According to Prince, branding in government is not entirely new—he harks back to the Green Cross Code Man of the 1970s, a sort of traffic superhero who taught children proper road safety in the UK—but its understanding of it has become more sophisticated, just as it has in business. “Five years ago the creative team in the COI would do the branding work for our departmental clients. Now we have two brand specialists. In government there are strong intelligent communications people working. They understand what a brand is and how branding works. They are comparable to brand managers in the private sector.”

The main driver for this growing acceptance of branding isn't because it offers competitive advantages, at least not in its traditional business sense. “You have to discard the private sector rationale for branding. It is not trying to do the same thing. This is not about competition or selling more products or services to the consumer,” says Josef Jurkovic, a partner and director of the Centre for Excellence in Communications in Ottawa, Canada. “The context is the overall communications environment today. More groups compete for anyone's attention. Today you are faced with as many as 4,000 marketing messages per day; 15 to 20 years ago it was less than half that amount. The competition is for attention and retention of any kind of message.”

“There's a realization that doing things the old way doesn't work anymore,” agrees Prince. “Everyone and anyone out there is communicating. Branding is interesting as it can get attention, cuts through the clutter and [allows groups to] develop relationships with audiences.”

But while much emphasis has been placed on branding, all but a few projects (especially in North America, observes Jurkovic) fall flat—much to the disgust of the taxpaying public. “For governments it is a more complex and difficult issue to brand than the private sector,” Jurkovic states. “The main difference is the degree of control the public sector has over branding. In government, branding is made harder because of complex reporting structures, bureaucracy and decision-making. You need 360-degree alignment of all activities, and it is hard for a large organization to exercise this control.

“There's a whole educational process required before you can even start contemplating branding as such,” Jurkovic continues. “They need to understand 360 alignment. You then need complete senior management commitment (and that means people like deputy ministers need to be driving the branding effort). You need a strong policing and monitoring effort so it is properly implemented, and you may need to create an infrastructure to administer the brand.”

Edwin Colyer is a science and technology writer based in Manchester, UK.