Whether based on individual national objectives of trade, investment, and travel/tourism, or vying for specific organization memberships such as inclusion in the EU, positioning a country's brand is more important than ever for the largest to the smallest of countries. In the last five years, Poland, Croatia, South Africa, Australia, and India are just a few examples of countries that have launched branding campaigns via the web, print, and television.

While the notion of nation branding is relatively new compared to the history of nations, the practice has always existed through public policies and economic development. In 1998, a British marketing consultant named Simon Anholt wrote an article arguing that places and nations can be equated as brands and was surprised by both the outrage and interest he received from academics and government officials alike at the notion of a nation brand. Since then a boutique field has not only emerged but is flourishing.

But, Anholt points out, like branding for the commercial sector, branding nations is a mixed bag with often mixed results. "The problem is there's no widely accepted theory of branding…about what it is and what it hopes to achieve. The consequence is that there are a lot of countries who are confused…and have a lot of different ideas of what branding is all about. And most of them, to tell you the truth, are achieving very little."

Anholt points out that a number of countries have spent quite large sums to create an expensive corporate identity with ad time on television channels such as CNN to essentially create a tourism campaign, when really what the countries were hoping for was much broader than just creating tourism awareness.