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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY, BRANDING, AND THE IMAGE OF NATIONS, PART III: A PAIR OF ACES?
MAY 15, 2012 - 12:45PM PST
Posted by Daryl Copeland
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In a couple of recent postings I have tried to elaborate the notion of a nation brand, to identify some of the salient issues surrounding the relationship between public diplomacy and branding, and to illuminate the more subtle distinctions. In this entry, I would like to drill down further into each of these, and several related issues. Branding guru Simon Anholt has developed a hexagonal model that sets out the principal elements of a nation’s brand, including tourism, exports, policies, investment and immigration, culture and heritage, and people. This has become the industry standard. While Simon and I concur on many points, but we do not agree on everything covered in the continuing debate. As far back as 2006, he wrote me to say “I dispute… your contention that branding is fundamentally a monologue. The best brand theory - and the best brand practice - today sees brand as the common purpose or shared vision that unites businesses with their staff, suppliers and customers, and so is in every sense parallel to (e.g. the British Council's insistence on) the mutuality of public and cultural diplomacy. A brand is also … as much an invitation to complain as it is a promise of quality, so even in that rather literal sense it must always be about two-way communication… Brand is very much more than ‘image’ and the communication, management or promotion of image. Brand strategy is almost synonymous with corporate strategy, and at least in theory, there is a parallel notion in nation branding. Most firms these days would describe their brand as their relationship with their market and their other stakeholders.” My response? Let one hundred flowers bloom. But when it comes time to pick the bouquet, it seems worth remembering that if branding is about selling dreams, public diplomacy is about sharing them. De-mystifying the distinction A nation’s public diplomacy should support its brand, and vice versa; it is not a matter of which is subsumed by the other. If anything, branding may be a somewhat more expansive concept, in that while all PD, in one way or another, contributes to the brand, not all branding – for instance, uni-directional communications – can be considered part of PD. And although the connection is not continuous, which it should be in the case of PD’s continuous conversation, branding, with its reliance upon market testing, client feedback and customer satisfaction, seems to me rather more responsive to changes in the environment. At the end of the day, much of the PD vs. branding competition is rather sterile. Suffice it to say that the two concepts are intimately related but distinct. More important is the observation that they converge around the conviction that a country’s international image and reputation requires active, ongoing management if international (and, by extension, domestic) policy are to be developed successfully. That said, even with best efforts, the experience of using branding efforts to support public diplomacy has been mixed. The “Cool Britannia” campaign launched by the UK…... FULL TEXT
 
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