Before one can attempt an exercise in branding, one has to understand what it is, how it originated and what core principles are at work to ensure success. Once this has been established, we will see how these principles can transform the Bangladeshi economy.

Israel Soccer Association Chairman Luzon said, "I thank Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the understanding that this tournament is of national importance and will greatly help the State of Israel's public diplomacy overseas by showing a beautiful Israel that loves sports.

First, the shortcomings in "public diplomacy" and lack of transparency in the five-month-old Kurdish peace process have led to confusion and anger, especially among Turks. This sentiment has triggered street violence by small groups, but what is more important is that the "silent majority" feels deprived of adequate information about the process. Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan grasped that.

Despite its wealth, Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is “inward looking.” Gerges also described Iran as a failed model and a dysfunctional system both ideologically and politically.
According to Gerges, for the countries in the Arab world, the only two models are the governance of the AK Party and Europe. Turkey can do “a great deal” with its soft power, he believes.

The idea was that China's south-west region, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India's Northeast and eastern region, might explore prospects for working together, using emerging new transport linkages as a platform for stronger trade, socio-cultural and people-to-people exchanges. Academics and scholars were invited to discuss this concept, and sensitise their governments, business entities and social organisations to the possibilities.

The 2006 Beijing action plan provided the first attempt to create institutional-level collaboration through the establishment of Confucius Institutes, although these are also largely organised at the intergovernmental level as part of China’s global ‘soft power’.

The Foreign Ministry’s appointment of the robot cat Doraemon as a “cultural ambassador” in 2008 is one instance. Another, less well known, concerns water trucks sent by Japan to Iraq in 2004 as a contribution to reconstruction of the war-shattered nation. The trucks were marked not by the Japanese flag but by a national symbol deemed (rightly) more instantly recognizable abroad — manga and anime soccer hero Captain Tsubasa. Talk about soft power!

Despite offering a live demonstration of Bollywood’s reach and soft power, Senecal is not the typical Haitian when it comes to knowledge about India. Here’s another story that illustrates just how distant and unknowable India is for Haiti even as New Delhi tries to help it recover from a massive earthquake that practically flattened Port-au-Prince three years ago.