Negotiating Nationalism: A Marketing-Based Exploration of a Baltic Collaborative Place Brand

This paper conceptualises how nationalist sentiments influence collaborative nation branding in the context of the Baltic nations’ foreign direct investment. Enterprise Estonia, Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, and Invest Lithuania operate as three investment promotion agencies, each with a mandate to promote and brand their nations for FDI attractiveness. An interview investigation on the Baltic investment promotion agencies reviews the case of each nation’s investment brands and investment branding process to assess the option to collaborate between promotion organisations to create a collaborative Baltic investment brand alliance. The study finds that neoliberal nationalism and economic nationalism may not be oppositional forces in the collaborative branding action, but rather nationalist sentiments may be reframed within the agency newly bestowed on transition nations. The findings extend previous nation branding literature by reflecting on the polarised views of the subject and taking into account the context of transition economies.