My response to "The Limits of Country Branding"

"The Limits of Country Branding"

My response to classmate Alejandro Neyra's post found by clicking here.

The Boston Globe makes note of the nation-building as a trend, reporting on how “the last few years have seen an explosion of ‘nation-branding,’ shorthand for coordinated government efforts to manage a country's image, whether to improve tourism, investment, or even foreign relations” (Risen, 2005). As Alejandro points out, Mexico, South Korea, and other middle powers are no exception. These middle powers are invested in gaining soft power, 'top of mind awareness,' cultural leverage, and a means to foster mutually beneficial relationships with its own constituents, prospective investors, potential customers, and/or other countries. Cesar Villanueva Rivas highlights how some countries, such as Mexico, are compelled to remake its image in effort to dispel the negative press that has plagued the country since it experienced a surge in "narco-violence." Other developing middle powers, such as South Korea, are trying to polish their public image to foster their influence. This is illustrated in Sook-Jung Lee's briefing on "South Korea's Soft Power Diplomacy," where he underscores how "South Korea’s national image and values for [the brand concept of a] Global Korea should be prosperous, democratic, modest, nonthreatening, and culturally syncretic, since many Third World countries see South Korea as a model with its simultaneous achievement of development and democratization” (Lee, 2009). One tactic indispensable to South Korea's branding strategy relies on translating its commercial and private sector success--Samsung's or LG's brand power for example--into soft power. The other tactic that is critical to South Korea's branding strategy is that it must follow through with the realization that branding, to put it in Alejandro's words, "is not only about having a commercial logo or a catchy slogan," but about building trust and fostering a credible rapport with the public.

This tactic goes beyond branding and moves into the realm of public diplomacy, which not only promotes the understanding of a nation's brand, but also the understanding of its culture, heritage, and people. In a sense, governments seeking to create their own brands and grow brand value also want to “develop [an] emotional, positive reaction between their part of the world and citizens...[they] want to make or re-make their image in the world to gain clout vis-à-vis their neighbors to achieve certain political ends” (Youde, 2009). In order to pique and develop the public's empathy for and/or sense of connection to a brand, a nation must look to its public diplomacy programming. As Alejandro also notes, public diplomacy is intrinsic to branding—and not secondary to it—because it provides various groups with the possibility to interact with, learn from, and connect to others. In other words, branding alone has its limits, but when combined with public diplomacy and people-to-people initiatives, the two have the power to building bridge across cultures, fostering mutual understanding within a larger regional or global community.

Just as branding is indispensable to shaping and communicating brand value, so too is public diplomacy to “helping audiences identify with” nation-states and “encouraging them to buy its products and services” (van Ham, 2002). And just as Lee emphasizes how “the soft power of a country operates in constant interaction with its hard power,” so too does public diplomacy operate in tandem with nation-branding.