Communication and International Relations

Flags have become logos, national anthems background music, and reputations slogans. In the world of nation-branding, the government and media have become key facilitators.

“The only remaining superpower is public opinion — and we are all, in one way or another, talking about effective diplomacy with that superpower,” says Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor and the pioneer behind the concept of nation brands, on his website.

However, less discussed is the multi-directional nature of branding a nation. It is a two-way process to change public sentiment; while one nation actively tries to improve its public image through the media, other nations do the same using different countries as points of contrast. What results is a push and pull between competing media outlets and public image campaigns. The government and the media propagate national identity within a country and outside of a country.

As scholar Etienne Balibar notes in the 1990 article “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” “every social community… is based on the projection of individual existence into the weft of a collective narrative, on the recognition of a common name and on traditions lived as the trace of immemorial past.”

How a nation defines itself to the world is paramount to its economic and diplomatic prosperity. The success of a country’s national branding can impact tourism, investment, and foreign relations. The stakes are high.

One way to impact public sentiment is to feed an enduring image through repetition of words and symbols that become synonymous with that nation.

“You only have a certain number of chances to register in people's minds,” says Anholt in the Boston Globe. “And unless each time you register, it appears to be making the same point, you don't have much of a chance.”

For example, the United States brand is one of freedom, cultural tolerance, and democracy — an image the U.S. is trying to catapult to other nations, particularly in the Middle East. A 9/11 Commission report said “'if the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us.''

The Commission’s sentiment not only highlights the newfound importance of national branding, but it also conjures an “us” versus “them” mentality. Language becomes a political process that articulates and reproduces the concept of “ourselves” in relation to “others.” Nation branding tries to build an identity that not only confirms our own sense of self, but also bolsters our image in the eyes of other countries. Often times, comparisons are drawn to lower the image standing of one nation, while raising the image of our own nation. And when multiple governments and media outlets act in the same fashion, a national image tug-of-war transpires.

Jennifer Aaker, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, says in The New York Times that one reason the U.S. failed to increase its positive image in the Middle East was because “of the underlying product — our policies were not perceived as pro-Middle East. We failed to understand the media, the culture, even the language in that region. It is difficult to garner favorable perceptions of the American brand in that context.”

The result is a national beauty pageant where countries compete for the crown; who has the best image and who can project the best personality wins.