Abstract
Nation branding is a remarkable phenomenon. In less than two decades, it has established itself as the preferred framework for interstate strategic communication and as an emerging academic field. The paper describes how this extraordinary expansion was possible by showing how nation branding presents itself as a theoretical possibility and a practical necessity. We propose that what made a travel possible from product branding via corporate branding to nation branding was the semantic flexibility of the brand concept. We argue that the brand concept is almost void of meaning and that this feature has been an indispensable requisite for establishing nation branding as a field of practice and as an academic field. Despite the indisputable academic productivity that is a result of the vagueness of the brand concept, we suggest that to reach a normal science-like situation in the field of nation branding a clarification and systematization of central concepts is needed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anholt, S. (2002) Foreword. Journal of Brand Management, 9(4), 229–239.
Anholt, S. (2006) Public diplomacy and place branding: Where’s the link? Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 2(4), 271–275.
Anholt, S. (2007) Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and Regions. Basingstoke, England/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Anholt, S. (2008) Why nation branding does not exist. Retrieved from Kommunikationsmaaling.dk website: http://kommunikationsmaaling.dk/artikel/why-nation-brandingdoesnotexist/
Anholt, S. (2009) Branding places and nations. In: R. Clifton (ed.) Brands and Branding, pp. 206–216. London: Economist Books
Aronczyk, M. (2013) Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Balmer, J. (2001) Corporate identity, corporate branding and corporate marketing. Seeing through the fog. European Journal of Marketing 35(3/4): 248–291
Banks, R., (2011) A Resource Guide to Public Diplomacy Evaluation. Figueroa Press, Los Angeles.
Boxenbaum, E. (2006) Lost in translation. The making of Danish diversity management. American Behavioral Scientist 49: 939-948.
Chaffee, S. H. (1991) Explication. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications Inc.
Cooren, F. (2000) The Organizing Property of Communication. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Cull, N. J. (2008) Public diplomacy: Taxonomies and histories. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 31–54.
Cull, N. J. (2009) How we got here. In P. Seib (ed.) Toward a new public diplomacy redirecting U.S. foreign policy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan
Czarniawska, B., & Joerges, B. (1996) Travels of Ideas. In B. Czarniawska & G. Sevón (eds.) Translating Organizational Change. Berlin: de Gruyter.(Vol. 56, pp. 13–48)
Czarniawska, B. and Sevón, G. (1996) Introduction. In B. Czarniawska and G. Sevón (eds.) Translating Organizational Change. Berlin: DeGruyter, pp. 1-17.
Czarniawska, B. and Sevón, G. (2005) Global Ideas. How Ideas, Objects and Practices Travel in the Global Economy. Malmo: Liber
DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell W.W. (1983) The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160.
Dinnie, K. (2008) Nation branding: concepts, issues, practice (1st ed.). Oxford; Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Eisenberg, E. M. (1984) Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication. Communication Monographs, 51, 227–242
Fan, Y. (2006) Nation branding: What is being branded?, Journal of Vacation Marketing, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 5–14.
Fan, Y. (2010) Branding the nation: Towards a better understanding. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 6(2), 97–103.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006) Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative inquiry, 12(2): 219–245.
Gregory, B. (2008) Public diplomacy: Sunrise of an academic field. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616: 274–290.
Habermas, J. (1963) Theorie und Praxis: Sozialphilosophische Studien. Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand. (cf. 1971)
Habermas, J. (1968) Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’, Merkur 22, Nr.243 (July 1968) pp. 591–610 & Nr.244 (August 1968) pp. 682–693
Hansen, H. K., and Flyverbom, M. (2014) The politics of transparency and the calibration of knowledge in the digital age. Organization. doi:10.1177/1350508414522315
Hatch, M.J. (2007) Corporate branding. In: S.R. Clegg and J.R. Bailey (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Organization Studies. London: Sage Publications, pp. 283–286.
Hatch, M. J., & Schultz, M. (2002) The dynamics of organizational identity. Human relations, 55(8): 989–1018.
Hocking, B. (2005) Rethinking the ‘new’ public diplomacy. In J. Melissen (ed.) The new public diplomacy soft power in international relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 28–43.
Hood, C. (1991) A Public Management for All Seasons? Public Administration, 69(spring), 3–19.
Kaneva, N. (2011) Nation Branding: Toward an Agenda for Critical Research. International Journal of Communication (5): 117–141.
Kavaratzis, M. (2007) City marketing: The past, the present and some unresolved issues. Geography Compass 1 (3): 695–712.
Keller, K. L. (2002) Branding and brand equity. In: B. Weitz and R. Wensley (eds.) Handbook of Marketing. London: Sage, pp. 151–178.
Kornberger, M. (2010) Brand society: How brands transform management and lifestyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kotler, P.H. (1991) Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, and Control, 8th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kotler, P., Jatusripitak, S., & Mausincee, S. (1997) The Marketing of Nations: A Strategic Approach to Building National Wealth. New York: The Free Press.
Latour, B. (1986) The Powers of Association. In J. Law (ed.) Power, Action and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 264-280.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1987) Introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss. London/Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Manning, P. (2010) The Semiotics of Brand. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 33–49.
Melissen, J. (2005) The New Public Diplomacy: between theory and practice. In J. Melissen (ed.) The New Public Diplomacy Soft Power in International Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 3–27.
Merkelsen, H. and Rasmussen, R.K. (2015) The construction of Brand Denmark: A case study of the reversed causality in nation brand valuation. Valuation Studies 3(2): 181–198.
Mor, B. (2009) Accounts and impression management in public diplomacy: Israeli justification of force during the 2006 Lebanon war. Global Change, Peace & Security, 21(2), 219–239.
Nye, J. S. (2004) Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics. New York: PublicAffairs.
Nye, J. S. (2008) Public diplomacy and soft power. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 94–109.
Olins, W. (2002) Branding the nation – The historical context. Brand Management 9(4–5): 241–248.
Olins, W. (2005) Making a National Brand. In J. Melissen (ed.) The New Public Diplomacy. Soft Power in International Relations (pp. 169–179). NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan.
Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1992) Reinventing government : how the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector. New York NY: Plume.
Pahlavi, P. (2007) Evaluating public diplomacy programmes. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 2: 255–281.
Pamment, J. (2012) What became of the new public diplomacy? Recent developments in British, US and Swedish public diplomacy policy and evaluation methods. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 7(3): 313–336.
Pamment, J. (2013) New Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century: A Comparative Study of Policy and Practice. London and New York: Routledge.
Pamment, J. (2014) Articulating influence: Toward a research agenda for interpreting the evaluation of soft power, public diplomacy and nation brands. Public Relations Review, 40(1): 50–59.
Peterson, P. G. (2002) Public Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism. Foreign Affairs 81(5): 74–94.
Power, M. (1999) The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rasmussen, R. K., & Merkelsen, H. (2012) The new PR of states: How nation branding practices affect the security function of public diplomacy. Public Relations Review, 38(5), 810–818
Rasmussen, R. K. and Merkelsen, H. (2014) The risks of nation branding as crisis response: a case study of how the Danish government turned the Cartoon Crisis into a struggle with Globalization. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 10(3): 230–248.
Rosenbaum-Elliott, R., Percy, L. and Pervan, S. (2011) Strategic Brand Management, 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Sahlin-Andersson, K. (1996) Imitating by editing success: The construction of organizational fields. In B. Czarniawska and G. Sevón (eds.) Translating organizational change. New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 69–93.
Schultz, M., Antorini, Y. M., & Csaba, F. F. (2005) Coporate Branding - an Evolving Concept. In M. Schultz, Y. M. Antorini & F. F. Csaba (eds.) Coporate branding. Purpose/People/Process (pp. 10–20). Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press.
Snow, N. & Taylor, P. M. (2009) Routledge handbook of public diplomacy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Siggelkow, N. (2007) Persuasion with case studies. Academy of Management Journal, 50(1): 20–24.
Star, S. L. (2010) This is not a boundary object: Reflections on the origin of a concept. Science, Technology & Human Values 35(5): 601–617.
Szondi, G. (2008) Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding: Conceptual Similarities and Differences. Haag: Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’.
Szondi, G. (2010) From image management to relationship building: A public relations approach to nation branding. Place Brand Public Dipl, 6(4): 333–343.
van Ham, P. (2002) Branding Territory: Inside the Wonderful Worlds of PR and IR Theory. Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 31(2): 249–269.
van Ham, P. (2001) The rise of the brand state: The postmodern politics of image and reputation. Foreign Affairs, 80(5): 2–6.
van Riel, C. B.M. & Balmer, J. M.T. (1997) Corporate identity: the concept, its measurement and management, European Journal of Marketing, 31(5): 340–355
Wæraas, A., and Sataøen, H. L. (2014) Trapped in conformity? Translating reputation management into practice. Scandinavian Journal of Management 30(2): 242–253.
Yin, R. K. (2013) Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks: Sage publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Merkelsen, H., Rasmussen, R.K. Nation branding as an emerging field – An institutionalist perspective. Place Brand Public Dipl 12, 99–109 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-016-0018-6
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41254-016-0018-6