Georgia’s national brand in the European Union – is it possible “to sell the nation”?

In the era of globalization, the product development and marketing strategy (that were the domain of international corporations and small, private companies) are being taken over by the public sector. This exchange of roles causes that the state enters the branding space. It creates an offer involving goods and services of nongovernmental organizations, domestic enterprises, and government itself, and as a result creates a strong brand, called the state brand.
The brand of the state consists of three equal elements: national brand, country brand, and political brand. The aim of the article is to present the construction of one of the components of a state brand, the national brand. The Author tries to answer the question whether Georgia adequately develops its national brand, can it “sell the nation” to the European Union? The article was made as part of the “Georgia’s political brand” project conducted in Tbilisi, Georgia. The project was financed by the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Warsaw as the “DSM 2017” project. It was made in cooperation with Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. During the project the Author created the series of articles about Georgia’s state branding: about the political brand, the country brand, the above national brand, and generally about the studies of state branding (the basic terminology).

In recent years, nation branding attracts interest of scholars and academic environment. In the era of globalisation, the need to care for propoer image and perception of a state in international environment becomes even more apparent. Soft power resources are a vital element in creating a strong nation brand. The aim of the article is to verify hipothesis stating that civil society can be perceived as a soft power resource used in building the brand. Therefore, the proposed research is conducted by analysing most significant branding rankings with respect to the positions reached by Sweden, used as a model state with strong civil society.

Georgia’s political brand in the European Union: building the political product and the political brand

We live in a world full of brands, where the names, symbols, and logos of big corporations, such as McDonald’s, Adidas, and Coca-Cola are extremely recognizable. Nowadays, in the era of globalization, the product development and marketing strategies that were the domain of private companies and corporations are being taken over by the public sector. This unusual exchange of roles causes the state to enter the branding space, and to create an offer that includes the goods and services of national businesses, government, and non-governmental organizations, and also to create a brand. The brand of a state consists of three equal components: a national brand, country brand, and political brand.
Georgia is a “model democratic state” in the South Caucasus, which cooperates consistently with the European Union. The multi-level specificity of this state and the implemented model of systemic transformation, directed the foreign policy and created the state brand towards the West.
The aim of the paper is to present the construction of one of the components of a state brand, the political brand, and to analyze the strategy of political branding in Georgia’s foreign policy created towards the European Union. The author will answer the question of how the political, and economic institutions of Georgia are building the political brand.