Ao minuto: Trump "muito otimista" sobre negociações com Irão. Khamenei fala de "nova fase" em Ormuz

[atomez]

A ideia é boa, mas nem é original. Há anos que "anda" por aí.

Agora esta afirmação:

Pinho said 19 percent of the country's power comes from renewable sources like wind or the sun

dá é vontade de rir - é que desses 19% aí uns 90% ou mais não são de origem eólica ou solar mas sim de origem hidroeléctrica (barragens) e isso já é assim há muitos muitos anos... nada de novo portanto... é só apresentar uma coisa antiga com aspecto moderno... típico da politiquice nacional...

Portugal podia ser a California da Europa?

Clima, turismo, praias, surf, bom vinho já temos.

Agora só nos falta:

- universidades do melhor que há no mundo
- sectores hi-tech como microelectrónica, software, biotech, aero-espacial do melhor que há no mundo
- investidores de risco do melhor que há no mundo
- Hollywood

Pequenas coisitas portanto. Estamos quase lá.

[Pata-Hari]

Portugal seeks new image as 'West Coast of Europe'
By Eric Pfanner

Sunday, December 16, 2007
LONDON: For Portugal, the signing Thursday of a treaty to overhaul the governance of the European Union in Lisbon was a "tipping point," said Manuel Pinho, the Portuguese minister for the economy and innovation.

"We are the focus of Europe, and even the whole world," he said.

The event did not go entirely smoothly. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain skipped the ceremony, skulking into town later in the day to add his signature.

The apparent snub - Brown cited a scheduling conflict - probably had more to do with fear of the euroskeptic Fleet Street tabloids than with any desire to offend the hosts. But to the Portuguese, being brushed off, overlooked or misunderstood by larger European countries is an all-too-common occurrence. Now they are trying to do something about it.

On Thursday, as the EU leaders converged on Lisbon, Portugal started an international advertising campaign aimed at bolstering the country's image. The campaign, one of a growing number of marketing initiatives by countries, states or cities, aims to give one of the oldest countries in Europe a New World, high-tech gloss, portraying Portugal as "the West Coast of Europe."

Print and outdoor ads feature well-known Portuguese sports figures like José Mourinho, the former coach of the Chelsea soccer team in London, and Cristiano Ronaldo, a star at Manchester United. Other subjects include Miguel Câncio Martins, an architect who designed the Buddha Bar in Paris and the Man Ray restaurant in New York. Their portraits are superimposed on pictures of dramatic Portuguese coastlines.

Other ads in the campaign focus on Portugal's strength in environmentally friendly energy production. Pinho said 19 percent of the country's power comes from renewable sources like wind or the sun, putting Portugal in third place in Europe, behind Sweden and Austria.

That might come as something of a surprise to people who see Southern European countries like Portugal as being rich in history, with a good quality of life, but not necessarily progressive in business or technology, Pinho said.

"It's better to present a country as a champion of renewable energy than history," he said. "History is the past."

The pages of international business magazines are full of government-sponsored advertising. But typically these campaigns are aimed at well-defined audiences like foreign investors or tourists. The former Soviet state of Georgia, for example, has been running ads that make the bold claim that it is a better place to do business than its namesake in the United States, among other places.

The campaign for Portugal is different because, like a corporate brand-building initiative, it aims to improve the general perception of Portugal, rather than focusing on specific attributes for potential investors or travelers, said João Wengorovius, chief executive of BBDO Portugal, the ad agency based in Lisbon that created the campaign.

"We were trying to move away from the stereotypes and clichés of this kind of advertising," he said.

One campaign conceived in a similar way was the German effort last year, in connection with the soccer World Cup, to brand itself as a "land of ideas," focusing on German technological and cultural innovation.

For Portugal, Pinho and Wengorovius acknowledged, one problem is that many people, even in Europe, have only vaguely formed ideas about the country. The tagline, highlighting Portugal's westward orientation, was intended to remind them that the country's coastline is along the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean, unlike other countries in Southern Europe with which it is sometimes lumped in the Northern European consciousness.

Portugal found itself the subject of unwanted media attention lately over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a then 3-year-old British girl who was on vacation with her family on the Algarve last spring. The unsolved case remains a big story for the British tabloids, and there have been reports of declines in tourism from Britain, an important market for Portugal.

Over all, though, tourism remains strong, Pinho said. And he added that the advertising campaign was conceived long before the disappearance of McCann.

"This is a tragic case, of course, but it has not affected the numbers," he said. "It's a very peaceful country, a very safe country."

The government is spending about €3 million, or $4.32 million on the ad campaign, Wengorovius said.

"We know that you cannot change the perception of a country just like that," he said. "But this is about trying to put perception closer to reality."

Eric Pfanner can be reached at adcol@iht.com.

Fonte é o iht.com