New Zealand's Global Image Comparison

As part of our globalisation inquiry we compared what we thought was New Zealand's global image and what our twitter followers thought.

Is New Zealand a Global Superstar?

New Zealand’s global image is important to get visitors to New Zealand and to the success of New Zealand exports overseas. For example if people think about New Zealand as a clean, green healthy environment they are more likely to buy food and products from New Zealand, especially dairy products.

We asked our twitter followers what came to mind when they thought of New Zealand. We then compared what we thought was New Zealand’s global image and what our followers thought.

Both overseas and ourselves thought of animals when we thought of New Zealand’s global image. We thought the Kiwi was a big part of New Zealand’s global image because we are called kiwis and it is our national bird.  However some people from overseas thought about wallabies, kangaroos and koalas possibly because they thought we had the same animals as Australia. To stop people getting confused we could include an image of the kiwi on the flag or people from New Zealand could share more information about the kiwi through twitter, blogs and skype.

Both overseas and ourselves thought of sporting teams and especially the All Blacks when we thought of New Zealand’s global image. The All Blacks are easily recognised around the world because they are the world champions, for their famous silver fern logo and the haka.  We thought the Silver Ferns netball team and the Black Caps would be as popular as the All Blacks. However these teams are not as recognised overseas because their players are not as famous, they don’t perform the haka and they don’t have a large company like Adidas sponsoring them and spending lots of money on advertising.  

Both overseas and ourselves also thought of Maori when we thought of New Zealand’s global image.  We thought the image of Maori would include tattoos, carving and weaving. However the people from overseas only seem to know about the haka. We believe the haka is the most known part of Maori culture because of the All Blacks. To promote Maori culture we as New Zealander’s could share more about Maori culture through social media and visitors to New Zealand could be taught Maori ways and customs.

Overall a positive global image is important because it can affect a country’s economy. For example China’s global image as a producer is that they often make products that are cheap, made of plastic and don’t last very long. This means people may avoid buying Chinese made products. New Zealand’s global image is different to what we originally thought it was. In the future New Zealand may need to work on changing its image so more people recognise our products and brands and choose to buy them.

We believe our summary is extended abstract because we have several similarities and differences and made an overall statement.