On Changing Foreign Perceptions of Greece: The 1990s Image Study

I have always been professionally interested in foreign perceptions of individual countries, and how one can attempt to change them.

There was an influential article by Andrew Apostolou in Odyssey Magazine, March/April 1999:

"The Greek government has decided to change Greece's poor image abroad...
In the aftermath of Greece's 1996 general elections the press ministry spent an undisclosed sum to survey foreign 'opinion leaders' and 'decision makers' in Britain, the United States, France, and Germany...
The results of these surveys were hardly a surprise- interviewees generally had a negative image of Greece. As every Athenian taxi driver knows, Greece is viewed abroad as being either troublesome or marginal...
The opinion leaders were particularly unimpressed by the Greek economy. The 81 US opinion leaders associated Greece with a low-tech economy exporting agricultural products...Greece was also seen to be lagging behind its EU partners...
Even though Greece does not make full use of its EU entitlement, the country's reputation is so low that there is resentment at misuse of this money. All the foreign opinion leaders felt that relying on EU money was bad for Greece and the abuse of that EU money was worse".

And so on... a four page feature article that ought to be revisited, given the size of the Greek investment in that study, I don't know what follow-up action was implemented following its completion and presentation to the Greek government.

It is not just a question of rebranding. In order to change perceptions, the reality has to change first, and there have to be some compelling, true stories to tell, backed up with reliable statistics.