ABSTRACT
In the spring of 2005, I was returning to Bulgaria for extended fieldwork on the country’s nation branding activities. Although I had been researching the topic remotely for over a year, there were moments when I was still not sure that nation branding was, in fact, a substantive phenomenon. Was there a clear set of ideas and practices that constituted nation branding? Or was this just a lot of hype? My uncertainty was somewhat abated almost immediately upon arrival. After landing at Sofia Airport, the first thing I saw from a friend’s car, as we drove away, was a giant billboard with the official Bulgarian national logo that had been recently approved by the Council for European Integration. The billboard seemed a bit odd; it simply displayed the large logo—an abstractly painted smudge in orange and yellow, intended to resemble a rose, and the word “Bulgaria” written in green under it—against a white background. There was no slogan because, as I would find out later, none had been agreed upon. Although the purpose of this billboard was unclear to me, something made its existence on the side of the highway possible and meaningful. That something was exactly what I had come to investigate.
