Policies of branding Malta

Abstract

Even though recently coined, the subject of nation branding has always gained a lot of attention in the past as countries always strived to have a better nation brand with the hopes of attracting foreign direct investment to the country. What the term actually stands for and how a country can improve its nation brand varies amongst scholars and professionals. Over the years several interpretations on the subject have been made, and recent literature attributed much attention on the policy making arena. In 2006 Malta had a short lived nation branding campaign called Brand Malta, which campaign brought about interest into whether Malta perused techniques to improve its nation brand. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the concept of nation branding and how Malta addresses the subject. Secondly, in the absence of a nation branding strategy, what is contributing to Malta's improved nation brand? Being that policy making is a key feature in nation branding processes, the dissertation focused on Malta's strategic approach to policy making i.e. Vision 2015 and the inevitable influences on national policy due to EU membership. Two target industries, being Financial Services & Support and Creative Industries, were selected as case studies to look into the different aspects of these influences. Semi-structured interviews with the Prime Minister of Malta, Dr. Lawrence Gonzi, Dr. David Fabri and Toni Attard were conducted to address the research questions being that all three are involved in the policy making process in areas targeted by this dissertation. The findings show that even though Malta does not currently have a nation branding campaign, EU influences and the Maltese governments own effort to form a national strategy and at the same time implement it is ultimately influencing Malta’s improved nation brand.