Nation Branding

 The Impact of Nation Branding

Since the globalization era began, companies across the world have been focusing their efforts on enhancing, modifying, and adapting themselves to new markets; however, these efforts have brought companies new challenges regarding managing their international reputation. Nowadays, the image building has not only been perceived as important for companies, but for governments that want to rebuild their image using nation branding. The roles of public relations practitioners who work in the nation branding field are to combine effectively communication tools to rebuild the negative image of a nation getting during or after a crisis and position nation’s products, services, and places in a worldwide level. Practitioners have to show in a creative way the values that make a nation outstanding , enhancing the link  nation-product, strengthening cross-cultural relations, restoring nation’s credibility, and increasing foreign investment in order to promote the political, economic and social policies goals.

In 2013, Future Brand provided a country brand ranking report. The aspects analyzed to measure the countries’ impact are related to the knowledge that people have about the country, the level of esteem of nationals towards their land, and foreigners’ ideas regarding tourism, investment, or products’ acquisition. The top five nations that have developed the most efficient nation branding strategies are: Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden, and New Zealand. However, Future Brand anticipates that in 2015, the top five will be composed by the United Arab Emirates, Chile, Malaysia, Qatar, and Estonia.

NATION BRANDING CONCEPTS

Gudjonsson (2005 as cited in Szondi, 2008) defined nation branding as a strategy used by governments which wanted to modify their nation’s image implementing different tools to change people’s behaviors and negative attitudes towards the country. Although, nation branding is the most common name for this strategy, Szondi (2008) identified it as international public relations because it helped nations to enhance and build relationships with their audiences abroad. Nation branding is used as a self-presentation of a country, which wants to demonstrate transparency to its publics showing its strengths and recognizing its weaknesses in all its sectors such as tourism, investment, export, and sports that influence on the economic, political, and social development of a nation. In addition, nation branding is the umbrella, which covers the national and international fields that can affect a country and its relationships with other nations. It is crucial for governments to demonstrate their concern about national and international issues, participating, cooperating, and contributing in social projects, which make nations to have commitment to their audiences.

The main issues perceived in this strategy are: Competitiveness which can be solved promoting activities that can complement the nation brand, reputation that is affected by the stakeholders’ experiences with the nation and the two-way communication between them, and  ethical standards that stakeholders expect  nations to achieve with the purpose of building a beneficial relationship among them; otherwise, the nation will fail in its credibility not only by foreigners but by nationals. Therefore, governments have perceived a need to develop national and international corporate social responsibility tactics, creating a mutual understanding on behalf of their nations, which increases their recognition worldwide. Public relations (PR) practitioners’ mission is to develop strategies having the relationship management theory as a fundamental theory to approach both national and international interest. This theory helps public relations practitioners to create, sustain and promote long-term relationships with nations’ publics and to interact with their global audiences.

The PR practitioner concludes that nation branding is an effort of giving an authentic identity to a nation which can help to rebuild its reputation as well as maintain its relationship with stakeholders. However, to accomplish the nation’s goal it is crucial to create a relationship based on trust especially with nationals who are going to spread and support the positive image of their nation. In addition, PR practitioner suggests that the social responsibility does not only have to be developed in a host country but it has to be successfully executed in the home country increasing  the value of the seven areas such as awareness, familiarity, preferences, decisions, association, consideration, and advocacy,  which determine the effectiveness of national branding (FutureBrand, 2013). Nation branding is a strategy which uses different tactics to effectively promote the positive aspects of a nation. PR practitioners have the ability to unify those tactics to create values for nations that want to brand and change their national and abroad image. PR practitioners’ knowledge about cross-cultural communication helps them to modify the perception towards the nation and at the same time to increase the exchange of product or services with other nations having as a result an economic, political and social improvement.

Nation branding case study

Colombia nation branding is a competitiveness strategy, created by the national government and supported by private companies, that aims to position a positive image of the country abroad. This situation will generate new trade and investment opportunities for the country in different economic and cultural activities. Colombia has been facing a negative image because of drug trafficking and armed conflict that has lasted for more than thirty years.  However, the nation branding has allowed the country to be recognized worldwide for its famous people, the quality of its export products, its natural richness and  geographical beauty. Although, the main focus of Colombia’s nation branding is to enhance its image abroad, parallel there have been developed communication strategies to generate sense of belonging and emotional relationship among Colombians, the country, and its brand. During 2005, “Colombia is passion” campaign was developed to show the world that Colombians are passionate and hardworking people and at the same time to engage nationals with the future of the country.

National celebrities, sports people, artists, natural resources, and national brands such as Juan Valdez, the image of Colombian coffee, were chosen to launch the nation branding campaign. The tactics executed in this campaign   were the creation of sport teams, musical videos with national singers, informative videos, nation branding stores, and the tourism campaign named “Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay”. The purpose of this campaign was to promote the tourism in Colombia and modify the negative perception that the world had of the country as tourism destination, incorporating emotional content as a key message.

Between 2002 and 2006, the number of tourists increased by 65% (Brodzkinky, 2006), and according to the data from World Tourism Organization the tourism has increased by 10.4% from 2005 to 2012 (Proexport Colombia, 2013). Testimonies of tourists and foreign journalists and films shot in the country were the main tactics of the campaign. Nowadays, Colombia has improved its image, enhancing the relationships with other countries. Through its nation branding campaign the government has implemented       new educational programs for its citizens. Although, Colombia is ranked worldwide 85^th,  and 9^th in Latin America in nation branding effectiveness, its website had 77000 monthly visits and its logo won an American Graphic Design Award in 2006 for attracting people’s attention. Since 2005, Colombia has enhanced its image and  has emerged  into a revived economy (FutureBrand, 2013). Nowadays the country ranks in Latin America as second in job opportunities , third in work force, and fifth in technology advances. Moreover, FutureBrand predicted that in 2015 Colombia will be in the 15^th of the worldwide ranking  in nation branding effectiveness.

Are PR practitioners responsible for building a nation’s image or is it the responsibility of the government and its people to build the nation and change its negative perceptions?