Image-building techniques
Typical image-building techniques are
Advertising in general financial media
Participating in investment exhibitions (in the country, in the region, elsewhere in the world)
Advertising in industry- or sector-specific media
Conducting general investment missions from source country to host country or from host country to source country
Conducting general information seminars on investment opportunities
The purpose of such activities is not to target individual companies as potential investors, but rather to spread the news that a given location is actively seeking investors and is trying to create favorable conditions. Image-building is based on communicating the general investment conditions, i.e. why a given place is an attractive market or an attractive location for export-oriented investment.
It is important to note that image-building techniques suffer from two limitations:
The effect of image-building can be entirely offset by countervailing evidence, for instance if a country receives a very low score in the World Economic Forum’s or the IMD’s country competitiveness index or Transparency International’s corruption index.
Image-building rarely has a direct, immediate effect in terms of attracting investment. In order to achieve this, it has to be complemented with investment-generating techniques.
the target group
SME
support
SME promo-
tion
investment
promotion
entrepreneur-
ship
promotion