At a quarter past twelve on any weekday, a Singapore hawker centre does something no government campaign has ever managed. Office workers, construction crews, retirees and tourists squeeze onto the same plastic stools, reserve seats with packets of tissue, and argue cheerfully about which stall makes the better char kway teow.

Nobody is selling Singapore to anyone. And yet, for many visitors, this is the moment the country becomes real and, quietly, lovable.

That is soft power in its natural habitat.

Soft power is a country’s ability to get what it wants by attracting others rather than coercing or paying them, drawing on the appeal of its culture, its political values and the way it behaves abroad.

The idea is usually filed under foreign policy. It belongs just as comfortably under branding, because a nation’s reputation behaves like a brand: built slowly by many hands, damaged quickly by a few, and never fully controlled by its nominal owner. Follow it through Korean dramas and pop, Japanese “cool”, Thai kitchens and Singapore’s hawker stalls, and one question keeps surfacing, the one governments least like to hear. Can you actually manufacture it?

Who coined “soft power”, and what did he mean?

The phrase belongs to Joseph Nye, the Harvard political scientist who later served as dean of the Kennedy School. He set it out in 1990, in his book Bound to Lead and an essay in Foreign Policy, and expanded it in 2004 in Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. He died in May 2025, by which time his phrase had escaped the seminar room and entered the vocabulary of tourism boards, culture ministries and marketing departments around the world.

Nye’s definition was careful. Hard power works through threats and payments, sticks and carrots. Soft power works through attraction: getting others to want what you want. He named three sources, culture, political values and foreign policy, and argued that they count only when others find them attractive.

That last condition is the one brand owners will recognise. A brand is what people believe about you, not what you say about yourself. A nation’s soft power is the same.

The culture ministry can write the brief. Audiences decide whether it lands.

The Korean Wave began with audiences, not a strategy

The Korean Wave is often told as a triumph of national planning. Its origin story is messier, and more instructive.

The term itself was coined abroad. On 19 November 1999 the Beijing Youth Daily used “Korean Wave” to describe Chinese viewers’ enthusiasm for Korean television dramas and pop songs. Then came Winter Sonata, a romantic drama that aired in Japan in 2003 and 2004 and made its lead actor, Bae Yong-joon, so popular that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi remarked that the star was more popular in Japan than he was. Fans began travelling to Nami Island, one of its filming locations.

The state did matter. In the 1990s South Korea began to treat cultural products as exports, and in 1999 the National Assembly passed a basic law to support the cultural industries. In 1998 the government also began lifting its long-standing restrictions on Japanese cultural imports, a step completed by 2004, which exposed Korean creators to a mature neighbouring pop industry. Competition sharpened them.

What followed was a run of moments no ministry could have scripted. Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube video to pass a billion views, in December 2012. Parasite won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2020, the first film not in English to do so.

Squid Game, released by Netflix in September 2021, became the platform’s most-watched series at launch. That same year the Oxford English Dictionary added both “hallyu” and “Korean Wave”. The nation brand had entered the English language.

The halo effect

Watch how the halo spreads. Korean instant noodles found overseas fans after appearing on screen.

Cosmetics, fashion and tourism rode the same current, and the Korea Tourism Organization built its “Imagine your Korea” campaign in 2014 around the entertainment that people already loved. In 2013 UNESCO inscribed kimjang, the communal autumn making and sharing of kimchi, on its list of intangible cultural heritage. A fermented cabbage became a diplomatic asset.

A Korea Tourism Organization campaign teaser starring EXO: the national tourism brand leaning on entertainment people already love.

The government also tried to push food directly. In 2009 it launched Global Hansik, a programme reported at US$77 million, with goals that included making Korean food a top-five international favourite and reaching 40,000 Korean restaurants worldwide by 2017. The targets were ambitious. What did more for Korean food abroad, arguably, was a drama character slurping ramyeon at midnight.

Cool Japan: what happens when the state tries to bottle cool

Japan’s experience is the cautionary chapter.

In 2002 the American journalist Douglas McGray published an essay in Foreign Policy called “Japan’s Gross National Cool”. His argument was that Japan, stuck in economic stagnation, had quietly become a cultural superpower through manga, anime, games, fashion and food. Tokyo took the compliment and turned it into policy.

In 2010 the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry set up a Creative Industries Promotion Office under a “Cool Japan” banner. In 2013 the government created the Cool Japan Fund, committing ¥50 billion over 20 years to invest in ventures that would sell Japanese culture abroad. Within five years it had reported pretax losses of around ¥10 billion.

Ventures such as a satellite channel and a department store in Kuala Lumpur lost money. Critics pointed to vague strategy, poor coordination between ministries and too little input from the foreigners the whole exercise was meant to attract.

The irony is hard to miss. The cool that McGray described was made by animators, game designers, chefs and street-fashion kids, almost none of whom worked to a government brief. When the state tried to become the author rather than the amplifier, the brand went flat.

Japan’s soft power did not collapse, of course. UNESCO recognised washoku, traditional Japanese food culture, in December 2013.

In Brand Finance’s 2026 Global Soft Power Index, Japan rose to third place, behind only the United States and China. The lesson is not that Japan lacks appeal. It is that appeal and the bureaucracy built to sell it are different things.

Thailand cooked its way into the world’s affections

If Cool Japan shows the limits of state branding, Thailand shows the version that works: practical, patient, and aimed at something people already wanted.

In 2002 the Thai government launched its Global Thai programme, sometimes called Kitchen of the World. The aim was concrete. There were roughly 5,500 Thai restaurants outside the country; the target was 8,000 by 2003.

The state offered model restaurant plans and finance through state-owned banks. By 2011 there were more than 10,000 Thai restaurants worldwide.

The genius was in the channel. Every Thai restaurant in Melbourne, Manchester or Minneapolis is a small embassy that customers pay to visit. Nobody feels marketed to while eating green curry. And each meal makes the next holiday to Bangkok a little more likely.

In December 2024 UNESCO added tom yum kung to its intangible heritage list, at a meeting in Asunción, Paraguay. Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra described the dish as part of Thai soft power, which tells you how explicitly the country now thinks in these terms. Brand Finance’s 2026 index ranked Thailand 38th overall but seventh in the world for two attributes, “food the world loves” and “fun”. Those are not bad words to own.

The academic term for all this is gastrodiplomacy. Its premise is old and simple: the quickest way to a nation’s heart runs through its stomach.

Singapore’s hawker centres: soft power you cannot fake

Singapore never set out to export hawker culture. Hawker centres grew up during the rapid urbanisation of the 1950s and 1960s, partly to deal with unhygienic food preparation by unlicensed street hawkers. A public-health measure became, over decades, a social institution. In 2016 two hawker stalls, Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle and Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodle, became the first street food vendors to receive a Michelin star.

In 2020 UNESCO inscribed “Hawker culture in Singapore, community dining and culinary practices in a multicultural urban context” on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The description is worth reading closely, because it reads like a brand positioning statement written by an outsider.

UNESCO’s own film on hawker culture in Singapore: the outsider’s view that reads like a brand positioning statement.

Hawker centres are described as community dining rooms where people of different backgrounds and incomes eat side by side. Many hawkers specialise in a single dish, passing recipes to family members or apprentices. Some started in the 1960s.

That is the essence of credible soft power. It is not a slogan about multiculturalism; it is a plate of chicken rice bought from a Hainanese stall, eaten next to a Malay family and an Indian office worker. The proof is in the behaviour. Visitors leave having experienced the national values rather than read about them.

It also carries a warning. Soft power rooted in living practice depends on the people who practise it. If young Singaporeans stop taking over the woks, no inscription will keep the asset alive. Brands face the same risk when their most loved quality sits in a few craftspeople and nobody plans the succession.

Beyond Asia: the same pattern, other accents

The pattern repeats wherever you look.

Turkey has become the world’s second-largest exporter of television dramas, behind only the United States, overtaking the telenovela giants Mexico and Brazil. Every episode sold abroad is an hour of Turkish streets, homes and manners watched by choice.

Nigeria’s film industry grew from the bottom up. Living in Bondage, a direct-to-video film released in 1992, is often credited with starting the modern Nollywood era, and the industry found its audience across Africa and its diaspora through informal sharing long before formal distribution caught up. No ministry designed it.

Peru invested in its cuisine as a national story from 2006 and won the World’s Leading Culinary Destination award every year from 2012 to 2019. Taiwan ran a food diplomacy campaign of its own in 2010, “All in Good Taste”. Different budgets, same insight. People love what they can taste, watch and sing along to.

Can a government actually manufacture soft power?

This is the question that splits the online debate. One side credits Seoul’s investment after the 1997 financial crisis. The other points out that nobody can produce figures for state spending on K-pop specifically, and argues that private entertainment companies spotted an opening the government only later embraced.

Both sides are partly right, and the branding view helps reconcile them. Governments are poor authors and decent amplifiers.

They can remove barriers, as Korea did with its cultural industries law. They can fund infrastructure, as Thailand did with restaurant finance. They can protect and certify, as Singapore and Thailand did through UNESCO.

What they cannot do is decree that something is cool. Attraction is granted by the audience.

Measurement is improving, if still imperfect. Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Index surveys more than 150,000 people in over 100 countries. Its 2026 edition placed South Korea 11th, up one place, with strong scores for loved products and brands and for influence in arts and entertainment.

Rankings like this are useful as a mirror. Treat them as a compass and you start chasing the score rather than the substance.

What brands can borrow from nations

For a business, soft power is not abstract. It arrives as a country-of-origin halo, and it can be used.

Picture a family kaya maker in Bedok preparing to sell in Jakarta. It does not need to explain Singapore. Its buyers have already met the country through its airport, its food and perhaps a holiday spent queueing at a hawker stall. The brand’s job is to connect to that existing affection with honesty, not to manufacture a new story from scratch.

Three principles travel well from nation to company. Start with what people already love about you, and amplify it rather than inventing a replacement. Prefer channels where the audience experiences rather than reads, whether that is a restaurant, a stream or a sample. And accept that the most persuasive storytellers will usually be people you do not employ: fans, chefs, critics and customers.

Before you leave the table

Who invented the term soft power?
The American political scientist Joseph Nye introduced it in 1990 and developed it in his 2004 book Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. He defined it as getting others to want what you want through attraction rather than force or payment.

Is hawker culture on the UNESCO list?
Yes. UNESCO inscribed hawker culture in Singapore on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020, recognising hawker centres as multicultural community dining rooms.

What is the difference between soft power and nation branding?
Soft power is the influence a country gains when others find its culture, values and conduct attractive. Nation branding is the deliberate effort to shape and communicate that reputation, and it works best when it amplifies attraction that already exists.

If your brand is ready to carry Singapore’s reputation into new markets, start with our guide to the EDGE grant for international branding.