By Michael Breen
On this week's cover, The Economist sports a pithy headline for its main story about the financial crisis in Greece: ``Acropolis Now.''
The headline will remain a classic even for a magazine that regularly produces gems. (Readers may recall the 2000 cover photo of the then relatively unknown Kim Jong-il, waving woodenly to the crowd at the 2000 summit with Kim Dae-jung: ``Greetings, Earthlings.'')
Would that in the quest to promote Korea and the regions, our copyeditors could come up with such perfection.
If, with such pithy two-worders, The Economist is able to reinforce its position as the best newsweekly in English in the world, with what choice of words may Korea and its cities convey that they are at least worth more consideration in the world than they currently receive?
Consider ``Acropolis Now.'' First, the subject is more than Greece. The country accounts for just 2.6 percent of the 16-nation euro-zone GDP, but a default would spread political and economic contagion for all of Europe, the world's largest economic zone. The subtitle makes this clear: ``Europe's debt crisis spins out of control.''
Second, as this suggests, what's happening ― and let's face it, even for the most educated reader, financial crises have a sense of being about nothing but newspaper articles and huge numbers until you lose your own job ― is profoundly important.
To drive this point home, there's the association with the Vietnam War, the formative international event that politicized the current ruling generation. The wordplay association with the war movie ``Apocalypse Now'' is reinforced with an illustration of helicopters labeled ``EU'' and ``IMF'' approaching the Parthenon.
There is also a very serious image of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in combat fatigues and the quote, ``The horror, the horror.'' These were the dying words of the character in the movie played by Marlon Brando and are themselves taken from the novel the movie was in part based on, The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.
And, then, there's the humor in the delivery which says, we're so sophisticated and confident as analysts that, as lesser minds struggle merely trying to understand events, we're so far ahead we can even summarize them in witticisms. There is no better way to appeal to serious people.
As this shows, there's a lot more to the headline than its two words. The same goes with slogans or any kind of summary. But, I wonder, if The Economist's copyeditors can do it every week, and if newspaper headline writers and advertising copywriters can do it so well, why is it that in the English language promotion of Korea, success eludes us?
Why can we not come up with the right meaningful words and the images that fit?
Why is it that we are confronted with awkward things like ``World's Best Air Hub'' (Incheon International Airport) and Green Land JeollaNamdo, or copycats, like Dynamic Busan: City of Tomorrow, Colorful Daegu, Beautiful Gyeongju, and Happy Suwon. Or stuff that's just not quite right, like Cheongju, the happy city worth living in, GyeongGi-Do: Global Inspiration, and Yongin City, a place at the leading edge of the future.
Just because the good result eludes us does not mean the problem is a great mystery. I think, in fact, that it's remarkably simple. In my opinion, the fatal flaw of the companies and organization seeking to brand themselves in this way is that they do not trust the experts they hire. (Or they don't trust them sufficiently to hire experts in the first place).
In my experience, managers here will not accept recommendations from experts unless they understand them themselves. The problem here is that if the slogan were Spanish or Tagalog, they'd just say ``OK.'' But most executives know enough English to say, ``But is Greece really in Apocalypse Now or is it coming later and shouldn't it be Apocalypse Soon? My idea is Parthenon Soon …"
Oh, the horror, the horror.
Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.
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