Nation Branding: Countries Adopt Tactics to Improve Standing, Image and Reputation Explored in New Book
Advertising pro turned communications professor urges the public to be ‘wary’ of growing practice
“My sense is that branding has become so ubiquitous that nobody questions it any more. I think we should continue to be surprised by it. We should be asking ‘Why is this happening?’ not ‘How do I do it?’”- Melissa Aronczyk
When Melissa Aronczyk admits to having a “shady past,” she is referring – half jokingly – to her previous work in advertising.
But it was some of the questionable ad campaigns she encountered during her first career that inspired Aronczyk to put the practice of promotional culture under the microscope as a researcher, author and, more recently, assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers.
“I went from ‘how to’ in advertising to ‘how come,’ ” said Aronczyk, who joined the School of Communication and Information in September. “I see myself at the intersection of journalism, advertising and media. There’s not enough critique of advertising and branding. Those industries are so powerful, and they’ve really infiltrated our lives.”
Aronczyk was at the end of her seven years in advertising in 2000, when she was hired by Quebec’s tourism board to work on campaign that opened her eyes to a then-budding phenomenon called nation branding. While promoting the province to Americans, the native Canadian was forbidden from mentioning Canada in her pitch - even a tiny Canadian flag shown flapping in her ad was airbrushed out.
The project left Aronczyk baffled but intrigued. Did Quebec really believe a slick advertising campaign could fool Americans into thinking it was not associated with Canada, she wondered?
“Quebec wanted to use this tourism campaign to make a stand, and I just didn’t get it at all. Why would you use tourism to be political?” said Aronczyk. “When I left advertising and went back to graduate school I thought, ‘I have to figure out why images and language were being used to present a country in a way that its citizens didn’t see themselves.’ My starting point was ‘How can anyone take this stuff seriously?’ ”
The Quebec pitch fueled Aronczyk’s research in the fields of nationalism and national consciousness and political and cultural interpretations of globalization, which she examines in her first book, Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Most Americans are now familiar with the practice of company branding, which evolved in the early ’90s in response to growing globalization. With many U.S. companies moving their operations overseas, less money was invested in the creation of products while more was devoted to crafting an image, said Aronczyk, pointing to Nike as an example.
“So much of Nike is based in China, but everyone thinks of it as speed, quality, ‘Just Do It’ and American values,” she said. “The company realized its value lies in what people think of it, not what it’s actually doing.”
With borders and boundaries becoming increasingly obsolete, Aronczyk said national governments began employing the same tools and techniques of commercial branding in an attempt to articulate a more coherent and cohesive identity, attract foreign capital and maintain citizen loyalty.
But unlike a company, such as Nike, which is able to evoke a strong emotional response with a single “swoosh,” there is no logo or slogan that can fully encapsulate the complexity of a country, she said. And, as her book points out, therein lay the problem with nation branding.
“Nations are only able to draw on those things that can make them money because, fundamentally, the purpose of branding is to increase funding, not talk about what you really stand for as a country,” said Aronczyk, whose stance on nation branding is a wary one. “If there’s one huge elephant-in-the-room kind of problem with nation branding, that is it.”
Published in September, “Branding the Nation” highlights a dozen cases of nation branding. Some, including Germany’s – whose ad campaigns featured billboards with Claudia Schiffer wrapped in nothing but the German flag – accomplished some significant short-term goals.
“Their legacy in the second World War, still hung heavy,” Aronczyk said of Germany. “This campaign represented the first time Germans felt proud to wave the German flag.”
That surge in national pride and improved image abroad was scheduled to coincide with the 2006 World Cup – hosted by Germany.
Other national ad campaigns Aronczyk researched – including Muammar Gaddafi’s bid to buoy his and Libya’s image among Westerners by paying off academics and media outlets to rewrite recent history –were not only epic failures but also ethical debacles.
Perhaps Aronczyk’s biggest concern about nation branding – or branding of any kind – is our tacit acceptance of it.
“Ten years ago, when I mentioned I was researching nation branding, people thought it was so implausible,” she said. “My sense is that branding has become so ubiquitous that nobody questions it any more. I think we should continue to be surprised by it. We should be asking ‘Why is this happening?’ not ‘How do I do it?’”
As a professor, Aronczyk is encouraging Rutgers students to do just that. Her “Media and Politics” course touches on the topics she covers in her book, including visual culture, consumerism and globalization.
“We discuss how to be critical, to be aware that this is happening,” she said of the course, which she hopes will produce more media-savvy students. “Having the knowledge to use this stuff reflexively will really help students, regardless of what they end up doing in their careers.”