Nation Branding in the Americas by Efe Sevin, César Jiménez-MartÍnez and Pablo Miño explores how countries across the Americas use branding to shape their image internationally, attract investment and build political influence. Drawing on rich case studies from the region, the authors make a compelling case for why nation branding, as distinct from soft power and diplomacy, should be studied carefully in a globalised world, writes Will Hall.
Defining nation branding
Nation Branding in the Americas takes stock of national promotional efforts undertaken in a sample of twelve representative nations from North and South America. In doing so, the authors highlight an underexamined though nearly ubiquitous set of practices that are adjacent to, but distinct from, the aims of foreign policy. The practices described in this thoroughly researched book include campaigns such as Costa Rica’s “Esencial Costa Rica”, Brazil’s “Brazil by Brasil” initiative and Canada’s promotional efforts through the organisation Destination Canada. Though each is unique, the goals of these activities are broadly consistent across the examples surveyed: namely, to attract foreign investment and businesses, increase the appeal of domestic products on international markets, and to entice students and tourists to visit the country. In addition, nation branding activities also aim to cast the governing power in an appealing, internationalist light and consolidate their power to describe to the national personality by defining its essential characteristics.
Though at first the authors struggle to distinguish their subject from adjacent practices – like public diplomacy or efforts to bolster soft power – the book contains ample examples to convince the reader that nation branding is distinct and worthy of study. By documenting the significant lengths that governments go to prioritise these strategies, a suggestive picture emerges of the ascendency of promotional logics in international affairs.
By situating nation branding in a historical context with analogous terms such as public diplomacy, the authors outline a period in which the notion of competitive identity come to displace notions of soft power. Particularly rewarding is the discussion that arises when the authors – each a professor whose work focuses on the intersection of media, politics and public diplomacy – apply pressure to these terms, questioning their appropriateness beyond the American context. The authors argue that public diplomacy, which includes “listening to foreign publics, advocacy of domestic policies and values, cultural diplomacy, student exchanges, and professional visits, and international broadcasting” is the preserve of nations with the resources to carry out these activities and broad strategic imperatives to do so (ie great power conflict). The term “public diplomacy” is historically specific and explicitly linked to the concept of soft power. Soft power – the authors argue – is a framework designed to explain an American response to an American problem.
Anholt stresses the difference between nation branding activities, which are commercial in nature and mirror how companies brand their products internationally, and the complex drivers of national reputation. The latter are much harder to achieve
Nation branding, on the other hand, responds to a global economic imperative. Far from being a preserve of hegemonic powers, it is carried out, with varying budgets and to various ends, across the Americas. It is specifically linked to the period of globalisation, to economic liberalisation and to freer trade. It is “an answer to the challenges of neoliberal globalisation,” in which nations must jockey to attract international investment, businesses, tourists and students exhort their citizens to be good brand ambassadors. And it is one which, as tariffs loom over world trade, might now be over?
Key figures in the story of nation branding
Over the course of this story, a few recurring characters emerge. One is Simon Anholt, the British communications advisor credited with coining the term “nation brands” in a 1998 paper, and whose consultancy, Anholt & Co., maintains the Nation Brands Index, a kind of league tables to which tourism boards, foreign ministries and trade departments the world over subscribe. Much like Darwin regretting his association with the term “evolution”, Anholt stresses the difference between nation branding activities, which are commercial in nature and mirror how companies brand their products internationally, and the complex drivers of national reputation. The latter, he argues in Competitive Identity (2006), are much harder to achieve; they are the result of a countries’ “world-friendly” policies and actions. They are often spontaneous and unbuyable actions or ideas that incline you to view a nation in a certain way: think of Cuba’s sending of 500 health workers to aid in Italy’s fight against COVID in the early days of the pandemic.
Another oracle of the movement is Wally Olins, a British brand consultant who observed in Trading Identities (1999) that countries were taking on some of the traditional functions of corporations, and that the public-sector / private-sector division was being reconfigured through globalisation. A number of consultancies then stepped up to meet nation-states’ newfound promotional needs: FutureBrand, which was tasked by Evo Morales with developing a holistic “Brand Bolivia” to promote exports, attract tourism, and stoke foreign investment. (The result, Bolivia, Corazon del Sur, debuted in 2017).
Case studies from Bolivia to Brazil
Future work in this area will likely seek to derive insight more from a few exemplary campaigns rather than tackling the breadth of case studies in this book. Analysis can only be as deep as its source material, and it would take the semiotic genius of Roland Barthes to derive “good reading” from some of the marketing materials cited. However, all marketing dross, no matter how drosslike, tries to achieve some rhetorical tour de main, and this book is most interesting when the authors close-read slogans and visual cues alongside the political context in which they were selected. Sometimes, as in the case of Interbrand’s campaign for Bolivia, a misfired brand can become a magnet for political criticism. (In that case, the issue was the letters spelling “Bolivia” were too close to the Morales’ movimiento blue.)
In others, striking a new tone with a new national branding campaign can be a deliberate attempt to move on from past governments’ image making. Lula did as much, post-Bolsonaro, by re-introducing the earlier Marca Brasil once his predecessor’s “Brazil by Brasil” campaign drew public scrutiny for its cost and apparent grammatical errors. They can also be deliberately neutral: interesting examples from the book’s first chapter cite Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay’s efforts to position themselves to North American audiences as reassuringly dull and stable in comparison to neighbouring states and stereotyped views.
Nation Branding in the Americas contributes significantly to an amorphous field of study, helping to shape understanding of these practices in the fields of communications, marketing, international relations, anthropology, and cultural studies.
The chapter on the USA is one of the most interesting. Because its market dominance already secures it a measure of global influence, it is one of the few nations in which nation branding efforts must be justified – and simultaneously the one with the most contradictions to synthesise into a coherent brand. “Arrogant, brash, overly familiar, and unwelcoming.” This is how was marketing agency’s JWT’s initial report for Brand USA described the national character, but also “free, diverse, and larger than life.” How to fit all that into a slogan? If the US is the nation with the deepest ambivalence as to to how and whether it should engage the rest of the world, it is also the one whose cultural influence has been all but guaranteed by the ubiquity of its products. As such, it is also the nation whose ever-shifting orientation toward the “rest of world” in large part set the terms of the competitive identity game.
Nation Branding in the Americas contributes significantly to an amorphous field of study, helping to shape understanding of these practices in the fields of communications, marketing, international relations, anthropology, and cultural studies. The authors acknowledge at the time of writing the book that public confidence in globalisation had been undermined and justifications for national promotion “weakened.” A further volume in, say, ten years’ time might be able to assert whether the period in which citizens became brand ambassadors lasted a few decades or if promotional logics are now structurally engrained enough to withstand any shocks. I found myself wishing for an epilogue in which the authors wagered, however provisionally, some prediction – some extension of its historical framework – which could then be used to test its analysis. Whether the methods and practices of globalisation will persist without one of its main architects is a question the authors, are excellently placed to address in subsequent work.
- This review first appeared at LSE Review of Books.
- Featured image: Allen & Ginter cigarette advertisements for Costa Rica, Argentina and Brazil via rawpixel.
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- Note: This article gives the views of the reviewer, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
