Managing a Country Brand

My role as head of public diplomacy involves work on “country branding”  – so basically developing a country brand that enables the country’s businesses and organizations to be more successful in the international marketplace, but also projecting a more holistic national identity with cultural, business, education and many more elements. I recently came across an article by John Quelch and Katherine Jocz, called Positioning the nation-state (link leads to pdf of the paper).  The paper is already a few years old (2004) and uses the cases of Spain, Greece and Chile to highlight the various aspects if finding the right “position” of the different countries in the international marketplace, be it in tourism, business or culture. The interesting aspect and certainly the strength of this paper is how it looks at ways how branding a country is different from brandig a product or company. A recommended read!