can be used as reference to fur-ther strengthens the iden-tity of Malaysia as a brand in destination-branding.

This study will also provide the initial direction of pro-moting Malaysian tourism sector to the world which can also be used as a milestone to be referred to in order to establish a new direction of promo-tion of Malaysian identity in Malaysian tourism sec-tor to further boost and enhance the income of the sector in the future.

This research is limited in terms of the funding and time to proceed in-depth in understanding the Malaysian identity and establishing new and unique directions that can be referred to in creating the a wholesome cam-paign that can be used to boost the tourism sec-

tor and also establishing a brand for Malaysia in des-tination marketing.

But alas, this study can be referred, read through and used as the initial framework and guide-lines to understand the concept of nation-brand-ing for Malaysian tourism in solidifying the Malay-sian identity in destina-tion-branding as well as identifying and establish-ing new and unique direc-tions of promoting Ma-laysia to the world as one of the unique, exotic and authentic destination with regards to the tourism-based industry.

Recommendation

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