MARCA PER: COMMUNICATING PER AS A BRAND

Marca Per: communicating Per as a brand out of context

Paloma Baytelman

Department of Media, Culture, and Communication New York University

December, 2012

MARCA PER: COMMUNICATING PER AS A BRAND

Introduction Imagine this situation: a red charter bus arrives to a small and quiet city in the middle of the United States called Peru, in Nemaha County, Nebraska. When the bus stops, about 30 people descend from it. They are all Pervians, not from Peru, Nebraska, but from Per, the Latin American Country. Pervian filmmakers, world-renowned chefs, champion surfers and celebrities are here to show how great is to be Pervian through food, music, sports, and folkloric traditions.1 This is the plot of the 15-minute video that the Ministry of Tourism of Per created in 2011 as a part of a commercial campaign.2 The objective was to promote the image of the country globally, but first the campaign look for encouraging national pride in Pervians, and therefore, make them feel as ambassadors of their country-brand. (Soldi 2012) The video was launched online on May 5, 2011, and in his first week online, goes viral receiving more than 680,000 hits on YouTube. (Abourezk 2011) Using common places, irony, dissimulation and contrast, this double edge propaganda video provides rich material to illustrate and discuss concepts relate with identity, communities and complexity of the stereotypes.

1 In order to make the distinction, in this essay I am going to refer as Pervians (with accent mark) to those
inhabitants of Per, as a country in Latin America, and Peruvians (without accent mark) to those inhabitants of the city of Peru, in Nebraska, United States. 2 Marca Per 2011 (Official Version with English Subtitles) http://youtu.be/RL9gsVy9gfU

MARCA PER: COMMUNICATING PER AS A BRAND

A national branding campaign for Per

After diagnosing the international perception of Per, the public relations arm of the government came to appreciate that it was largely based on stereotypes and clichs. (Promperu 2011) In 2007 some Pervian institutions related to the economy and tourism decided to solve this image problem, hiring the international branding agency FutureBrand. This company conduced an in-depth study showing the situation was not only affecting global markets, but also revealed that Pervians had a low perception of them-selves and of their own country. For them, touristic, cultural and human aspects were somewhat favorable elements associated with the image of Per; while the educational, political and social issues were not highly valued. (Promperu 2011) Improving this self-image would be an important first goal before taking on the international image of Per. The strategy taken to develop a unified national brand was to first convince Pervians on their own self-worth, before communicating this image on the world, explains Mariella Soldi, Director of Country Brand at Promper. (Soldi 2012) Lead by FutureBrand the project aimed to take advantage of the countrys growth and crescent performance in matters of investment, exports and tourism, making visible Pers multifaceted richness, that result of the combination of people, grounds, climates, goods and opportunities. (FutureBrand 2011) To achieve these objectives a board was created, comprised of representatives from Promper (Commission for the Promotion of Per Export and Tourism), Proinversin (Agency promoting private investment in Per), the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They started to look at how to showcase Per as an

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interesting country, based on its people, culture, flavors, opportunities, products and places. It was decided that the new country emblem would be its own name: Per. The board began working on campaigns related to Per as a word, its consistency in different languages, the accent mark, and the shortness of the term. As for the graphic design, it was inspired by motifs of Pervian ancient cultures, such as Cantalloc, Moche, Nazca and Inca, while they also sought for an identity associated with a strong projection into the future. In March 2011 the board introduced the new country brand Marca Per and two months later they launched an advertising campaign specifically created to raise awareness of the national identity among Pervians. The goal was to make them feel like proud country ambassadors, before approaching World Markets. One of the most successful pieces of the campaign was the video of Peru Nebraska.3

The plot: performance, irony and dissimulation The video is based on the idea of this group of Pervianscolorful, spicy and full of rhythmarriving in the other Peru to show why their Pervian culture and traditions are worthy of pride. Although the story develops in a very natural wayas if the habitants of Peru, Nebraska were surprised to receive these visitsthe situation is clearly a performance prepared in advance; it is a game full of irony that builds its message through contrast and dissimulation. There is 3 Marca Per 2011 (Official Version with English Subtitles) http://youtu.be/RL9gsVy9gfU

MARCA PER: COMMUNICATING PER AS A BRAND

something about this performance that is deliberately fake and playful. While the plot is being developed, we are fully aware of the game and the artifice: a false Per is being performed. Taking just some chosen aspect of Pervian identity, the images dissimulate the fact that the real Per is not there. (Baudrillard 1994) Peru, Nebraska, has a problem: the inhabitants are Peruvians, but they dont know what that means. This is one of the early sentences of the video that illustrates everything that the Per in Latin America is not: dull, plain, quiet, tasteless, nor lackluster. Via voice-over, as well as the participation of prominent Pervians, the video seeks to establish a maxim that all Pervianseven the Peruvians without the accent markshould appreciate how wonderful it is to be Pervian. (Promper 2011) The delegation of Peruvians is led by Pervian chefs Gastn Acurio, Christian Bravo, Ivan Kisic and Javier Wong; artists Magaly Solier, Carlos Alcntara, Gonzalo Torres and Dina Paucar; surfers Sofia Mulanovich and Gabriel Villarn; the tenor Juan Diego Flores and the journalist Rafo Len. Getting off the bus they shout: "You are from Peru, it's your right to eat delicious food". (Promper 2011) Then, the party started. Pervians share with Peruvians anticuchos, ceviche, chicha morada, alpaca burger, lcuma ice cream, Pervian pisco, cabrito a la nortea, yuca, huancana Potatoes, and Inca Kola (the best known Pervian soda). On the local dinner, they take out the ketchup and replace it with Pervian spicy dressings. Performing a huge fake wave with a blue plastic sheet, Villarn teaches how to surf, using a skateboard instead of a surfboard. Peruvian Sheriff John McNorman is convinced to replace his donuts with Pervian picarones. In a Pervian testing, Peruvians say that Inca Kola tastes like bubblegum, and yuca like french fries. Dina Paucar, promotes her Huayno show with colorful posters all over

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Peru. "Per Negro" teaches their African-Latin-American rhythms, and Juan Diego Flores sings on the local Peruvian radio station. In this way performance of dissimulation is created, trying to turn Peru into a more Pervian place (Baudrillard 1994). This American Peru has started, to quote Jean Baudrillard, to "live in an universe strangely similar to the original," (Baudrillard 1994, 11) if we concede that in this case the performed Perthat one with the accent markis the original, but dissimulated playing up this false Per to restore reality principle to Per: Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary." (Baudrillard 1994, 3) The permanent contrast shows that it is not intended to question, but to reinforce the real and the fake and open up many possibilities to determine what is genuine and what is false here. Indeed, the beauty of this drill is that it makes us fully aware of the game and the artifice. The idea seems to be to bring to Peru the essence of the Pervian nation as an imagined community (Anderson 1991): sovereign through its customs, imagined while all Pervians are invited to feel and to be part of this identity, and with boundaries shown when Pervians teach Peruvians about Pers geographical advantages. (Promper 2011)

MARCA PER: COMMUNICATING PER AS A BRAND

Communicating identity in contrast The video "Marca Per" suggests a strong sense of identity, showing all the elements of an imagined community: sovereignty, pride of belonging and boundaries. (Anderson 1991) Thereby the campaign seeks to generate an emotional tie among Pervians, showing things they have in common, highlighting cultural belongingness. But the video does not highlight cultural belongingness in a traditional way, but foregrounds it and contrasts it in what Stuart Hall (1996) calls a narrativization of the self: it is only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks, to what has been called its constitutive outside that the 'positive' meaning of any term - and thus its 'identity' - can be constructed. (Hall 1996, 4) In fact, Pervian identity arises here within a constructed fantasy, based on an imaginary Per, in a performance that emphasizes differences between Peru and Per, establishing a dialectical relationship between them. The Marca Per video generates those senses of identity and community first through dissimulation, and second, through juxtaposition. Regarding dissimulation, in spite of the fact that nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time (Anderson 1991, 3), this video does not highlight the socio-political aspects of Per's identity as a nation, but focuses on other cultural elements, such as food, music, dance, folklore, literature and sports. These cultural elements are shown in contrast to Peru, Nebraskaan equal in name, but a distinct other because everything else. Pervians play themselves in a performance full of clichs, but hiding or excluding some very important cultural aspects. This not only constitutes an irony, but also, as an entertainment

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piece, makes it harder to criticize. (Zizek 2004, p. 200-204) Similar Kofi Agawus description in The Invention of African Rhythm, in Marca Per those clichs are created by Pervians themselves, so we cannot say they are being misrepresented. Therefore, the Pervian identity is here what Agawu would call an invention, a construction, a fiction, a myth, a lie. (Agawu 2003) As a spectacle, the campaign represents the essence of what constitutes an identity, and promotes feelings of identity. According to Guy Debord (1977), the importance of spectacle is precisely in the deployment as society itself, as part of society, and as the meaning of unification, making up this unreal reality (Debord 1977, p. 3). Through this performance, famous Pervians, are asking American-Peruvians to embrace being Pervian, and actually encouraging real Pervians to embrace their own identity. Nations inspire love, and often profoundly selfsacrificing love. The cultural products of nationalism poetry, prose fiction, music, plastic arts show this love very clearly in thousands of different forms and styles. (Anderson 1991, 141) What this campaign ultimately does is employs the rhetorical formula used by Plato in Phaedrus: So, there is argument and counter-argument not only in the courts and places of public assembly but it seems that in all cases of speaking there would be one and the same art of some kind (if indeed it is an art) which enables someone to make everything similar to everything else, provided that things are comparable and able to be compared and, when someone else makes these similarities but hides the fact that he is doing so, to bring this to light (Plato 2003). Like Socrates, Hegel also brings up the relevance of this dialectical process between the thing and the denial of the same, as the key method of attaining truth. For Hegel, in order to go

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beyond sense certainties, it is necessary to first reach perception through the knowledge of the senses, and then to the understanding, by thinking about the thing, to finally get to the reason or absolute knowledge. This is only possible through the dialectical path of successive affirmations and negations, to achieve a synthesis between being and nothingness, and thus determine the essence of being (Hegel 1977). In order to understand Pervian identity from a Hegelian point of view, it is necessary to comprehend what Pervian identity is not; this is why the contrast between Per and Nebraska is so important--if we concede that Peru is the denial of Per. That juxtaposition makes this dissimulation evident, and also emphasizes the concept of the imagined community, which Anderson claims constitutes the idea of a nation (Anderson 1991).

Pervian Identity: stereotypes or archetypes According to Anderson, a nation, as a cultural artifact, is an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. Following this logic, the video seeks to generate or reinforce the belief that all Pervians constitute one big community, and it does it by juxtaposition and contrast (Anderson 1991, 32-33). However, the video does not present any clear political dimension of Per, a nation that is far from a unitary homogeneous community. Rather, Per is a racially, ethnically and socially diverse one. In this multicultural context, social interactions among Pervians have being characterized by inequality and by the social exclusion of indigenous and other minority segments of the population. (Espinosa 2011)

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According to psychologist Agustin Espinosa, in Pervian popular belief, national identity seems to be a matter of circumstance rather than of emotional bonding. He claims that there is no solid and strong national identity, but ambivalent stereotypes and self-views. Some people associate Per as a troubled society with underdevelopment, backwardness and marginality, other have high levels of positive identification with the country and a strong sense of belonging. (Espinosa 2011) Espinosa asserts that in Per, different ethnic and social groups give different perspectives on what means to be Pervian. The perception of Peruvian national identity is then partly based on stereotypes and valuations made up by the different groups that make Pervian society. In fact, Pervian society tends toward stereotyping and prejudice based on social and ethnic characteristics, although there often appears to be no awareness or explicit recognition of this. Based on the above, it is reasonable to think that the relevant issue for this campaign was to reinforce not the existence of a single national identity but on the possibility of achieving it on the basis of a collective self-esteem, positive and inclusive. As a part of its multicultural nature, Pervian identity is related to the Andean world, Amazon communities, colonial religious traditions, as well as African, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French and Spanish traditions. Although Pervian cuisine is a reflection of this mixture, it is also a symbol of collectiveness. Its folk music, for example, is one of the most diverse in the world, with pre-Inca wind and percussion instruments mixed with moderns ones. Taking some of those aspects, what Marca Per does is to dissimulate stereotypes, while highlighting Pervian archetypes, using recognizable Pervian symbols, such as famous people, well known food,

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sports, music and folkloric traditions. Using common tropessuch as sending Pervian black musicians to spice up Peruthe video not only constitutes a clich, but also a potential danger while some Pervian characteristics are highlighted, other are totally undermined. As a case study, Marca Per shows how complex it is to use stereotypeseven in a dissimulated way in attempting to foster national identity pride.

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References

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Promper. Documental Marca Per 2011 (Versin Oficial de la Campaa Nacional). May 12, 2011. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1991. Hall, Stuart. Introduction: Who Needs 'Identity'? in Questions of Cultural Identity, by Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 1-17. London: Sage Publications, 1996. Debord, Guy. The Commodity as Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red Books, 1977. Plato. Phaedrus. Edit by Stephen Scully. Newburyport: Focus Publishing, 2003. Abourezk, Kevin. Peruvian commercial filmed in Nebraska goes viral. June 5, 2011. http://journalstar.com/news/local/article_00de890e-257f-531c-acb2-b6928150b69d.html (accessed November 27, 2012). Soldi, Mariella. Director of Country Brand, Promper (personal communication, October 12, 2012). Promperu. Marca Peru. Presentation (unpublished) Lima, 2011. FutureBrand. Country Brand Peru . 2011. http://www.futurebrand.com/work/featured-cases/countrybrand-peru/ (accessed November 26, 2012). Espinosa, Agustin. Estudios sobre identidad nacional en el Per y sus correlatos psicolgicos, sociales y culturales. (PhD Dissertation) San Sebastin: Universidad del Pas Vasco, 2011. Zizek, Slavoj. Politics: A Plea for Cultural Revolution. En Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences, by Slavoj Zizek, 183-2013. New York: Routledge, 2004. Agawu, Kofi. The Invention of African Rhythm. En Representing African Music, by Kofi Agawu. New York: Routledge, 2003.