Different kind of branding

Abstract

This article argues that Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid-19 in Brazil was consistent with his ‘different kind of branding.’ Contrary to the expectations of marketing experts and place branding scholars, Bolsonaro’s branding tactics were predicated not on portraying Brazil positively to commoditize it to (trans)national audiences but on producing the image of Brazil as a white conservative Christian country through maintaining epistemic and informational crises, delegitimizing expert systems, and engaging in necropolitical calculation. Methodologically, to describe the ‘brand-new’ Brazil projected in Bolsonaro’s presidency (2019–2022), I build three case studies centering on the boycott of Covid-19 vaccines, his strategy of letting the virus spread freely in favor of a supposed herd immunity, and the ‘shadow board’ that helped him build a necropolitical strategy. I suggest that Bolsonaro’s ‘chaotic’ branding project harnessed features of currently existing neoliberalism, including informational entropy, the digital production of ‘alternative facts’, entrepreneurial ethos, the delegitimization of expert systems, and the association between free market and political conservatism.