Warning: Nation branding can lead to a loss of reality.
Jessica Gienow-Hecht is a leading historian of transnational cultural and foreign policy. All the more reason for branding experts to be curious about her new book: Vom Staat zur Marke. Die Geschichte des Nation Branding (From State to Brand: The History of Nation Branding, Stuttgart 2025). The title promises much—namely, a serious historical engagement with the phenomenon of nation branding, embedded in the evolution of state self-representation. It also raises hopes: the branding concept seems to have finally found its way into the social sciences and humanities.
The book addresses many valid and important questions: Where does the current "interest in the nation as a brand" come from? Is this not, at heart, simply a case of misleading rebranding? As the book itself notes: "'Nation Brand' is an old concept with a long history and a new name." And the "central concern of this book" is indeed commendable: "to better understand the dynamics and risks of contemporary national brand building as an instrument of non-violent power."
However, doubts arise with the author’s "simple core message": "Since the First World War, the nation has developed into a brand product, which was extensively 'played' by state governments until the fall of the Iron Curtain. Since then, liberal democracies in particular have struggled with this task. This is dangerous, because at the same time, many authoritarian states skillfully use the nation brand to advance their own undemocratic goals. Democratic states must therefore present themselves more clearly again." One must pause: The nation as a brand product? The state as an advertising agency? Authoritarian regimes as successful brand products? Liberal democracies as failing brand products? Profiling campaigns to strengthen democracy? State branding as a matter of national security? Geopolitical competition as a global brand contest? Social analysis as marketing history? Brand critique as a form of democracy critique? All this is familiar from marketing speak. But as the outcome of a critical historical analysis? Social analysis, the book suggests, can apparently be told through the logic of campaigns, slogans, and brand values.
Conceptual vagueness permeates the book. State and nation are briefly "explained" in just two pages. "Nation brand" is adopted entirely uncritically—primarily from well-known branding consultants such as Simon Anholt (the "inventor" of nation branding) and related agencies and advisory firms—and equated with clever naming strategies, promising slogans, attractive logos, major sporting events, and smart advertising campaigns intended to communicate compelling cultural attributes and counter negative perceptions. To be fair, the book admits: "It sounds easier than it is." But this acknowledgment has no bearing on the actual analysis.
In this context, what would have been needed is a historically and theoretically grounded critical engagement with the concept of the brand—especially to analytically assess its application to the political domain. Instead, the brand concept is used uncritically, largely in the jargon of the branding world, and in line with promotional logic. The understanding of brand becomes reduced to a simplistic conflation of brand development with advertising. Nation branding is portrayed as a linear communication process: advertising campaign equals image change. This is exemplified by Gienow-Hecht’s reading of the 2006 campaign "Germany – Land of Ideas." According to her, it created a new image of Germany "almost overnight" (and almost on its own). And it doesn’t stop with Germany: "Today, governments around the world spend millions on the 'nation brand'," she writes—and operational effort is uncritically equated with political success. In addition, the author introduces the concept of "stateless branding" ("at subnational and supranational levels"), illustrated by examples such as the “brands Palestine, Catalonia, NATO, the EU, the African Union, and the Middle East”.
At no point does the book question what "brand" actually means in this—political—context, or whether nations can even be staged like products without ignoring their political, social, and historical contradictions. The term "brand" functions as a glittering label for what elsewhere is referred to as "soft power" or "public diplomacy"—or what the author herself, in her "vignettes" that comprise most of the book, narrates in an essayistic and entertaining manner as state-run "cultural image management," "state image campaigns," "cultural self-representation," or "foreign cultural policy." This story is told largely anecdotally, brings together highly diverse phenomena under a single roof, and constructs a clear periodization: "From the Age of Revolutions to the First World War," a cacophony of non-state voices prevails. Then follows the birth of nation branding, the "nationalization of brand advertising": "After the end of the First World War, the state became the principal advertising agency of the nation." In a particularly jarring formulation equating totalitarian state power with market-based consumer logic, the author writes: "Fascism transformed the state into a tightly controlled consumer product."
From the perspective of critically informed brand studies, the book is ultimately disappointing—mainly because it fails to take the concept of the brand seriously. Instead, it employs it in a reduced, affirmative, and theoretically underdeveloped manner—where it could serve as an analytical tool: for differentiating symbolic practices, critiquing political communication strategies, and reflecting on the power effects of images. A brand is not merely a decorative term, but a strategically potent concept—a tool of semantic compression with powerful effects: brands guide perception, shape behavior, structure social expectations, and in the best case create social, political, and economic realities. In the political sphere, branding attempts to translate complex national identities into manageable images—smoothing contradictions, suppressing ambiguity, and to reframe conflict as consensus.
Rather than offering yet another (scholarly disguised) apology of the concept, what is needed is a critical investigation of nation branding that takes the brand concept seriously—not just as a communication tool, but as an economic (value creation and locational factor), semiotic (symbolic order and meaning-making), and above all political (power technique and governance instrument) construct. A research approach that asks, among other things: What explains the popularity of the brand concept in the political sphere? Why has "brand" become a key term of state self-understanding in recent history? Nation Branding: What would a critical conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) look like? And most importantly: What happens to the political when it begins to think, speak, and act in the terms of marketing? Is negotiation replaced by management? Does political publicity mutate into target group communication? Are conflicts replaced by simulated consensus? It is time to analyze not just the appearances of nation branding but its implicit political theory.
More importantly, perhaps: The problem is not Gienow-Hecht's alone. Her book is symptomatic of growing unease within the broader field of nation branding research. On the one hand, nation branding is increasingly recognized as a phenomenon—in international relations, cultural studies, communication research. On the other hand, most studies lack empirical rigor and theoretical ambition in dealing with the brand concept. What remains is a hollow vocabulary that replaces critical analysis with promotional language.
When the nation becomes a brand, politics turns into performance. At best, this results in waste—of public attention or public resources. At worst, it becomes dangerous—when dominant interpretive patterns support political developments that suppress societal diversity, silence conflict, and simulate unity. One thing it never is: harmless. Especially not in scholarly work that naïvely adopts marketing terms without reflecting on their origins or critically examining their function in political contextHence, our modest proposal in conclusion: If we must engage with nation branding, then please with a warning label—like the mandatory text on cigarette packages. Something like: "Nation Branding can lead to a loss of reality." With possible side effects including: Confusion of image and substance. Substitution of political analysis with PR rhetoric. Historical depth in PowerPoint format. And not least: acute theoretical deficits. After all: the careless use of the brand concept may damage your academic credibility.
