Trading Spaces : The World Tour - Branding the Nation

Th e images, metaphors, and rhetorical turns from which nationalist ideologies are built are essentially devices, cultural devices designed to render one or another aspect of the broad process of collective self-redeﬁ nition explicit, to cast essentialist pride or epochal-ist hope into speciﬁ c symbolic forms . . .

—Cliﬀ ord Geertz, Th e Interpretation of Cultures

I

n the literature on nationalism and national identity, several studies have pondered the relationship of nationalism to economic growth. One of the most well known is Liah Greenfeld’s work, which argues that “the factor responsible for the reorientation of economic activity toward growth is na-tionalism.” ¹ Drawing on empirical studies of the emergence of capitalism across four national settings—France, Germany, Japan, and America—

Greenfeld concludes that it is nationalism—that is, the existence within national territorial boundaries of a distinct social consciousness with an image of a collective membership based on equality and committed to sovereignty—which formed the spirit of capitalism.

Th is argument itself drew on the notion contained in Max Weber’s classic work, Th e Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , that the particular norms and values attached to the pursuit of proﬁ t could be ex-plained by aspects of seventeenth-century Calvinist doctrine, which ad-hered to the idea of a “calling” and the embrace of entrepreneurial ten-dencies. Calvinism, by “suppl[ying] the moral energy and drive of the capitalist entrepreneur,” contained within it the ethic (‘spirit’) of modern economy. ² Despite multiple criticisms of this work and its methods, Weber’s ideas set in motion a hundred years of debate over the role of cul-ture in economic development. Th e questions animating this debate have turned around whether a distinct set of motivations, behaviors, ethical

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standards, and cultural values need to be in place before a society can achieve economic growth.

Nation branding represents a curious inversion of this belief. If for a century it was believed that nationalism formed the spirit of capitalism, nation branding appears to advocate that it is now capitalism that forms the spirit of nationalism. In order for nations to survive and thrive, in order for them to maintain the fertile social consciousness that gives rise to conditions of belief and belonging, the presumption is that they must embrace the capitalist principles of competitiveness, growth, and proﬁ t.

One of the most vocal proponents of this view is Simon Anholt. I intro-duced Anholt in chapter three as the guru of the nation-branding move-ment. In its invocation of a quasi-religious following, the term guru is not an overstatement. ³ For Anholt, nations need to develop a “competitive identity,” a form of national consciousness that is oriented not to the con-ditions of equality or sovereignty but to those of global capital demand.

“Governments are beginning to wake up to the fact that cities, countries and regions all need a new way of looking at identity, strategy, develop-ment, competitiveness and purpose if they are to survive and prosper in a very new world order,” he writes. “Big changes in the social and political fabric of modern society make the more ‘public-oriented’ approach of Competitive Identity a necessity. Th is is not a question of governments

‘playing to the gallery’ or a strategy for legitimizing state propaganda, just a growing acknowledgement of the inﬂ uence of global public opinion and market forces on international aﬀ airs.” ⁴

In this chapter, I consider the implications of these claims against pro-ﬁ les of nation-branding projects and programs in nine countries on pro-ﬁ ve continents. My aim, in part, is to document some of the ways in which na-tions have been branded—that is, to explore some of the processes and practices by which the metaphor of brand has been applied to transforma-tions in national policy and practice in the drive to respond to perceived global capitalist exigencies.

In developing this portrait I also wish to draw out some of the assump-tions that guide the practice of nation branding more generally, in order to reveal facets of its underlying and problematic logic. Th ree facets of this logic are given attention here. Th e ﬁ rst is that nation branding is presented as a form of progress; the second, that nation branding is designed to render na-tional identity more “useful” by reorienting its cultural and social bases to ﬁ t the parameters of global demand; and the third premise is that nation brand-ing is a purely economic consideration, detached from political interests.

Th is set of premises emerges from the history of marketing itself. If a foundational point about economics is that it involves the study of the

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exchange of wealth, marketing—as distinct from economics—understands itself largely as a system of exchange of desires. It organizes relationships between producer and consumer to achieve a satisfaction of wants. Market-ing is at root a system of motivations. Another animatMarket-ing feature of mar-keting, one that courses through its hundreds of textbooks and salvos, is that it is a catalyst for economic development, a form of economic progress that indexes by its existence a drive toward modernization. As source of both motivation and modernization, marketing is advanced as a mindset— a set of attitudes and beliefs or a way of life that is not only a harbinger of growth but also a universally recognized indicator of growth in all times and places, independent of local political powers or programs.

Th e nine cases I examine here—Chile, Jamaica, Germany, Sweden, Esto-nia, Botswana, Uganda, Libya, and Georgia—were chosen, to quote Ele-onora Pasotti, “not because they prove the theory right but rather because of their theory-generating ability.” ⁵ Th e cases diﬀ er vastly in their geoeco-nomic landscape, historical legacy, and sociocultural demographics. Th e point is to derive lessons from each as to the reach and inﬂ uence of nation branding as a generalized global phenomenon. As such, each case provides a diﬀ erent facet of the phenomenon to demonstrate its complexity and multilayered eﬀ ects. Th is is not to say that the other cases do not share these facets. I describe intellectual property issues in Jamaica and the in-ﬂ uence of world sporting events in Germany as part of the phenomenon, but this does not mean that intellectual property issues are unique to Jamaica or that the eﬀ ects of hosting international sporting events are only visible in Germany. In drawing out diﬀ erent aspects of what is de-scribed as a single phenomenon, my aim is to show how national represen-tation, like national identity, is not a monolithic concept or an empirically coherent set of practices, but an indeterminate and ongoing process that is negotiated diﬀ erently in diﬀ erent spaces. As I suggested in chapter two, nation branding is part of a delicate exercise in knowledge transfer by various experts and organizations who are part of what I am calling a transnational promotional class (TPC). Yet these cases are not born of TPC initiatives alone; they are made eﬀ ective by the activities of state leaders who interact with these transnational authorities in eﬀ orts to gain the advantages that can accrue to them by meeting so-called global require-ments. Some of the identity campaigns I present here are initiated as a ﬁ nal stage of competitiveness programs, designed as public relations ef-forts to communicate changes made via structural adjustments and re-forms. In other cases, the campaigns are part and parcel of these reforms, conceived as a kind of cultural adjustment to accompany institutional and policy change.

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In performing this demonstration I wish to make another observation:

while the indeterminacy and variability of national identity is recognized by the TPC, which emphasizes the “unique” and “authentic” elements of national character that must prevail in any nation-branding paradigm, the TPC and their clients fundamentally misrecognize the ex tent to which the so-called global concepts they seek to apply are themselves indeterminate and variable. It is therefore not merely the understanding of what consti-tutes national culture that changes across space and time, but also con-cepts like global competitiveness and transactions like foreign direct in-vestment. ⁶ To make this observation I am drawing on ideas advanced in sociological studies of economic practices that have contested the domi-nant views of market forces as natural, inevitable, and inexorable. Rather than seeing economic processes as “disembedded” from political, social, and cultural inﬂ uences, sociological accounts of economic transactions rec-ognize the messy and contingent aspects inherent to economic processes. ⁷ To elaborate each case, I use interviews with actors engaged in the branding initiatives and trace the model nation-brand development pro-cess introduced in chapter three (research/evaluation, training/education, identiﬁ cation, and implementation/communication). In this regard, the cases are similar. I focus on the core values that each brand identity is meant to bring out. My aim, however, is not to establish direct compari-sons among these cases; they are meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive. I use these cases to construct a typology of the kinds of values that are seen as most beneﬁ cial. Despite claims to authenticity and uniqueness con-tained in the initiatives and used as justiﬁ cations for the project, the anal-ysis reveals a continuum of values that bring the nations into evolutionary

Table 6.1. TRAITS OF UNBRANDED VERSUS BRANDED NATIONS

Th e Culture of Unbranded Nations Th e Culture of Branded Nations

Backward (-looking) Progressive

Old Young

Political Neutral

Antagonistic (radical) Friendly

Divisive Peaceful

Invisible Visible

Abnormal Normal

Untrustworthy Authentic

Traditional Transforming (market-friendly)

Lazy Innovative (entrepreneurial)

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alignment. Despite the presumption that nation-branding eﬀ orts are merely economic, postpolitical, or postmodern, nations are repositioned in branding discourses according to a decidedly political pattern. Th e hier-archy prompted by nation-branding discourses determines a system of values that privileges certain traits as more evolved than others, with those nations at the bottom of the rungs desiring to move upward along a unilin-ear modernist path.

BOTSWANA: TRANQUILITY, HOMEGROWN, WORKS WELL

In April 2005, two consulting ﬁ rms won a bid for tenders put out by the Botswana Export Development & Investment Authority (BEDIA) to develop a brand for the country. ⁸ Placebrands, a consultancy based in the United Kingdom and Holland, and Kaiser Associates Economic Development Prac-tice, an American ﬁ rm with an oﬃ ce in South Africa, were charged with de-veloping “a comprehensive brand strategy and implementation plan for Botswana” that would improve the status of the country’s “exports, invest-ment, tourism, foreign relations and local citizen identity.” ⁹

Th e consultants began a series of visits to the country in February 2006.

Th eir initial step was to create and incorporate a Botswana “brand partner-ship”: a public–private organization that would oversee and chair the brand development initiative. Members in the brand partnership consisted of chief executives from key industries (representatives from Debswana, the De Beers diamond mining enterprise in Botswana; the Botswana Develop-ment Corporation; the Botswana Tourism Board; the Vision 2016 Council Secretariat; and the advertising agency Ogilvy); national government rep-resentatives from the Ministries of Trade and Industry, Foreign Aﬀ airs, and International Cooperation; and highlevel representatives from the ﬁ -nancial sector (the governor of the Bank of Botswana, members of the International Financial Services Center). Th is group was itself to be over-seen by a “multi-stakeholder Brand Development Team”—a group of ap-proximately ﬁ fty representatives from national and parastatal organiza-tions, academia, the corporate sector, and civil society. Th e president of the country, Festus Mogae, acted as the brand’s honorary chair. ¹⁰

Once the public–private infrastructure of oversight was established, the consultancies’ next step was to conduct a “situational analysis” of the cur-rent perceptions of national identity through interviews with representa-tives from the brand partnership. At the same time, the consultants ran a

“masterclass,” a two-day workshop for the members of the branding teams

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to establish the logic and rationale for the brand development. Once the analysis was complete, the consultants worked to develop a “brand vision”

that would express the core values of the country to both domestic and in-ternational audiences; these values, in turn, would be used to develop the marketing strategy.

Th e brand vision that was developed consisted of three discrete but terrelated “strands”: concepts that would work to combine Botswana’s in-dustry and economy with key facets of its identity. Although the value concepts had to be “real”—that is, rooted in existing practices within Botswana’s communities—there also had to be an element of projection, a strategic “prospect” or future outlook that the country could strive to become. As one of the consultants explained to me:

It’s very unusual, once you’ve chosen the brand strategy, that there aren’t al-ready bits of it happening in a country . . . on a rough scale between nought and 100, it would be unusual if there wasn’t sort of 30% of activity [that was already on brand].

Th e brand values selected were “home-grown,” “works well,” and “tran-quility.” Th ese values were made tangible in a colorful seventy-page brand book. Th e brand book was not intended for international distribution—it was not, the consultant insisted, “the kind of fantasy island stuﬀ that tourism boards indulge in.” Rather, the book was for domestic audiences, meant “to inform the population at large about the brand”:

We’re talking about printing tens of thousands of them, it’s not a small print run. And this will be used by teachers in schools, it will go to kids to take the brand book home to their families, projects will be run round about it, and it’ll go into companies . . . and the challenge is in a way to the individual and the or-ganization and the institution: how can we become more “on brand”?

As we have seen in earlier chapters, to be “on brand,” according to corporate marketing wisdom, is to align the features of the brand with all of its forms of expression in a coherent and systematic way, through various methods of institutionalization and socialization by those organizations and actors who will use the brand. In the case of the nation, being on brand means that citizens must absorb, inculcate, and embody the habits of belief ad-vanced by branding narratives. ¹¹ As the brand book indicated,

When you think about it, everything you do and say becomes a brand choice for Botswana. In order to support and bring the Brand to life, before you say, think

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or do something ask yourself “Is this on-brand and am I contributing to Brand Botswana?” If you are not, think about ways in which you can live, work, enjoy leisure activities and express yourself in a way that is in line with the Brand themes. ¹²

Each of the three brand themes was articulated in the brand book in the form of various narratives, polyphonic interpretations of how “tranquility,”

“home-grown,” and “works well” could be brought to life. “Tranquility,” for instance, could refer to the country’s “wide-open spaces” and “immaculate wildernesses,” as well as to citizens’ friendliness, politeness, and civility—

traits that were deemed part of Botswana’s “national character.” “Home-grown,” too, could refer to the kindness and charity of its people, exempli-ﬁ ed in aspects of the country’s cultural heritage (the brand book refers to the country’s “Botho” and “Th erisanyo”—Tswana words that encapsulate a broad spirit of courtesy and discipline and a legacy of democratic dialogue);

it could also refer to the country’s arable land and farming, a major source of the country’s GDP before the incursion of the diamond trade. “Works well” was elaborated in terms of the government’s ongoing commitment to public education; the country’s high literacy rate; and its modern infra-structure, services, and utilities.

Th e photographs accompanying the text further reinforced the semiotic potential of the brand tropes. Indigenous peoples were featured participat-ing in various “traditional” activities (weavparticipat-ing cloth, drinkparticipat-ing tea, sittparticipat-ing in a circle on the ground) or dressed in uniforms representing various profes-sional occupations (medical staﬀ , police force, airline personnel, diamond processing workers, national football team) interspersed with unpeopled images of crops, plants, and wildlife.

Each of the three core values carried additional dimensions of interpre-tation, dimensions that were not contained within the brand book; these were designed for communication to foreign audiences rather than do-mestic ones. “Home-grown,” for example, as one consultant explained to me, “is actually about taking local talent and local resource and making more of it than we’re currently doing.” In this regard, “home-grown” re-ferred primarily to the activities of Debswana within the country.

Initially called the De Beers Botswana Mining Company Limited, the company was renamed Debswana in 1992, the name underscoring an in-creasingly intimate link between the company and the country: it is now co-owned by De Beers and the government of Botswana. Th e country’s Jwaneng mine, where Debswana operates, is Africa’s richest diamond mine; Debswana is Botswana’s largest private employer. In 2000, 40 percent of government revenues in Botswana were attributed to diamond sales. ¹³

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Th e brand communications were therefore partly intended to advertise the developments Debswana was undertaking within the country, including a tax-free industrial park port in Gabarone, the nation’s capital, to attract other companies involved in the diamond mining supply chain.

“Tranquility,” on the other hand, had important connections to tourism.

In the mid-2000s, the primary tourism market in Botswana consisted of wealthy European visitors on desert safaris, accompanied by locals who chauﬀ eur and cook for them. Th e aim here was to increase this market, at-tracting more tourists through a communications strategy that promoted the peace and quiet of the Kalahari Desert.

“Works well” was, as my respondent put it, “basically a statement to say that this is the African country that does work.” Th e brand book made mention of the country’s “modern buildings, up-to-date telecommunica-tions technology, current aircrafts and good road and rail transport sys-tems.” ¹⁴ Low personal and corporate taxes and duty-free access to American, European, and African markets were emphasized in the communications.

It was also a matter of corresponding to international standards of produc-tion and technical and managerial skills. Th is, the consultant explained, was what foreign audiences would look for:

Th ese people [foreign investors] have a choice—they can go anywhere in the world, and once they satisfy those ethics of property, proﬁ tability, what are they going to choose from? Th ey’re going to choose from places that have their act together, they’re going to choose from places that know who they are and what

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