Public Policies Branding; Benefits, Challenges and Solutions

Today, the brand is strongly associated with three important aspects of policy-making: framing and managing policy issues and policy solutions, activating and obliging actors to the policy-making process, and connecting with the wider environment through the media. The purpose of this study is to examine the benefits and challenges of branding in policy making and to find solutions to do so. To this end, firstly, the present research examined why branding is important in policy-making, the purposes of its use, its function in the policy-making process and how to do it in the literature. Then, through field research, the above three key questions were answered. Because of the limited study background, the qualitative research method was used. Eleven experts familiar with the two areas of branding and policy-making were purposefully identified by snowball method. In-depth semi-structured interview was used. And the data was analyzed through Theme analysis. To calculate the reliability of the interviews, the retest reliability method and the intra-subject agreement method were used, both of which were higher than 60% and therefore acceptable. Findings indicate the benefits or reasons for branding in public policies include managing audience perception, citizen and media demand, raising capital and stakeholder commitment, facilitating policy promotion, and increasing competitiveness. The challenges are insufficient knowledge of policymakers, lack of trustees for branding in public and government sector and economic and cultural problems such as inflationary economics and increasing fixed asset value despite the depreciation and neglect of intangible assets such as brand. To this end, it is necessary to change the knowledge and attitude of policy makers about this concept and its functions. It should also be addressed in scientific institutions. Identify its trustee and establish specialized institutions to create and evaluate policy brands or add to the mission of existing institutions.