Nation branding raises fascinating issues of identity that are relevant to some of the most significant challenges of our time. On one level, it is a marketing tool to attract tourism and investment, with real and specific benefits to the nation that successfully conveys an attractive image to the outside world. On another level, it is part of a larger activity that is fundamental to the overall well-being of any given society. Done well and put in its proper context, nation branding can aid any nation in articulating a new understanding of its own values and purpose (even to itself) in a diverse and dynamically changing environment.
Nation branding can be especially challenging, for example, when the ethnic identity of a nation is changing rapidly, as it is for European nations facing sharp demographic declines in the near term. They have some tough choices: Either they continue their present course and preside over a long decline into economic stagnation as their labor supply dries up, or they import labor from Africa and the Middle East and fundamentally change the ethnic makeup of their countries. What will it mean to be Italian or German or French, then, if the future population includes a significant percentage whose ancestors are from the Middle East and Africa? (Of course, historically, the “Italians” came from all over the place, as did the “French” and the “Germans” and everyone else, but most people have forgotten that.) Japan, with its own shrinking population, is also facing this question.
In the end, the search for identity is a never-ending process of clarifying those qualities that citizens of a necessarily diverse population share in common with each other and yet, at the same time, do not share in common with other nations. At the heart of the issue is a fundamental paradox: On the one hand, there is a powerful human impulse to be integrated into a community of shared values and habits and customs, and on the other hand, there is an equally powerful and contrasting impulse to be autonomous, unique, innovative, creative, and different. Therefore, identity is derived from a conjoining of both these complementary impulses. Nation branding is one manifestation—in this case, in marketing—of a fundamental yearning in the human condition for the meaning that comes from both solidarity and individuality, from being simultaneously part of a group and not part of a group.
This book by Keith Dinnie is an excellent introduction to the wide contours of this subject. It is divided into ten chapters, each consisting of short portions written by 29 contributors from all over the world, as well as substantial sections by Dinnie, who teaches at Temple University, Japan. There is a short preface in which Dinnie notes that the book “is designed to show not only the ways in which conventional brand management techniques can be applied to nations but also to provide some background depth on the context and nature of nation branding. Therefore, the scope of the book encompasses wider issues related to national identity, sustainable development and political awareness, in addition to the more familiar branding themes of brand identity, brand image, brand positioning, brand equity, and so on” (p. ix).
There is a short but serviceable index at the end of the book and reference notes at the end of every chapter that provide a useful guide to some of the secondary literature on the subject. I have only one quibble with the organization of the work, which could have benefited from an introduction at the beginning that integrated the pieces into a more intelligible whole before the reader was thrown into the details of the subject. The organization of each chapter was also confusing, beginning with a case study, and only afterward followed by a section entitled “introduction.”
Dinnie sets ambitious goals for himself at the beginning but makes good on his promise. There are two specific strengths to this book: its global coverage and its interdisciplinary approach. Each chapter begins with a “country case insight,” which includes South Africa, Egypt, Chile, Switzerland, Russia, Brazil, Bolivia, Iceland, Japan, and France. Throughout the body of the text, other countries, such as Nepal, Taiwan, and Hungary, are also considered. The interdisciplinary orientation of the author is particularly strong, enabling him to put nation branding into a larger context. He focuses not only on the economic implications of nation branding but also on the central importance of cultural, ethnic, social, political, and historical factors to a full understanding of the subject.
Inspired by his broad view, I am prompted to wonder if the real challenge for the future, now that the world is facing so many problems on a global scale, will be to acknowledge a fundamental need for both a national identity that focuses on differences between peoples and a global identity that focuses on similarities between peoples. To reach the level of cooperation and investment necessary for a sustainable global community, it may be necessary to cultivate a dual identity—rather like the proposal by the ancient Stoic marketing experts that all humans are born into two communities: the community of birth (the polis) and the community of all humankind (the cosmopolis). Can present-day marketing experts contribute to this enterprise of both nation branding and Earth-branding? Keith Dinnie’s fine book, with its cosmopolitan outlook, is a great beginning.
—Alan T. Wood, University of Washington Bothell