The image of a Country | Visar Ramajli | TEDxPrishtina
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RidkPSf6MJw Video ID: RidkPSf6MJw ============================================================ [Music] ladies and gentlemen this is a great honor to be here today and to hold this speech in front of you my name is viscera Maile and I love Kosovo I was I was raised in a family that harvest in me the three fundamental things honor trust and respect for others these fundamental things have taught my my way of life and also governed my my future as well I have found it about ten companies till now five of them still exist and I think this is quite a good number in terms of business and I am a father of three boys and I'm very honored to have a very supported wife which is sitting over here with me today thank you before things start to get emotional and become but potentially a little bit funny I will be speaking today about perceived image of our country post-war transitions are never an easy process and many things have been done in a positive way but there are a lot of that that could have been done in a better way but unfortunately now we have only the future to change it eighteen years ago we were in war a war which was followed by all news agencies around the world unfortunately even today after 18 years when I traveled to another country and I meet people that never visited Kosovo I get the same question asks oh you are from Kosovo is it still the war there is it safe and every time I have to make the same explanations to them that now the war is over a long time ago and nevertheless now COSO is a safe safe place and even statistically speaking it is even safer than many other countries including even some in the united European Union and I believe my fellow friends also you have the same thing or the same experience with with you travelling the notion of perception is that it is reality itself but it all depends how we see and look at this reality and what I could get from the people that I met in foreign countries about the picture and how they picture Kosovo I tried to get some picture last night in Internet and try to visualize the way how they think so I'm going to show you some some of them so basically were eggs on political disability actually this is not from Kosovo but in any case he's a dangerous guy so he has to have a tie there but on the other side on the other side we ourselves see differently and we perceive our country differently and we also show it differently too to those people and basically this is image this is the image that we tend to kind of what we perceive and how we see is in how we also talk to people about it country branding identity now most of you have heard about the corporate brand identity this is quite a term used in in the business community all companies try to present themselves as good as possible and so their products and services reflect quality reliability and the company in general reflects that is trustworthy some countries have applied the same concept on a country level so they can present the country better and also change the perception of the country because we are not the only one it seems that in the world that needs perception change personally I totally agree with this concept and I really think that we need to do something on on that regard even though in Kosovo we had our government trying to deal with with with brennick and most of you if you are aware there there was a campaign health and it was called the young Europeans and I searched last night on internet and I found the video clip which is actually one of the best ever made for Kosovo in Kosovo I really liked it but one thing that really strikes me is the number of views so basically we're talking about hundred and ninety-nine thousand views in total of this video clip in YouTube now this number may not be that much relevant to the to the campaign impact because it was also shown in TV but this shows a lot for me and then we have individuals from Kosovo and last night I saw that a race Rafi with her song bom bom x reached 451 million views for me this tells a lot it shows that the power of branding the identity of a country relies with individuals and and their reactions actually other and and and not with the government executed campaigns so well and results is is evident we are all responsible for our country's branding and our individual actions shape the identity of our country it is our duty and responsibility as a citizen of this country to do what is best and wrote and what is right as well if we want to tailor the perception of our country we all play a very vital role and a very important role on this so every single individual Warren buffer had a very nice quote he said that the reputation it's built in 20 years and it takes 20 years actually to build the reputation and you lose it only in five minutes so if we think about that we will have to do things differently and definitely for us doing things differently means starting with it right now in 2012 I decided to take another path of doing business a path that will take me into a very nice country Netherlands up till that point we were doing business with local partnerships and so on and it was the first time that we have contacted a potential partner in the Netherlands and the first contact was through an email sent to them and we had a response and we scheduled we wanted to schedule a face-to-face meeting so basically knowing that most of the people that never visit Kosova had bad reputation for Co so I wanted to invite mr. Robert Rahman who is now our partner to actually visit Co so as a first visit and of course the response was very quick he said no I'm not coming into Kosovo so the first meeting definitely should take place in Volendam which is a town about 22 kilometers from from Amsterdam and the meeting was held and we started presenting how perfect Kosovo is in terms of the taxing system in terms of operational cost and nevertheless we mentioned a a very interesting parameter that seventy percent of our population is under 35 years of age and unfortunately I'm I'm on the other side now so in in in any case what striped him is that rubber started you know scratching is that and he said how come I mean and and really I didn't know the answer why we have this kind of proportion but on the other hand knowing the perception that they he might have for our country I I had to to to say to him that look Robert don't worry we haven't killed them so the elders are there but it's it's something else so basically that was a very nice icebreaker into the discussion and and into into the whole meeting as well the meeting was concluded with a dinner and at the end of that particular dinner for at the same night we shaked hands in an Albanian way and said to each other yes we will pursue the opportunity to do business together in cost at that time I realized that an initial trust was settled and this is a very important stuff the next meeting was in in in Kosovo scheduled and one of the team members from the Netherland told me that his wife was searching to buy a bulletproof vest for him and uh and and basically she couldn't find one because she wanted for her her her husband to take it with him the guy that I'm talking about is the guy in the middle and it's called Simon he's an extrusion Simon cross he's an extrusion operator with our come within our company and what is interesting is the same guy one year after took ten days of his holiday to come in Kosova and stay with his local friends from catch sonic and enjoy his holidays for ten days here so he liked it very much basically in in one we we had to go through a thorough planning for about a year and in about five months we we built the factory jointly with our partners from Netherlands you know many partnerships failed and usually when there are cultural differences that's even more more often but in our case we were trusted and we were working based on trust honesty and this are the main ingredient in our case that kept the whole partnership running without any misunderstandings because disputes it's not even a word that we ever used in in communication as a young intrapreneur well from the 30% not not the 70% actually but still considered myself as young I never would have thought that that my initiatives an action will have a significant impact in the community and also I would never think that my main motive of doing business will be people today I'm happy that I'm doing my job for benefit of all this fulfills me and as well creates perspective for the others I see the effects of our company in in our personnel everyday and and I'm I'm very happy what we have achieved in catch sonic where is the factory located it is a very very bad situation unemployment very high people joining also radical movements nevertheless leaving country is one of the key options for all the people over there and I want to share that within two and a half months we had 14 employees getting married it's not the case that they were getting married because they are employed by us but what is important is that 11 of them could have a fault having a celebration just because they have a steady job and they have a steady income and they could could finance it there are others who have made renovation in their houses others who have also started University because this was impossible for them without a job to keep up with the universe many of them also spend time in Netherlands and they also learned a lot and gained a big knowledge and there was a quite a good cultural exchange between people that we send in as well people from from Volendam and nevertheless most importantly we managed to contribute a lot to the local community by supporting many activities such as sport culture and even environmental organizations and this is in terms of sport yeah the guy who you see on the left is Arian post - moose he's our chief technician who's coming every month here in in in car sonic and nevertheless he was a coach there so he uses his spare time every single night that he is there to teach young to play football this is something that I want to share with you quickly as well I know that I'm almost at the end of the time I I said to Robert why don't you bring your friends one day I mean bring your friends and let's let's have it's not only the guys who are coming for business but bring your friends over and then this is what he did he calls me one time in in the summertime and says ok we saw I'm coming and I I thought that it's going to be one two people maximum three people but he really brought the whole whole threads together so so we had to deal with all of them and going through the whole different different cultural events and nevertheless also the the nightlife yeah and this is all of them returning safe and sound [Laughter] yeah very important thing so thank you very much for listening to me let's play