Abstract

The article presents the justification of the place branding as the direction of modern politics. The range of correlations was identified by temporal and synchronized comparison of the world rankings of countries / cities development and their branding strategies as the territories. It is proved that the territory brand – is an immaterial product of political activity, which is able to act as the asset of the foreign state’s policy and its territorial­administrative unit, development indicator of civil society and the political practice of system self­organizing, harmonization of relations in society, between government and business, production values and collective meanings. The author singled out the main reasons and key factors of the neutral­negative concept­image of Ukraine on the basis of summarizing the empirical material (sociological polls, media­audit of internal and external information space of Ukraine, and the analysis of power­oppositional and expert discourses). The article includes the ways of correction of the branding strategy of Ukraine, especially concerning the image of power, content and metaphors of the state’s information policy, the legal framework of the state branding and the reform of its territorial system.