Branding Hrvatska — a mixed blessing that might succeed: The advantage of being unrecognisable

Abstract

The Republic of Croatia — Republika Hrvatska, according to the original linguistic version of its name — has a whole set of identification problems: from the West it is one of those hardly recognisable post-socialist, post-Yugoslav, post-war … countries that lack any traditional international image, and it is also a country tarnished by the most inappropriate political idiom recently invented. It is a country in transition (like so many others); that is why branding Hrvatska means getting rid of all those negative labels and inventing a new one that would be based upon the country's real potentials and its genuine character … and that could last, being resistant to the competition in the 'transitional Europe' of today and the united Europe of tomorrow.