Nation ‘branding’ to promote states in the global market has serious consequences for social diversity within European countries

One largely overlooked consequence of states competing in globalised markets is the incentive for political authorities to use marketing techniques to create a coherent ‘brand’ for individual countries. Melissa Aronczyk writes on this type of nation ‘branding’, noting that it has three largely negative consequences: the involvement of relatively unaccountable marketing experts in decision-making; the downplaying of components of national identity which do not project the desired image; and the reduction of national identity to a single configuration, neglecting the fact that there may be competing conceptions of what a state’s national identity consists of.