Organic tea of Panchagarh, crab of Khulna, nakshikantha of Faridpur, handloom products of Tangail, clay tiles of Shatkhira, pineapple of Khagrachhari, betal leaf of Chuadanga and hilsa fish of Bhola. I was born and brought up in Dhaka while my parents hail from Meherpur and Sylhet. I am left pondering how to brand these two districts with a flagship product. I know Meherpur is famous for Mujibnagar and Sylhet is famous for many more things, but how to brand these districts with key products or trade representative of the districts? Which district you belong to? May be if you are a brand 'gewrew' yourself, you can propose some unique branding strategy for your district and mine and with our collective effort, we can join our bits and pieces to establish a competitive advantage for our own districts.Daily Star reports that inspired by the Japanese 'one village one product' movement, the government has started implementing a 'one district one product' (ODOP) scheme to decentralise and diversify export production. Officials hope the move will lower costs and ease environmental and social problems such as uncontrolled migration from rural areas to the country's main cities. Japan launched such a movement at Oita Prefecture in 1979. It has now become a global movement as countries like China, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and the United States have adopted this strategy to promote their products. As per the EPB plan, a common logo for all the selected products under ODOP will be introduced to make them familiar worldwide.The state-run export promotional agency also has a plan to set up some common centres all over the country, which will provide technical and logistic supports for the products under the ODOP project.The EPB wants optimum use of organic raw materials as well as indigenous technology to promote products in the international market.An expert in such movement from Japan, Tadashi Uchida, will soon be invited to Bangladesh to share his experience with local people.The EPB will also propose to the government that it seek support from donors like Japan's External Trade Organization in order to carry out the project.
So time to get back to roots I guess, think how you can give something back to the district you affiliate yourself with. Perhaps a good time to apply the branding strategies we learnt and preach...to our 'desher baris' first.
2 comments:
This is interesting.The Ethiopian solution to get better prices for their coffee was to brand locally.The best cofee in the world come from the ethiopian region of Sidama.I wonder if our tea is good enough to compete with the rest of the world.I would love to see a 'Moulovibazar' branded tea selling at Tesco's someday, but I guess that is just wishful thinking.
I have read in newspaper that New Zealand has named their most of the area on basis of their major attractive thing. We can also named the place like that. Something like nick name. Like "Area of best Hilsha in the world". well have make it in short...
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