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.