By Simon Anholt
America has just become, according to my research, the world’s most admired country.
Since 2005, I’ve been running a survey called the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI), which measures international perceptions of 50 countries. Each year, around 20,000 people in 20 countries are asked to record their perceptions of each country’s government and its domestic and foreign policies on human rights, the environment, and international peace and security; of the people of each country, their talents, education, skills and their kindess to strangers; of each country’s cultural heritage and popular culture; about the quality and attractiveness of the products and services it produces; of the landscape and climate and tourist appeal of each country; of the economic and educational opportunities each country offers its own population and to immigrants. The NBI has been conducted fourteen times, and now consists of over a billion data points recording “how the world sees the world”. A parallel study, the Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index, performs a similar analysis of 50 cities (the 2008 topline results of both surveys can be queried interactively at www.simonanholt.com/research).