Public Branding and Marketing: Theoretical and Practical Developments

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Staci M. Zavattaro,Alex Marland,Jasper Eshuis
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13372

Symposium

Introduction

728Public Administration Review • July | August 2021

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 4, pp. 728–730. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13372.

Public Branding and Marketing: Theoretical and Practical

Developments

Public brands have come to play an important

role in a wide range of governance processes,

the management of public organizations, and

political processes. For example, brands have been

deployed during the global Coronavirus disease 2019

(COVID-19) pandemic as strategic instruments

by many governments and political leaders who

leveraged the brands of their national health

agencies and health research institutes to make their

coronavirus policies credible and legitimate. Logos,

names, and symbols from official organizations were

used to indicate the trustworthiness and reliability

of public communications above other forms of

communication. Message simplification and repetition

were staples to break through communication clutter

and avoid mixed messaging that could cost lives.

At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted the

challenges public organizations may face when trying

to build their brand, protect their brand’s equity, and

coordinate communications with the aid of brands.

The U.S. response to COVID-19 has been one of

the least successful in the world, contributing to

the country’s decline in international reputational

indexes, whereas the resilience of places such as South

Korea and New Zealand has enhanced their brand

(FutureBrand2020). While the United States was

mired in internal bickering, South Korea leveraged

its soft power through nation branding to enhance its

international standing by sending protective equipment

to other countries and building internal trust through

consistent messaging (Lee and Kim2020), while New

Zealand’s strict nonpharmaceutical interventions

spared lives (Robert2020) and further strengthened

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s brand as a trustworthy,

empathic, and competent leader (see Mazey and

Richardson2020). Thus, brands played a role in

influencing governance processes in the pandemic, and

in turn, they were also affected by those same processes.

In this symposium issue, public branding and

marketing take center stage as a recent evolution

of organization communication and reputation

building in the public sector (Zavattaro and

EshuisForthcoming). On a global level, how

governments manage public brands has considerable

bearing on diplomacy, economic investment, exports,

public policy, tourism, and immigration among other

activities. Worldwide, the communications landscape

of public management is changing from information

provision to strategic governance strategy in which

marketing and branding play an important role

(Eshuis and Klijn2012). This has a direct bearing on

public administration, whether through the prospects

of effective and efficient government communication

or by opening the door to the use of marketing and

branding techniques for (partisan) manipulation of

the public.

Public branding and marketing are outgrowths of

organizational image and reputation management

(Waeraas and Byrkjeflot2012; Waeraas and

Maor2015) and focus on how public places (cities,

states, nations, hospitals, schools, etc.), people

(politicians, agency heads), and agencies (government

bureaucracies) attempt to craft an identity to engender

positive public images that create an emotional

connection. Branding is the proactive act of bringing

a brand to life through concerted, concentrated

efforts from all key stakeholders (Marland, Lewis,

and Flanagan2017); when employed in the public

sector, branding is the strategic, deliberate control

of elements that communicate about the place,

organization, policy, elected officials, or bureaucrats

(Karens et al.2016; Marland2016). As Perez(2021)

explains in this symposium, branding helps to manage

image and reputation.

As a governance tool, public brands articulate

public policy frames and solutions, mobilize actors

in the branding and governance process, and

communicate information (Eshuis and Klijn2012).

Public marketing largely follows the same logic,

relying on stakeholder feedback to guide policy and

organizational preferences (Lamb1987), and when

applied to politics, marketing involves political

Staci M. ZavattaroAlex Marland

Jasper Eshuis

University of Central FloridaMemorial University of Newfoundland

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Staci M. Zavattaro, Ph.D., is an associate

professor of public administration at the

University of Central Florida.

Email: staci.zavattaro@ucf.edu

Alex Marland, Ph.D., is a Professor of

political science at Memorial University of

Newfoundland.

Email: amarland@mun.ca

Jasper Eshuis, Ph.D., is an associate

professor of public administration at

Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Email: eshuis@essb.eur.nl