Medway in Kent was one of 25 areas in England awarded a share of £3 million to help them set their own standards for design locally. We asked Virginie Giles, Place Manager & Director for We Are Medway CIC, to explain more about the impact placemaking is having on the area, including the importance of bringing Medway’s diverse communities together to deliver positive change.

Recent industry efforts, like DMOcracy, have highlighted the important role technology can play in cultivating a participatory approach to tourism governance and development. Cornell University's O'Shannon Burns explores how smart city innovations can play a vital role in ensuring a more sustainable future for tourism.

Each year, we reach out to our community of place brand and marketing leaders to benchmark how the industry is developing and to take stock of emerging challenges and opportunities. With the continued global uncertainty, it once again seemed particularly pertinent to understand how strategies were evolving. Here are just a few of our key takeaways from the research to help inform your own strategies…

Your private sector is a core part of the make-up of your place. More than that, they can often be those with the most to gain from your strategy to grow tourism or attract new talent, and of course they can also be an important source of funding for place brand and marketing initiatives. So how can you engage them more effectively in your strategy?

Last week, Brand Finance launched their 2023 Global Soft Power Index. Against a backdrop of uncertainty and instability, it seemed particularly relevant to pause and take stock of how soft power was impacting – and being impacted by – world events. Discover which nations are leading the way and how smaller to mid-sized countries are creating an impact on the global stage.

Lithuania’s capital could easily employ at least 8,000 more IT specialists to sustain the ecosystem’s growth and similar numbers across Fintech, Biotechnology, and Lasers. International House Vilnius was set up to accommodate this need and make the city increasingly attractive for foreign talent.

Even as the pandemic restrictions lifted, many workers who could work from home chose not to return to commuting to Washington DC. The challenge: How to encourage people to return to their DC office, and return to participating in all the aspects of city life they used to love in DC?

Shelley Watson, Head of Marketing for Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, spoke with Asbjørn Overgaard Christiansen, CEO at Copenhagen Capacity, to understand Copenhagen’s success at attracting top talent and how Copenhagen’s sustainable values have proven such an asset.

How can you prove the long-lasting impact of your strategy when you’re advocating for the value of your work to your key stakeholders? Ten of our expert partners shared their thoughts on how place brand and marketing organisations can re-think their approaches to the Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] that they use and how you can make sure you’re measuring impact in the areas that will make a difference for your organisation.

Today’s traveller is focused on planning more personalised and meaningful travel experiences than ever before. For Destination Management Organisations, this presents an opportunity to grow their demand in this area by utilising comprehensive, timely and regular insights to better understand the needs and dynamics of their visitors and to get a sense of how their destination is doing in relation to their competitive set.

Maria Lypiatska, Head of BRAND UKRAINE and Strategic Communications Advisor for the MFA, outlines how they’re telling Ukraine’s story to the world during a war and shares lessons from crisis communications that hopefully you’ll never need to use.

On the 24th of February 2022, the war in Ukraine started, forcing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to leave their home country. As a multinational country, many of whose citizens had previously expressed pro-Russian views, Moldova faced a communication crisis. Discover how Invest Moldova launched a campaign to unite the nation.

Talent attraction is the global challenge right now. Katie Ralston Howe, the Director of the Workforce Division at North Dakota Department of Commerce, joined us to explore how they’re engaging their community in a strategy to attract new residents to the state.

Which trends will be making the biggest impact on place brand and place marketing strategies over the next twelve months? From sustainability to data to managing decreased spending budgets, five of our expert partners shared their insights to help you keep your finger on the pulse as you head into 2023.

Rural destinations are facing a potential renaissance. Idanha-a-Nova's Mayor Armindo Jacinto sat down with us to explain how a clear place brand strategy overturned decades of population decline and positioned the region as a place of opportunity and prosperity.