Duncan Harriss, managing director of integrated production company, Limehouse Creative, and Dan Aldridge, creative director, BBC Studios Australia and HyperKid, have mentored four teams of entrepreneurs in their bid to rebrand Australia as an entrepreneurial nation. Harris and Aldridge are working with The Academy of Entrepreneurs on the task for the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade).

The shortlisted ideas were chosen from those of 61 students and entrepreneurs from over 40 nationalities, who workshopped ideas and creative concepts to rebrand Australia. Over five weeks, students learned branding and advertising 101, analysed what Australia has to offer as a nation and critiqued other successful global nation brand campaigns.

“What brief could be more exciting than helping rebrand and better brand Australia! The Nation Brand initiative is one that resonates with our own industry as well citizens but perhaps more importantly, one that needs to be heard across the world by potential investors and talent to convince them Australia is the place to come and realise their dreams. We believe that Australia is the perfect place to test and launch a start-up; because we are a multicultural, young, innovative nation with a strong economy. Entrepreneurs are a key voice, a current and future demographic and the engine of Australia,” Harriss commented.

Fiona De Jong, head of Australia’s Nation Brand at Austrade noted, “I had the opportunity to hear the top four pitches from extraordinary entrepreneurs of Australia. I was blown away by the creativity, and the expression and the imagination of these incredible young people in our country. Each of the ideas was executed in different ways but collectively articulated some really special attributes of this country and that’s what this whole project was about. Let’s get to the essence in a simple way about what’s great about his country and let’s celebrate that. The people in this course were able to do that over the course of a very short period of time so I do thank the Academy of Entrepreneurs for the opportunity to have this project come to life and for sharing with us the inspiring ideas from young entrepreneurs in our country.”

The Foreign Policy White Paper of 2017 found that the current nation branding is fragmented with no unified representation of Australia internationally. It showed that the number of individual brands in the global market place was diluting the effectiveness of the collective promotion of Australia.

Paula Mills, founder and chief executive officer of the Academy of Entrepreneurs, added, “Often visitors and students come to Australia for the laid-back lifestyle and its natural beauty but end up wanting to stay due to Australia’s young, multicultural, welcoming and strong & safe economy. This is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to contribute to the Australia Nation Brand initiative with ideas designed to make it more attractive for talent of all ages to think about launching their own start-ups and careers in Australia.”

[cover image: Fiona De Jong, head of Australia’s Nation Brand at Austrade]