Country branding is not a new practice. Early examples of country branding include the ‘Cool Britannia’ slogan utilised by Tony Blair and the New Labour movement after their victory in the 1997 general election. Country branding can even be seen as far back as the late 19th and early 20th Centuries with the concept of American Exceptionalism. The past few years has seen significant increases in the concept and practice of Country Branding, due to prominent Nation Branding lists and indexes including the FutureBrand Country Brand Index and Simon Anhalt’s Nation Brand Index.

As the Al Jazeera feature highlights, the last few years has seen several governments from emerging market nations employ the services of American and UK communications firms. They do this to alter their international perception, and particular, their perception in the Western world. Notable examples include the Nigerian government hiring Washington D.C.-based public relations firm Levick to help manage their reputation in the fallout that occurred in the wake of the government’s failure to locate 219 schoolgirls, that were kidnapped by the armed group Boko Haram. Another recent example comes from the Russian government, who published an op-ed in the New York Times addressed to the American public with the help of Ketchum PR.

Country branding has grown in popularity recently, because many governments are recognising that the international perception of a nation is of great importance in the contemporary globalised world. A country with a positive reputation in the international community will often find that its tourism, trade, diplomatic relations and attractiveness to foreign investors will improve as a result.

However, as the Al Jazeera video highlights, there can sometimes be a dark side to country branding, especially when it veers dangerously close to propaganda and smearing of trade and/or diplomatic rivals. Practices such as these are not only morally dubious, but as Farzana Baduel points, their long term effectiveness as a communications strategy is questionable.

The ubiquity of the internet has meant that information is now more open and free than ever before, and in an era of Wikileaks and Anonymous (The ‘Hacktivist’ Group) it is increasingly likely that PR companies and governments involved in these questionable practices will have their activities discovered. Ultimately, such discoveries are likely to tarnish the reputations of the countries involved even further, ironic given that the reason these governments spend such vast sums of money is to construct a better reputation for themselves.

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