Even if its roots are as old as the existance of nations, Nation Branding as a discipline on its own is young and is only now being shaped into a mature and solid body. Considering its youthfulness, it’s only normal that everyone has his/her own perspective and have their own definitions, but this is is what I think these nation-branding related concepts mean:

- Brand: A sum of the ideas and feelings associated with a name, a symbol, a trademark, a logo. Whatever that comes to your mind when you see the Nike logo. Not the logo itself nor the company’s visual style, but the feelings in your gut and the ideas in your mind are the brand.

- Nation brand: the same as a commercial brand, when applied to countries. Whatever that comes to your mind when you see the Australian flag. Images, faces, ideas, first person experiences, traditions, historic events, landscapes, politicians, movies, cities, products, people from there you know… That’s the nation brand.

- Strong nation brand: Ideas and feelings associated with a nation are widely shared by a large proportion of people. Most people think the same when they hear “North Korea” or “Sweden”, so they have strong nation brands consequently, no matter if they are positive or negative.

- Good nation brand: Ideas and feelings associated with a country, while they don’t have to be very much shared and could be fragmented and scattered, are mostly positive. For instance, people think very different things when they hear about the Netherlands (from bycicles to channels, from tulips to football players, from the Dutch commercial prowess to the country’s important maritime transport hub, from lovely windmills to liberal laws in sex and drugs), but most of them are regarded as good things. Hence the country has a good nation brand.

- Branding: Not the ‘branding’ graphic designers refer to, but the real ‘branding’ entrepeneurs, CEO’s and branding experts adopt. The strategies taken to gain a desired ‘brand’, that is the desired reputation among consumers. That includes thinking what a business is about, sketching how we want its character to be, defining how it looks and how it acts, describing how the business would be if it were a person, writing down its personality traits, stating a product/category and pricing policy. All in all, defining what we want the business to be beyond being a business, and adopting the necessary steps to deserve that ‘brand’ among the consumers.

- Nation branding: the adoption of real-life policies and tactics following a strategic plan to gain relevance and perceived value in one or several aspects of a country’s reputation. Or, simply put, defining what reputation a country wants to have, and taking the necessary measures to become by fact what a country intends to be known for. Deserving the reputation by fact by implementing strategies, policies, activities, investments and symbolic actions. In other worlds, doing the right things to prove the country deserves the desired brand among citizens, both inside and outside the country.

Andreas Markessinis

Alla definizione del brand di una nazione concorrono tutti gli "stakeholder" di una comunita', le sue istituzioni, la societa' civile, artisti e sportivi, i suoi cittadini, ecc.
In un certo senso ogni cittadino apporta o sottrae valore al brand nazionale con le sue azioni, comportamenti, idee, ecc.
In questo puo' dirsi che ognuno di noi e' oggi un "Ambasciatore" all'estero.
Naturalmente anche i diplomatici di carriera di un paese concorrono alla gestione del brand.
Anzi essendo in prima linea all'estero, sono spesso i migliori termometri della percezione del brand nazionale.
Sarebbe dunque utile una crescente loro compartecipazione alla definizione e non solo alla gestione del brand della nazione.

Il grande giornalista american Edward Murrow, responsabile della USIA negli anni Sessanta, fu chiamato ad uno sforzo di "damage control' del disastroso tentativo di invasione cubana da parte del presidente Kennedy. In quella occasione Murrow commento' in maniera memorabile che " They' d better have us also at the take-offs and not just at the crash landings" .