"Branding", a hybrid discipline emerging from an eclectic mix of psychology, sociology, economics and the applied disciplines of consumer behaviour, PR, marketing and advertising research first gained prominance as the technique behind the gains of world-brands such as Coke, Pepsi, Microsoft and Intel.

Of course in the past few years, marketers from many companies small and large have embraced the branding concept. In the past years Orient Pacific Century have been involved in creating brands for countries. At present a major re-branding exercise for Thailand is also under way, interestingly using not professional branding or advertising agencies but USA academics and some graduate business students from SASIN at Chulalongkorn University.

Now, the refined principles of branding are being used to market the war of terrorism after a series of major marketing blunders...

This story from Brand USA

The greatest branding challenge of all: to sell the United States and its war on terrorism to an increasingly hostile world.

The appointment of an ad woman to this post understandably raised some criticism, but Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shrugged it off. "There is nothing wrong with getting somebody who knows how to sell something. We are selling a product. We need someone who can re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy." Besides, he said, "She got me to buy Uncle Ben's rice." So why, only five months in, does the campaign for a new and improved Brand USA seem in disarray? Several of its public service announcements have been exposed for playing fast and loose with the facts. And when Beers went on a mission to Egypt in January to improve the image of the U.S. among Arab "opinion-makers," it didn't go well. Muhammad Abdel Hadi, an editor at the newspaper Al Ahram, left his meeting with Beers frustrated that she seemed more interested in talking about vague American values than about specific U.S. policies. "No matter how hard you try to make them understand," he said, "they don't."