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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Malaysia as a Brand - What do others see?


It's funny that eventhough we have been independent for 53 years now this year, we still really have this identity crisis or self image problem when it comes to promote the country as a tourism spot. We always project ourselves as multi-ethnic, multiracial country that can co-exist together and live in harmony. Or in common sense, we are a 'rojak' society. Do we really want others to see us as a "Rojak" society? Sound tasty, but, really... how does this work? We project ourselves as a boiling point of many cultures and but then again also promote ourselves as this moderate Islamic country. Is this on purpose so that the foreigners that come here will be confuse enough to even bother. If you go to Bali, Indonesia you can expect there will be one single theme to it and you can even see it once you arrived at their airport. The same goes to Thailand. There is one single underlying theme to every country and the foreignors will know what will they be experiencing. But, in Malaysia case, it can varied depending on where you want to go. Malaysia Truly Asia or Malaysia The Confuse Asia. Nothing serious. Just my personal thought.