International branding experts have damned Vietnam’s national brand building efforts at a recent meeting in Hanoi.

Vietnam has some rice varieties, such as Tam rice, but productivity remains low and quality has decreased in recent years

Speaking at the conference on national branding development held by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Sammir Dixit, Managing Director, Brand Finance Asia Pacific at Brand Finance plc, said, “Vietnam is proud of its coffee exports, but you know, the worst cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted was in Vietnam. Vietnam also boasts huge rice export revenues, but the worst kind of rice I’ve ever eaten was when I was on a Vietnamese flight. I hope that what I’ve just said won’t hurt your pride”.

Many Vietnamese may still think that Vietnam is among the leading countries in terms of rice and coffee exports, so these products are de facto aspects of the country’s national branding. However, in reality, there is a great difference between large production and exports and national brand awareness.

International brand experts said products which are considered as national trademarks must excel in terms of quality and display some ingenuity or originality. No mass-produced product is good enough to compete with unique specialities.

For instance, when thinking of Italy, people often think of their pasta, or Kobe beef from Japan, chocolate from Switzerland and specific wines from France.

Even a country which still faces many difficulties like Cuba also has cigars and rum as highly-renowned national brands. But, Vietnam to date has nothing which serves the same purpose.

Vietnam has some rice varieties, such as Tam rice, but productivity remains low and quality has decreased in recent years. Vietnam earns big revenues from cashew nut exports, but mainly semi-processed products.

Meanwhile, Trung Nguyen-branded coffee is seen as famous in Vietnam, but few foreigners have ever heard of it, let alone being able to pronounce its name correctly.

Sixty-three companies have been presented with the Vietnam National Branding Programme’s Vietnam Value awards this year, more than double the thirty companies honoured in 2008.

But, Dixit said that he knew almost nothing about the 63 companies that had won the awards, since no information was available about them and there was no website offering the information.

Le Phuoc Vu , Chairman of Hoa Sen Group, is head of the programme’s steering board, but none of his firm’s products won awards national.

Thierry Noyelle, Senior Adviser to the SECO-Vietrade Technical Co-operation Programme, noted that the websites of the 63 firms that had Vietnam Value had English-language website versions, but they were characterised by very poor content.

Noyelle said that only 10 of the 63 companies displayed the Vietnam Value logo on their websites. The other 53 award-winning companies did not mention the awards.

This proves the fact that Vietnam Value is just a title, and plays no role in national branding because if it carried real meaning as a marketing tool the firms would have used it in their promotional material.

The serious and frank comments of Thierry Noyelle and Sammir Dixit reminded Vietnam to define what products were capable of representing Vietnam to the world.

Samir Dixit, Asia-Pacific Director of Brand Finance, said that according to a Brand Finance evaluation report, the trademark valuation of Vietnamese companies in 2015 totalled USD140 billion, down 19% from the previous year and equal to the Apple Corporation alone.

Compared with seven ASEAN countries listed on the National Brand Ranking drafted by Brand Finance, Vietnam ranked sixth after Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines and only ahead of just Cambodia.