Branding National Identity

Abstract

The following thesis, Branding national authored by Anamaria Georgescu and Andrei Botescu, attempts to develop a multidisciplinary perspective on a particularly new topic raised by marketing and advertising. Several theoreticians in field discern matter as a strategy of fighting globalisation with its own weapons (Simon Anholt, 2002). It promises to offer equal opportunities for back up to countries with a low level of economic development. This is to be done by appealing and emphasizing cultural and national specific. This controversial set of suggestions requires to be objectively debated using various perspectives. Also, a practical extension of our debate is to consider aspects of scrutinized theoretical constructions, in a particular example of a developing country: Romania. We brought a new angle to approaches of nation branding using sociological theories and concepts like the imagined communities of Benedict Anderson, the interacting identities or global networks in Information Age described by Castells. We meant to examine concept of national identity, which represents content of such strategies. It has proven to be rather a field of disputes than an unambiguous area for contemporary sociology. Therefore, effort of finding a representative national brand has to be most difficult part in pursuing nation branding strategies. Nevertheless, idea of brand and advertising influence, and particularly persuasion proficiency of national brand, has generated a large ethical debate. We developed our arguments examining illustrative visions of different authors like Naomi Klein, in No logo, and further related articles, which demonise brand's sway. We also utilized Roland Barthes's Mythologies, analysing national identity myth's culpability, and Simon Anholt's book Brand new Justice: The Upside of Global Branding, referring to benefits of brands for underdeveloped countries in a economy. How to put things at work or how to start and manage a nation branding campaign is likely to find out researching past and ongoing programs. Thus, we have investigated several branding agencies specialized in field. We offered illustrative examples in specific matters and also we developed our own discussions related to different approaches and instruments of national identity communication. The prospect of nation branding in a Romanian environment started to be considered by different entities a complex stimulation of an anarchic actual identity perspective. Thus, we considered to offer an analytical perspective of opinions, programs or ideas exposed by different external or internal sources, using theoretical and empirical insights assembled throughout whole paper. Several key concepts utilized in our dissertation are: national identity, globalisation, nation branding, holistic approach, comprehensive brand, creative industries, and symbolic communication.