In a previous post, I talked about Finland being the world’s best kept secret — having excellent products and talented people, but being a bit too shy to communicate these facts to the rest of the world.

Since that time, my friends in Finland tell me that the economy has moved south. Nokia’s decline and subsequent sale of its handset business to Microsoft has had a more serious negative impact on Finland’s economy than many originally thought. As reported in the UK edition of Wired Magazine, “By 2000, Nokia accounted for a mindboggling 4 per cent of Finnish GDP, 70 per cent of Helsinki's stock exchange market capital, 43 per cent of corporate R&D, 21 per cent of total exports and 14 per cent of corporate tax revenues.”

Even successes from Neste (oil refining), Wärtsilä (power systems), Kone (maker of elevators and escalators), Rovio (creator of Angry Birds — which has just announced its own layoffs), and many others have not been enough to counteract the negative impact Nokia’s decline has had on the Finnish economy. So what should Finland do?

Develop a Finnish brand identity.

The image of a country can greatly contribute to (or detract from) the brands that come from that country. Many believe that France makes quality wine, Germany makes high-performance cars and beer, Japan makes reliable consumer electronics and automobiles, and the US makes desirable entertainment and technology products for computing and communications. These brand images give products from companies in those countries an advantage in the marketplace.

Even if people are not familiar with a foreign brand, they presume it is good if it comes from a country known for being good at making that kind of product. Countries that have no clear brand identity put their companies at a competitive disadvantage. This is one problem that Finland seems to have.

The Finnish brand is not well-known.

Finland is not very well-known outside its borders — especially in the United States. In fact, when I tell my friends and associates that I am going to Finland, without fail, the next time they see me, they ask, “When are you going to Sweden …, Norway …, Denmark ...?” They rarely, if ever, remember that I am going to Finland.

Even more amazing, when I return from Finland, they’ll ask, “How was Sweden …, Norway …, Denmark …?” When I ask people for their first word association with Finland, I either hear “cold” or “I have no idea.” Some Finns dismiss this as “Oh that’s just because Americans are dumb about the rest of the world.” While that may be true, it is also true that America represents an important consuming market with over 300 million people that can buy what Finland is selling if they know the products exist and are made in Finland.

Also, the United States is not alone. In a post entitled “Did You Know? — Finnish Brands,” Adam Csikos says, “… there are a lot of unique, worldwide brands from Finland (in addition to Rovio, he cites Clash of Clans, Abloy, Marttiini, Linux, Fiskars, Tikkurila, F-Secure, and HIM) in the every day use. However, usually no one is able to connect these huge brands to the Nordic country.”

More evidence.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my point was underscored in a news “blurb” that appeared in the Business Section of the Los Angeles Times way back on the 17th of February, 1999. In the piece entitled “More on Tech,” the author wrote (and I am quoting verbatim), “Nokia to Buy Diamond Lane: Swedish cellular phone maker Nokia agreed to buy Petaluma, Calif.-based Diamond Lane Communications Corp. for $125 million to help meet demand for Internet access through wireless phones.” Nokia was, and still is (even after its decline), Finland’s best-known brand, and the writer of the article in a major newspaper thought it was a Swedish company. Case closed.



Why is not having a clear brand a problem?

People are less likely to want to “buy a product” that has no clear, positive image in their mind. In fact, it is a rule of marketing that if prospective buyers cannot remember the brand (in this case, made in Finland), it is unlikely they will buy the product. If the businesses in the country make great products, the economy should be booming, but as discussed above, that is currently not the case in Finland.

Finland needs to communicate more effectively.

To overcome the “best kept secret” syndrome, it would help Finland to realize that the concept of “if you make it, they will come” is only found in movies. The benefits of Finland need to be actively marketed. That means they need to be highlighted in headlines, and not buried in the body text of communications.

It would help if Finns learned to overcome their shyness, and not be afraid to tell others how Finland can help them. The Finnish government and its bigger, better-known companies need to lead the charge to communicate the great things that have come out of Finland.

Easy to say and harder to do.

I know what you are thinking — it’s easy for me to say, but much harder for Finland to do. That is likely true, but hard does not mean impossible. Many countries have had a tougher job turning around their “corporate image” to help their companies succeed.

After WWII, products made in Japan had a worldwide image of being “cheap” — meaning they were inexpensive and of poor quality. Akio Morita, CEO of Sony, overheard someone talking about this in a restaurant. He was so personally distraught by what he overheard that he formed a group of influential Japanese businessmen to turnaround Japan’s poor quality perception. They hired a quality expert from the United States named W. Edwards Deming to come to Japan to teach them how to put quality into their products.

Deming is often credited with helping Japan to create its post-war economic miracle whereby “made in Japan” went from meaning poor quality to amongst the best quality in the world. During the 10 years that followed, Japan’s economy experienced record growth to become the second largest in the world behind the United States. The Japanese Government contributed to this boom through its Ministry of International Trade and Industry better known by the acronym MITI. MITI grew to be very powerful — helping Japanese companies to better compete in world markets.

What can Finland do?

Finnish companies already produce quality products. The area where they are known to be weak is in marketing. Even though it has been in business since 1985, Nokia hired its first Chief Marketing Officer in January of 2011. Just over a year later, she was gone.

So here’s the idea. Why doesn’t the Finnish government do what the Japanese government did with MITI? Why doesn't it find and recruit a team of really good marketing people (the marketing equivalents of W. Edwards Deming) and give them the task to market Finland and serve as a resource to help Finnish companies with their marketing?

It is certainly worth a try, and if it pays off, it will not be an expense, but a very worthwhile investment in Finnish businesses and its economy. Rather than be dependent on one company, Finland can hopefully create a lot of Nokias. With great products and talent already in place, all that is needed is the missing ingredient — world-class marketing. That's my two cents.

Ira Kalb is president of Kalb & Associates, an international consulting and training firm, and assistant professor of clinical marketing at the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California.

