THE BRIGHT SIDE OF MONEY: A WEAPON OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION

The goal of this paper is to describe the way social identity is influenced by symbols people encounter in their everyday life. We studied the modern paper currency of all NATO countries, starting with the year 1960, over a span of 50 years. Our preliminary study reveals that the national currency has an important contribution to reflecting and promoting the peoples’ national identity and it is also a variable of building/changing the population’s values (political/ cultural/ religious/ historical). We can argue that, from a historical and relational perspective, money mirrors the ideology of a given period and it impacts society by promoting persons and symbols as watermarks on the paper currency. Our article dwells on the power of money, but we do not necessarily focus on its economic power, but on its capacity to become a tool for strategic communication within a nation.