Nation Branding

While waiting for divine inspiration to strike and inform me as to what, exactly, I would be writing a blog post on this week, I started doing a little research for my country profile, and played with typing in a few keywords into my google search bar. First thing I typed in: "Swiss branding". I was met with a direct link to the Victorinox Swiss Army Website. Ok, enough of that. I then typed in "Swiss nation branding" and was given a link to Simon Anholt's blog. I believe that we have discussed a little about him in our class- or at least some of our reading referenced him, but if you would like to find out more about nation branding, I recommend a quick browse of his site. Along with the much too wordy heading (Simon Anholt's Placeblog: "The place for anyone who's interested in national image and identity, place branding, public diplomacy, and anything to do with the reputations of countries, cities and regions; how they're formed; how they're measured and how they are (mis)managed."), you can find a link to many of his nation branding guides as well as just about any form of media he's been in in the last few years. No matter what your opinion of nation branding is, it definitely holds a place in Public Diplomacy. Whether or not it is effective is another question.