Drug Cartels and Apartheid: Critical Study of Nation Branding in Developing Countries Burdened by Stigmatizations

Abstract: Nation branding is gaining increasing importance between both scholars and practitioners. Although, research in this field seems to focus mainly on developed economies, developing countries are affected by a “label effect” of being categorized as ‘developing’ which generates tacit social stigmatizations. Hence, their attempts to craft a desirable brand image to attract investment, tourism and human resources must deal with these stigmas. In this thesis we explore the effort of two developing countries, Mexico and South Africa, in crafting a desirable and compelling nation brand. In order to accomplish this purpose we employ a semiotic analysis of four video campaigns (targeted to internal and external audiences) and a lexical semantic analysis of brand perceptions from an online community.