• Place Branding, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 2006, Basingstoke

Close your eyes and imagine Uganda. What comes to mind? Images of Idi Amin and his genocidal murders? Or more recent scenes of “night-commuting” children swarming rural towns at dusk to avoid impressment into the Lord’s Resistance Army? That is not the picture of Uganda that has greeted viewers of CNN International during the past year. Instead, the channel has aired a steady stream of commercials featuring lush jungle foliage, silver-backed gorillas in the mist, and rugged river gorges—all meant to convey the message that Uganda is, as its new advertising slogan states, “gifted by nature.”

Uganda’s marketing blitz, concocted by the giant public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton at a cost of nearly $650,000 and promoted through a $1 million ad buy on CNN, is simply the latest example of what has come to be known as “nation branding”—using modern marketing techniques to reshape public opinion of a country. Other countries launching controversial brand-burnishing efforts in the past year include Nigeria (billing itself as the “Heart of Africa”) and Israel, which, after three years of research and focus groups, started a new marketing push that makes no mention of the conflict with Palestinians, or even religion (“Israel starts with I” is one of the oh-so-snappy slogans).

The brand management of nations, regions, and cities has become such a hot topic that there is even a quarterly British journal devoted to the practice: Place Branding, now in its second year of publication. Last April’s issue tackles such topics as whether Africa could use branding to improve its image, the use of food to help brand places, and an exploration of whether England...