canada.com
Another indication of DFAIT’s demise
Day: March 21, 2012
Public Diplomacy, Branding and the Image of Nations, Part I:What’s in a Brand?
I am writing today from London.
Although I will be going in to see colleagues at the FCO next week, I confess that I have not been thinking much about whether or not the Brits will be able to top, or at least equal the Chinese in skillfully using the occasion of the Summer Olympics to advance their top line public diplomacy (PD) objectives. Instead, I have been busy teaching a graduate seminar on Science, Technology, Diplomacy and International Policy, and helping to organize an International Symposium on the theme of heteropolarity and world order. Today I am preparing to welcome nation branding guru Simon Anholt into my MA class, hot on the heels of a command performance last Wednesday by Parag Khanna.
In order to introduce Simon, I have been reviewing his work, and in that regard came across a fascinating exchange he engaged in a few years back on the CPD blog with Craig Hayden. Their repartee got me thinking – again – about the hardy perennial issue of whether or not there exists a real distinction between branding and PD.
Is one a subset of the other? If so, which is the larger construct? Does it really matter?
I’m not sure, especially because these sorts of considerations suggest that the relationship may be asymmetrical, rather than simply differentiated.