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CPD’S VISITING RESEARCH FULBRIGHT CHAIR TO PUBLISH BRANDING CANADA: PROJECTING CANADA’S SOFT POWER
MAY 8, 2008
 A conversation with Dr. Evan Potter about his upcoming book Branding Canada: Projecting Canada's Soft Power through Public Diplomacy.
What initially led you to write this book?
I think it was my strong sense that although Canada is a well-liked country, probably one of the most in fact, people don’t really know much about it, aside from some easy stereotypes, and even those are incomplete, and from another century really.
When teaching an Introduction to Media Studies course, I was thinking about how Hollywood had constructed Canada. The late Canadian writer, Pierre Berton, in his book, Hollywood’s Canada: the Americanization of our National Image, shows how Canada essentially became a back lot for Hollywood. The book’s (sadly) amusing anecdotes show how Hollywood – in the course of over 600 films about Canada - completely distorted Canada’s geography, offered insulting stereotypes of French Canadians, Indians, Mounties, women, and provided a very inaccurate picture of Canada’s history, character, and even climate. When I talked to students about the history of film, we noted that the Canadian English-language feature film industry has always suffered from Canada’s geographic proximity to the United States. The fact is that Hollywood controlled Canadian commercial film production, distribution,and exhibition for most of the last century. So, apart from documentaries produced by Canada’s highly-respected National Film Board, how did the rest of the world get to know Canada? Through Hollywood.
From the classic film, Nanook of the North (1922), about Canada’s Inuit (Eskimos) to the idealized images of Mounties on horseback in the Rockies in the 1930s and 1940s, foreigners in the first half of the 20th century could have been forgiven for thinking that Canada didn’t have any cities at all – just mountains, moose and Mounties. Several generations of the attentive global public in the last century could probably not conceive of Canada as a modern, industrialized nation. And the vestiges of these inaccurate images of Canada – a Group of Eight member country - remain to the present day.
Modern Canada is hiding in plain sight. In summary, Canada has an incomplete image and in an increasingly competitive international environment where (as in domestic politics) image is increasingly reality, an incomplete nation brand will have damaging consequences. If a country is not accurately presented and well-known internationally foreign students will not come to study, tourists will not visit, foreign direct investment will flow elsewhere, skilled immigrants will take their expertise and energy to other shores, and diplomatic prestige will suffer since the country is not top-of-mind among global decision makers.
So I wanted to find out what role the federal government has had in managing Canada’s national brand. It seems to me that a national government has a limited, but nonetheless vital role to play in managing the national brand. It can provide a corrective to misinformation; it can ‘fill in’ the nation brand by providing additional information and by helping to coordinate the public relations efforts abroad of the Canadian private and voluntary sectors – a so-called ‘whole-of-country’ approach to ensure that Canada’s voice is heard around the world .
What do you consider is the trajectory of this concern over Canada’s international role and image? Are there other individuals or communities who have been vocal about the issue?
Well, at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s there was a notion in the West that we deserved a peace dividend. In Canada there was also a sense that if we did not get our national debt and deficit under control, we would, according to an oft-quoted editorial in the Wall Street Journal, become a card-carrying member of the third world. In order to get our financial house in order, the government made necessary budgetary cuts which led to large cuts in our international envelope – defense, development assistance and diplomacy or the 3 ‘Ds’. We retreated from the international arena.
And yes, the world noticed. There was the classic 2003 Time Magazine (Canada edition) cover story, “Would Anyone Notice if Canada Disappeared”, which was essentially a reaction to Andrew Cohen’s book While Canada Slept, synthesizing the prevailing view that Canada has wasted its opportunities for greater influence in the world. It was less academic and very widely read. It really struck a chord nationally - especially among journalists, academics, and policy makers in Ottawa.
Since then, there has been a call to re-invest in the international portfolio. In the post-9/11 world it has become clear that we cannot afford to be absent from the international arena. And not only do we have to be present, but we also have to be active: one-part present, one-part promotion. I don’t think that Canada is in the habit of self-promotion, maybe it’s not part of the Canadian character, but this will have to change.
In the 1950’s we didn’t have to promote - but through the 80’s, 90’s and especially now, the global marketplace is crowded with countries competing for attention and influence. So, if we don’t promote, as I said, we’ll get drowned out and people, and business, will go elsewhere.
It seems that you are joining in the call for improved policy and management. Was there a particular audience you were directing your book towards when writing it?
Mainly towards the policy community, yes. I hope that the book will help to focus minds on the importance of narrowing the “say-do” gap. The most powerful public diplomacy – that is, the best way to influence global public opinion – comes from embarking on concrete initiatives (money, soldiers, aid workers, intellectual leadership) to address global problems. Not only do you have to ‘just do it’ (to borrow a slogan from Nike), but you also have to be seen to be ‘doing it’. And, naturally, there needs to be a very close alignment between what you say you are doing and what you are actually doing. A country risks losing credibility if its rhetoric is not supported by the facts of what it is doing on the ground. Credibility is like a reservoir: it takes long time to fill up, but can be drained very quickly as a result of a misstep. In short, a nation’s public diplomacy can fail in two ways: you do nothing and trumpet that you are doing something, or, you are doing something very well and you don’t tell anyone about it.
There’s no room for being sheepish or shy in our information age. Nations which are shy are ignored; their good work is ignored. If you don’t establish a track record, people won’t go back to you again for help with their global problems. This can have implications. So, all this is not about being boastful or egotistical; the ability to manage what Hans Morgenthau refers to as “prestige” in his classic book, Politics Among Nations, has very real consequences across a range of national interests – diplomatic, economic and social/cultural.
What surprised you the most in the course of your research and in the process of writing this book?
I had a bit of an epiphany when I was writing the preface. In retrospect, it seems fairly obvious: a strong cultural and artistic community is vital for a strong public diplomacy. A country’s ability to project a coherent image abroad depends on vibrant cultural communities at home because they will create the foundation for the nation brand. In other words, the image will influence relations on all elements of the brand – immigration, education, policy, trade and investment. Before people encounter a nation through investment or migration, they encounter it mostly through culture—in a movie, in books, in a conversation with someone from that country. And that exposure may pique interest about a country. However, that interest usually has to be developed by further exposure and this is where government can help. Even the Great Powers – US, France, Russia, UK – recognize that as large as their cultural communities are (in other words, their cultural output will seep into the international arena by virtue of its critical mass without government help), there is still a place for government to manage bilateral and multilateral cultural relations in the national interest.
There’s one particular vignette I would like to share which illustrates this idea of the link between domestic support of a cultural community and the ability to project a positive international image. In 2004, the Canadian movie, The Barbarian Invasions, by Quebec director, Denys Arcand won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The film was produced thanks, in part, to the financial support from the Canadian and Quebec governments. The Canadian consulate-general in California, Telefilm Canada and the Quebec government’s office in Los Angeles all worked together to help promote this movie to Academy members. On Oscar night, when the film was awarded the Oscar and the recipients got on stage in front of a worldwide audience of over 1 billion people, I seem to recollect that they thanked the Government of Canada and Quebec. Think of how rarely, if ever, a government gets thanked for an Oscar! I think this is symbolic of the role of government in supporting culture and the link to public diplomacy. Would the film have been produced in the absence of government support? Maybe. Would it have received an academy award without the collective push of several levels of the Canadian government? Maybe. However, there is no doubt that the odds were improved on all counts with the catalytic role played by government.
And finally I would like to emphasize another domestic dimension of public diplomacy – the feedback loop. Seeing your country through the mirror of the world can be very important for bolstering national pride and identity. If the world sees you positively – and it does see Canada positively – this can be an important ingredient for national social cohesion. For instance, when the world saw Canada as the quintessential peacekeeping nation, that pride cut through regional divisions; Canadians from Newfoundland, Quebec, British Columbia all shared that sentiment.
With the reinvestment in Canada’s 3 ‘D’s over the last 5 years (notably in the Canadian military) and with increased government support for the arts through the Canada Council for the Arts and other agencies, Canada is closing the ‘say-do’ gap and Canadian public diplomacy has a more promising future.
Interview conducted by CPD Contributing Researcher, Anoush Rima Tatevossian.
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