Nation Branding, Public Relations and Soft Power

Corporatising Poland

Pawel Surowiec

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317593782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Public Relations
• Index: Business

Nation Branding, Public Relations and Soft Power: Corporatizing Poland provides an empirically grounded analysis of changes in the way in which various actors seek to manage Poland's national image in world opinion. It explores how and why changes in political economy have shaped these actors and their use of soft power in a way that is influenced by public relations, corporate communication, and marketing practices.

By examining the discourse and practices of professional nation branders who have re-shaped the relationship between collective identities and national image management, it plots changes in the way in which Poland's national image is communicated, and culturally reshaped, creating tensions between national identity and democracy. The book demonstrates that nation branding is a consequence of the corporatization of political governance, soft power and national identity, while revealing how the Poland "brand" is shaping public and foreign affairs.

Challenging and original, this book will be of interest to scholars in public relations, corporate communications, political marketing and international relations.

1 From ‘total wars’ to ‘total markets’

What is branding?

The concept of ‘brand’ is a product of promotional culture: its contemporary, dominant meaning originates in marketing models and practice. Initially, it referred to commodities signification. Lee and Carter (2005, p. 226) define brands as ‘the means customers use to differentiate products and services based on extrinsic and intrinsic features and are the source of organisations’ competitive advantage’. Thus, branding is hardly new, but contemporary scholarship recognises a shift of branding focus and its expansion into new areas of social agency. Arvidsson (2005, p. 244) notes:

Originally, brands had referred to producers. They had generally served as a trademark or a ‘marker’s mark’ that worked to guarantee quality or to give the potentially anonymous mass-produced commodity an identity by linking it to an identifiable producer or inventor or a particular physical place. Nowadays, the brand, or the ‘brand image’, began to refer instead to the significance that commodities acquired in the minds of consumers.

The above shift refers to ‘contexts of consumption’ (Grainge, 2008, p. 25). Branding expansionism, on the other hand, suggests that this concept ventured into new fields of agency, changing not only the way marketing is thought of, but more importantly, it describes a social shift in the culture-economy dynamics by increasing the amount of marketing activities. In formal terms, branding is a soft-selling tool that facilitates commodity exchanges and it is a pro-market-orientated practice that aims at increasing the perceived value of commodities. The expansion of this marketing technique and its emergence in different contexts stems from an assumption of its universality: branding of products and services (Kapferer, 2005); corporate branding (Balmer and Greyser, 2003); personal branding (Montoya and Vandehey, 2003); political parties’ branding (Reeves et al., 2006) and branding of higher education (Chapleo, 2010). Even monarchies did not escape subjecting to the idea of branding (Greyser et al., 2006). Finally, its discourse, in the form of ‘nation branding’ has entered the corridors of power in post-Soviet Poland and other actors in world politics.

In the conceptualisation of marketing’s ‘disciplinary shift’ that characterises the development of branding in the twentieth century, it is worth noting how branding has merged with corporate public relations. Moloney (2006) highlights that in the mid-1990s branding expanded corporate communication management frameworks. Before that, corporate branding was referred to as ‘corporate identity’ or as a ‘what do we stand for?’ metaphor (Moloney, 2006, p. 141). The outcome of this merger between marketing and public relations (PR) – corporate communications – is an attempt to integrate various forms of organisational communication management. Given that the PR academic discourse has a made a contribution to the field of governance of soft power, the following overview of the literature considers how a social construct of branding is re-contextualised as a self-perpetuating management practice.

Corporate branding is an exercise in corporate image and corporate identity management, and it is one of the tools in corporate communications. Cornelissen (2009, p. 5) defines this area of practice as a management

framework for the effective coordination of all internal and external communication with the overall purpose of establishing and maintaining favourable reputations with stakeholder groups upon which the organization is dependent on.

It is beyond the scope of this book to discuss corporate branding practice in detail. Nevertheless, a departure point for exploring the subject of this study – nation branding – is an indication of its relationship to corporate branding. There are two explicit connections that can be made at the surface level. First, marketing writings assume the universality of the brand construct. Balmer and Grayser (2003, p. 975) claim that ‘corporate-level brands can also apply to countries, regions, and cities’. Second, corporate branding conceptualists contribute to the development of nation branding (Olins, 1999). As it stands, terminology existing in the area of nation branding is derived from corporate branding. Corporate branding is a collective process engaging stakeholders which indicates parallels with nation branding aspirations with regards to collective identity construction. Finally, claims regarding the importance of branding to organisational management (Schultz et al., 2005) echo in the academic discourse highlighting the strategic role of nation branding to the statecraft and political governance (Dinnie, 2008).

The above utterances demonstrate the perpetuating notion of branding: nowadays the idea of nation branding is welcomed by the Foreign Affairs Ministries, Prime Ministers, and the state agencies responsible for governance of soft power resources. Jansen (2008, p. 123) notes, ‘even, public diplomacy, a nation’s attempt to shape its image and influence public opinion in other nations (that is, its propaganda), has come under the purview of nation branders’. For example, Anholt (2006a) touches on this conceptual relationship. In part, this book reveals how nation branding has been introduced to the state structures in Poland. The pages to follow provide definitions of nation branding, explore ‘theatres’ of soft power, and spell out critical assessment of interconnections between them.

Making sense of nation branding

Nation branding originates in the marketing discipline, specifically its sub-field of place marketing. The emergence of place marketing as a semi-autonomous area goes back to 1993 when Kotler and colleagues (Kotler et al., 1993) published ‘Marketing places: attracting investment, industry, and tourism to cities, states, and nations’. Development of the term ‘nation brand’ is attributed to Simon Anholt, a marketing practitioner, policy adviser and one of the authors in this area. In 1999, Anholt spelled out this idea by referring to the particular states as brands. Initially, he talked about nation brands in the context of country-of-origin effect and signified ‘America’, ‘Brazil’, or ‘Switzerland’ as brands (Anholt, 1998, p. 400).

Definitions of ‘nation brand’ and ‘nation branding’ did not emerge until early 2000. It is said that there is a difference between the term ‘nation brand’ and ‘nation branding’. Fan (2006, p. 2) argues that a nation ‘has a brand image with or without national branding’. He defines nation branding as ‘applying branding and marketing communication techniques to promote a nation’s image’¹ (ibid., p. 6). Therefore, the pre-existence of the notion of multiple ‘national images’ or ‘national stereotypes’ (Kunczik, 1997, p. 46) tends to be replaced with a notion of ‘brand image’ (Gertner and Kotler, 2004) and assumes applicability of branding into yet another social space.

Fan (2006, p. 6) identifies different terminologies in the area of nation branding and categorises them into: ‘product related’, ‘national level’ and ‘cultural focus’ definitions. The ‘product related’ grouping refers to a country-of-origin effect and implies the impact of the image of the country² on its products (e.g. Swiss chocolate, Cuban cigars) as well as its inverted version – the impact of products on the country’s image (e.g. stylish French women in perfume advertising). The ‘national related’ category refers to the state’s ‘overall’ perceptions (e.g. Ireland as ‘Celtic tiger’). Finally, although Fan (2006) recognises ‘cultural focus’ definitions of nation branding, he does not provide insights into his understanding of national cultures and collective identities. Elsewhere, however, Anholt (2007) argues that national culture is one of the elements that should be taken into consideration while developing a nation brand strategy. The first handbook of nation branding defines nation brand as:

the unique, multidimensional blend of elements that provide the nation with culturally grounded differentiation and relevance for all its target audiences.

(Dinnie, 2008, p. 15)

The ‘communication based’ approach to nation branding has been extended by the introduction of ‘a policy based approach’, so-called ‘competitive identity’ management. A key proponent of this idea argues that a departure point for nation branding is evocation of ‘a spirit of benign nationalism amongst the populace, notwithstanding its cultural, social, ethnic, linguistic, economic, political, territorial, and historical division’ (Anholt, 2007, p. 16). He further says:

National identity and nation brand are virtually the same thing: nation brand is national identity made tangible, robust, communicable, and above all useful. Unless the overall strategy chimes with something fundamentally true about place and its people, there is little chance that it will be believed or endorsed by the population, let alone the rest of the world.

(Ibid., p. 75)

While the above explanations make a connection between branding and national identity, they do not reveal a modus operandi of nation branding. By introducing comparative metaphors, they offer tautological explanations of the relationship between nation branding, national identity, and national images and reputations. Given that, allegedly, the ‘proper nation brand management’ involves a broad range of subject areas, such as policy making aligned with foreign direct investment, tourism industry, cultural policy, or foreign policy, it is, at this stage, virtually impossible to comprehend the mechanism of its practice. In this logic, all aspects of political economy and social agency seem to be enacted as part of the nation branding exercise. Therefore, I argue, that this universalising feature of nation branding literature requires conceptual reflection and empirical insights. The latter might facilitate understanding of nation branding practice and its relationship to national identities construction.

Economics and the process of nation branding

Initially, there were three contributors to nation branding discourse made by Simon Anholt, Mark Leonard, and Wally Olins. The literature reveals that the first author has coined the term ‘nation brand’ and written on the subject. Anholt is also an editor of a journal entitled Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. By now, aspects of his professional practice have already been analysed and these include consultancy, policy advisery, and public speaking on the subject of nation branding (Aronczyk, 2008). Wally Olins, on the other hand, had previously written on corporate branding. In one of the first public defences of nation branding, Olins (1999, p. 1) argues for overlapping identities between the state and corporate enterprises:

The relationship between countries and companies is changing. In some ways they are becoming more like each other. Nations increasingly emphasize nationality; global companies increasingly ignore it. Nations increasingly use business speak – growth targets, education targets, health targets; global companies increasingly emphasis soft issues, their value to the society and their benevolent influence. The relationship between companies and countries is getting closer. They compete, they overlap, they swap places. Perhaps the most significant, most misunderstood of this phenomenon emerges in the way nation now attempts to build a brand.

The above paragraph reveals a new intertwining order in discourses on branding, national identity, and globalisation. The early research on nation branding came from the United Kingdom. Awan (2007) reveals that its advocates clustered around ‘The Foreign Policy Centre’ think-tank and had answers with regards to ‘redesigning Britain as a multicultural society. The discourse on nation branding emerged in the UK after the government’s ‘Cool Britannia’ campaign’ (Leonard, 1997; Roy, 2007). The first public debate regarding nation branding exercise was met with criticism and faded away as it lost government support (McNeill, 2004). The media studies scholars recognised the British nation branding exercise in the following terms:

New, more sellable ways to describe us differently with breathy excitement, for it was suggested if you could describe us differently, perhaps, hey-presto, we would be different. It was an essentially propagandistic and certainly ideological view of Britishness, self-consciously shaped for selling us to ourselves and abroad.

(Curran and Seaton, 2010, p. 300)

Although nation branding discourse lost continuity in the UK political field, nation branding publishing continued. Anholt and Hildreth (2004) in their discussion on ‘the brand America’ talk about the logic of the US domination in commercial branding. While in US, nation branding emerged as a solution to negative perceptions of the US in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, there are anecdotal explanations of the intertwining relationship between nation branders and US politics. For example, Anholt and Hildreth (2004, p. 6) argue that the US is the mother of all brands as it ‘quite consciously built and managed itself as a brand right from the very start’. By applying anachronism to their argument, they interpret the US history to the tune of branding logic. Research demonstrating the dynamics of the relationship between the marketing industry, the US government and nation branding analyses the ‘Shared Values Initiative’ campaign managed by ex-advertising executive, Charlotte Beers. Beers was appointed by George W. Bush as the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (Plaisance, 2005; Fullerton and Kendrick, 2006).

The principles of competitive globalised markets are justification for the nation branding. Olins (1999, p. 4) provides the following rationale for nation branding:

competition between nations today increasingly takes place in three commercial areas – inward investment, tourism, and export of goods and services – where success or failure can accurately be charted, and where the questions of reputation, image, identity and hence marketing and branding are central to competitive edge.

Later, Olins (2005) discusses the importance of public diplomacy for nation branding. In fact, the four dimensions of the state policies – inward investment, tourism, trade, and public diplomacy – are dominant sub-areas of interest for nation brand conceptualists. The marketing academics have responded enthusiastically to the idea of nation branding. Their works, however, tend to be descriptive, terminogically derivative, and make executive recommendations that can supposedly be applied to practice (Hereźniak, 2011). Furthermore, the conceptual transformation of branding into the statehood resulted in the formation of preconceived notions.

Kotler and Gertner (2002) suggest applying a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis to determine nation brand qualities. Gnoth (2002) speaks of product brand leveraging into nation brand. Gilmore (2002) discusses nation brand positioning whereas Viosca et al. (2005) make recommendations with regards to nation brand equity management. The imperative overtone of nation branding discourse marries with advocacy of an executive approach to its enactment. This managerialism echoes in the works of Gertner and Kotler (2004) who argue that branding is a technique thanks to which ‘places’ can manage their identities and images. Among descriptive, ‘success stories’, assuming nation branding in various national contexts are Spain (Gilmore, 2002), Australia (Olins, 2003) and New Zealand (Morgan et al., 2002). While marketers attempt to intellectualise nation branding, its mechanics is rather simple. Olins (1999, pp. 23–4) outlines a seven-step process that Jansen (2008, p. 130) paraphrased and abridged:

1 Create a working group with representatives of government, industry, the arts, education and the media to implement the initiative.

2 Using qualitative and quantitative methods, find out how the nation is viewed both domestically and abroad.

3 Consult with opinion leaders regarding the nation’s strengths and weakness and compare results with findings of the internal and external studies.

4 Identify the core strategy of the campaign, and create the central idea on which the strategy is based; basically this boils down to a slogan, around which the rest of the campaign is framed.

5 Develop a visual design and attach it to everything that represents the nation abroad.

6 Correlate and adjust the message to target audiences: tourism, internal and external investors.

7 Create a public-private liaison group to launch the programme and keep it active in government, commerce, industry, the arts, and media, etc.

In summary, the above section indicates that branding has been adopted into many fields of human agency. Conceptually, nation branding writings strive to contribute to the field of national images management and wielding of soft power whereby the state and non-state actors attempt to challenge mediated pre-understandings of particularly national identities. The section below, on the other hand, maps out the academic literature in this area with a particular focus on conceptual debates and emerging research on nation branding. In light of this overview, I argue that the application of nation branding into the governance and statecraft is part of the process of corporatisation of soft power. This process manifests itself by reinventing ‘old’ propaganda by corporate communication models to match neo-liberal intuitionalism.

Genesis, resources and theatres of soft power

The review of literature reveals that national images management is the extension of political fields. It is a specialised, institutional network engaging persuasive communication practices aimed at changing images of nations. Traditionally, state actors of modern states were the key player in this area. The modernist era (1917–39)³ gave birth to the professionalisation and furthering institutionalisation of government overseas propaganda. In Poland this process began as part of the state-building at the beginning of the twentieth century. Pratkanis and Aronson (1991) call this feature of modernism an ‘age of propaganda’. Indeed, academic works discussing the early modernist government communication efforts demonstrate how propaganda was practised as part of the military warfare during the First World War (Taylor, 1981). Given the role of overseas propaganda in facilitating military conflicts, propaganda has been associated with ‘deceit’; ‘manipulation’; ‘mind control’; ‘brainwashing’. Later, the widespread application of propaganda within political fields that stood in opposition to Western liberalism or capitalist order contributed to negative associations of this signification of persuasive communications. Kunczik (1997) goes as far as to argue that propaganda, public relations and public diplomacy are synonymous terms underpinned by persuasion as thei...