A Brand Culture Approach to Managing Nation‐Brands

AuthorCagri Yalkin
Date01 March 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12129
Published date01 March 2018
A Brand Culture Approach to
Managing Nation-Brands
CAGRI YALKIN
Brunel Business School
The objective of this note is to formulate conceptual links between nation brands, international relations, and
politics through the developmentof research questionsthat are underpinned by a brand-culture approach. The focus
is on the export of Turkeys soap operasto diverse locations aroundthe globe, but in particularto the Middle East and
the Balkans. The note calls for: (1) forging a dialogue across international relations, political science, media, and
management studies through a brand-culture lens which allows for a historical understanding; (2) focusing on
historical and political discourses as resources in interpreting nation brands and cultural and creative goods; and,
(3) focusing on nation branding between countries in the Global South. Forging a dialogue across disciplines and
focusing on how consumers make use of historical andpolitical discourses informs both commercial and diplomatic
co-creators of nation brands.
Keywords: brand culture; nation brands; Turkey; international relations; politics
Introduction
Both the trade of popular culture products and the
management of nation brands within it, remain at the
problematic epicentre of studies on cultural industry,
nation branding, diplomacy, international relations, and
geopolitics,all of which focus on themes of globalization,
transnationalism, and imperial tensions. Drawing on an
illustrative case study of an ever-expanding transnational
trade of Turkish soap operas that are used as nation
branding tools, this research note demonstrates the utility
of a brand-culture approach, which allows for the
recognition of historical and political contexts in
managing nation brands. The brand-culture approach
provides an interdisciplinary and comprehensive take on
managing nation brands as it brings a contextual
appreciationand recognizes the role of state and non-state
actors that co-create the nation brand.
Nation brands are particular positionings of nations
within the global framework (Anholt, 2007, 2009). They
are studied by management, international relations,
politics, and diplomacy scholars (OShaughnessy and
OShaughnessy, 2000; Olins, 2002; Fisher-Onar, 2009,
2011; Marat, 2009; Sevin and White, 2011 Kerrigan
et al., 2012; Dinnie, 2015); the study of nation brands
is therefore interdisciplinary. Nation branding, the
process through which countries tell their own stories
to influence the attitude of international target markets
(Sevin and White, 2011), focuses on a countrysimage
holistically in the international arena and it covers
political, economic, and cultural dimensions (Quelch
and Jocz, 2005; Fan, 2006). It draws upon country-of-
origin (COO henceforth; see Dinnie, 2015), place or
destination branding (Morgan et al., 2002; Kotler and
Gertner, 2002; Konecnik and Go, 2008; Qu et al.,
2011), public diplomacy (van Ham, 2001; Melissen,
2005; Fan, 2008), geopolitics (Yanik, 2009a),
commercial diplomacy (Sevin and Dinnie, 2015), and
national identity studies (Smith, 1991; Bond et al.,
2003; Yanik, 2017). However, the dialogue between
these areas is fragmented, and can benefit from a
particular understanding of brands, such as that of
brand-culture (Schroeder and Salzer-Mörling, 2006;
Schroeder et al., 2015), which allows for a melding of
history, foreign policy, politics, and consumer
co-creation.
Kemming and Sandikcis (2007) work juxtaposes
politics and nation branding by examining how member
states perceiveTurkeys nation brandimage in a European
Union (EU) accession scenario, and Marat (2009)
provides an overview of the images presented by Central
Asian states in the post-Soviet era through an account of
political and international relations (IR henceforth)
discourses. Similarly, political science and IR scholars
Correspondence: CagriYalkin, Brunel UniversityLondon, KingstonLane,
Uxbridge UB83PH, UK. E-mail: cagri.yalkin@brunel.ac.uk
European Management Review, Vol. 15, 137149, (2018)
DOI: 10.1111/emre.12129
©2017 European Academy of Management

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