Propaganda rebranded? Finland’s international communication from the Kantine committee to the Mission for Finland report

ABSTRACT

This joint article starts with Finland’s nation branding to look at image-building activities as context and path-dependent activities. The main empirical example will be Finland’s image-building efforts between 1988 and 2011. Despite changes in tone and methods, the 2011 Mission for Finland-report on the nation’s brand and the 1990 Kantine-report were both parts of a continuum in Finland’s image policy practices. In an effort to contribute to studies drawing historical comparisons between image crafting policies, we would like to suggest that different contexts in fact produced different patterns of the same phenomenon, different expressions of the same urge to present Finland to the world for what was perceived as pressing political, economic, and identity-based reasons. On this basis, our article suggests a series of variables with which to organise differences and similarities between the development of Finland’s 1980s–1990s public diplomacy and its 2008–2011 branding committee and following campaign.

KEYWORDS:

• Nation branding
• Finland
• history
• path dependency
• public diplomacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In their edited volume, Carolin Viktorin, Jessica Gienow–Hecht, Annika Estner and Marcel K. Will (2018) build a strong case for such a historical approach to nation branding, both by reconnecting current policies to historical continuities and by using nation branding as a category of thought in the study of past cases.

2. Finland adheres to a 25-year rule for the release of government documents, and Kantine’s papers were released to the public in 2010 following these normal archival regulations (Finnish Foreign Ministry’s Archives, archive group 19, Kantine records).

3. Katja Valaskivi was the director of the Finnish Institute in Japan (2002–2005). At that time, the Institute, together with the Foreign Ministry, organised a campaign called Feel Finland (2003). This was a time when professional, marketing oriented ways of producing events for national image-building were becoming a trend in the Nordic countries, and Finland launched its own programme for ‘cultural exports’. Feel Finland was inspired by the campaign Swedish Style, organised in Tokyo a couple of years earlier. Later, Valaskivi was an expert member of the Finland Promotion Board (2014–2018).

4. In 1961, a ‘committee on information activities’ gathered in the Foreign Ministry and concluded its work by emphasising that ‘information activities are an essential part of the country’s foreign policy’. The report specified that the crafting and spreading of Finland’s national image for foreign consumption had to be coordinated by state authorities, and especially by the Foreign Ministry (Anonymous 1961, 1–9). For decades, this report functioned as the blueprint of Finland’s ‘information activities abroad’ (cf. Clerc, Glover, and Jordan 2015, 145–171).

5. Finnish Foreign Ministry’s Archives, Kantine papers, Box 3, Esittelylista valtioneuvoston yleiseen istuntoon (list of items to be examined during a general session of government), 27 October 1988, signed by Ralf Friberg.

6. The committee conducted a series of interviews with Finnish diplomats, whose testimonies convinced the members that Finland was either ignored or had a bad reputation. The Embassy in Denmark, for example, signalled that most Danes would associate Finland primarily with heavy drinking and the Soviet Union (see Finnish Foreign Ministry’s Archives, Kantine papers, Box 6, telex, Copenhagen, 14 November 1988).

7. In March 1989, the committee created a ‘commercial-economic sub-committee’ in order to discuss elements of ‘trademark Finland’. Cf. Finnish Foreign Ministry’s Archives, Kantine papers, Box 1, Pöytäkirja (transcription of debates), 8 March 1989 meeting.

8. http://www.formin.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=60114&contentlan=1&culture=fi-FI (accessed 5 May 2017).

9. Finnish governments are almost systematically coalition governments, which start their term by a round of negotiations in order to establish a governmental programme for their mandate. These programmes are approved in Parliament and used as political roadmaps for the legislative term.

10. An oft-used quote by Simon Anholt, the British nation branding consultant and developer of the Nation Brands Index. It was repeated in interviews by several civil servants and has also been used in public by both Jorma Ollila and Alexander Stubb (Valaskivi 2016a).

11. Simon Anholt, Finland’s competitive identity – final report (12 October 2009).

12. A website was open in order for Finns to describe ‘their’ Finland, from which some parts were then compiled into the book mentioned above (Isokangas 2010).

13. Demos Helsinki is an independent think tank, founded in 2005. It focuses on projects aiming at sustainability and the democratic development of society. Demos was one of the first among a still-continuing boom of think tanks in Finland in the 2000s. Although independent, with its strong emphasis on environmental issues Demos is often seen as being close to the Green movement: https://www.demoshelsinki.fi/en/.

14. In the time of writing this in 2017, these Team Finland communication functions that focus on business sector were again shifted into the Ministry of Trade and Industry from the Prime Minister’s office (https://valtioneuvosto.fi/artikkeli/-/asset_publisher/team-finland-uudistaa-palveluaan-ja-toimintamallejaan?_101_INSTANCE_3wyslLo1Z0ni_groupId=1410877, accessed 8 August 2018) The idea of all-purpose coordinated communication has been seen as problematic by most actors throughout the process, since different organisations have different aims, purposes, and focus groups (e.g. Larsen 2016).

15. Interviews conducted under condition of anonymity by Katja Valaskivi, with Visit Finland and Ministry for Foreign Affairs civil servants, 2011.

16. In one of its most revealing quotes, the 2010 brand report claims that: ‘Thus, problems are rarely political, let alone moral. […] Finland is a country where engineering skill provides the answer even to the disposal of nuclear waste. In other countries this would be an ethical problem, here, it is a practical one’ (Country Brand Delegation 2010, 82).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louis Clerc

Louis Clerc is a professor in Contemporary History at the University of Turku, Finland.

Katja Valaskivi

Katja Valaskivi is Research director at COMET, University of Tampere, Finland.