The locus of Nation Brand governance varies widely from one country to another. The United Kingdom’s GREAT campaign, for example, is located within the Cabinet Office. The Swedish Institute operates on behalf of the Swedish Parliament and Government. Essential Costa Rica interfaces with The Costa Rican Foreign Trade Promoter (Procomer), The Costa Rican Tourism Board, The Ministry of Foreign Trade, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship, and The Ministry of Culture and Youth.
Whilst there will always be a need for local approaches to reflect local realities, the design and implementation of effective long-term strategic Nation Branding would benefit from institutionalization of the Nation Brand through the creation of a bespoke Department of Nation Branding with guaranteed funding to allow for reliable budgeting to support long-term strategy.
Embedding the Nation Brand within government
By enshrining responsibility for the Nation Brand within its own governmental entity, the country’s Nation Brand would benefit from being integrated within the machinery of government rather than being perceived as an optional add-on with fluctuating levels of oversight and engagement by policy makers.
A government entity with a guaranteed budget would also reassure stakeholders in the private sector that the Nation Brand enjoys the full support of government, thereby facilitating the formation of long-term strategic partnerships.
Creating consistent messaging
The creation of a dedicated Department of Nation Branding would ensure clear and consistent stewardship of the Nation Brand, thereby avoiding the proliferation of uncoordinated actions and messaging that can occur when different Ministries, Departments and Agencies conduct their own activities without consultation with each other. Potential synergies could be identified by a Department of Nation Branding that is embedded within government and tasked with providing a clear lead on the country’s Nation Brand strategy in alignment with broader policy objectives.
The multiplicity of Nation Brand audiences represents an ongoing risk of incoherent, misaligned or contradictory messaging if there is no clear ownership of Nation Brand strategy. Trade and investment, tourism, and talent attraction audiences will be communicated with by different government entities but that communication needs to be informed by Nation Brand considerations. Such alignment is more likely to occur if a clearly designated Department of Nation Branding exists and is in regular communication with other Departments.
Building Nation Branding expertise
A further benefit to be gained from the creation of a Department of Nation Branding is its contribution to capacity-building in Nation Branding expertise. Current models of Nation Brand governance often rely on drafting in experienced professionals from the private sector whose knowledge and skills in marketing, branding, and communications can be highly effective in developing the country’s Nation Brand strategy. However, this approach provides limited capacity-building as these transplanted private sector individuals find themselves operating within an environment where government employees have not had any training or education in Nation Branding. By creating a dedicated Department of Nation Branding, the profile of Nation Branding would be raised within government. Senior politicians and their political advisers would become more familiar with the concepts and challenges of Nation Branding, and cohorts of government employees would be developed with a profound appreciation of the steps required to nurture a successful Nation Brand.
Branding a nation is a far more complex undertaking than branding a product or even a multinational corporation. A dedicated Department of Nation Branding would create the conditions for developing government employee expertise not only in conventional marketing and branding techniques such as audience research and brand positioning, but also in other areas such as diplomacy, international relations, and Soft Power. Nurturing this expertise in-house would help the Nation Brand permeate all areas of government rather than having the Nation Brand function run by government employees who lack a solid grounding in the subject.
Managing reputational risk and crisis response
In situations where a country is facing reputational risk, a dedicated Department of Nation Branding could take the lead in crisis management, ensuring that the response to any crisis is aligned with the Nation Brand and also with wider policy objectives. This would allow faster and more focused crisis management than leaving individual Ministries to decide what the crisis response should be. The crisis response by the Department of Nation Branding would be informed by its relationships with stakeholders across the public and private sectors, encompassing the full range of potential audiences across trade and investment, tourism, and talent attraction, as well as global public opinion.
Strengthening domestic engagement with the Nation Brand
Finally, the creation of a dedicated Department of Nation Branding would also signal to a country’s citizens that the Nation Brand is a key element of government policy and as such should be transparent and open to scrutiny. This could motivate greater engagement domestically with the Nation Brand, which may otherwise focus more or less exclusively on international audiences rather than on the country’s own citizens. For this to succeed, it is important to note that the Department of Nation Branding should be at the service of the country as a whole rather than merely a propaganda tool of the government of the day.
Cite article: Bloom Consulting (2026): The case for creating a Department of Nation Branding. Bloom Consulting Journal, 3 June. Available at: https://www.bloom-consulting.com/journal/the-case-for-creating-a-department-of-nation-branding
