There is no silver bullet in place branding; it takes sustainable commitment, over multiple years to begin to shift the needle. Here's how you can advocate for your work to convince budget holders of the importance of investing in a strong place brand and marketing strategy.

Louisa Shaw, Head of Place Marketing at We Are Staffordshire, shares what has driven the region's success, how they’re engaging the private sector as ambassadors, and what she’ll be looking for in a winning entry at the CNP Awards.

A successful place branding strategy is by its nature a long-term strategy, and those who don’t understand that will often be looking for shorter-term wins. So what does best practice look like when it comes to educating your stakeholders and giving a realistic overview of your impact? We reached out to the City Nation Place Expert partners to get their insight on what you should be focusing on.

How do you prove the efficacy of your place brand and marketing strategy? City Nation Place has carried out a research study to help place brand and marketing teams benchmark how they are measuring and demonstrating the impact of their work.

What can you do to demonstrate the impact that place marketing has on the bottom-line for your organisation? Mohamed Ashoor, Head of Digital Marketing at the, Bahrain Economic Development Board [EDB], talks to us about how they developed a marketing attribution model to show the impact that marketing has on delivering investments into the Kingdom.

Canberra is the capital city of Australia. But it’s not Australia’s most famous city. To tackle misconceptions about the city, the team at Canberra are unearthing the city’s DNA to position the city in a way that reflects their everyday reality and showcases Canberra’s strengths to a domestic and international audience. Isaac Mizrachi, Senior Director – Marketing for VisitCanberra, caught up with us to outline the strategy and vision for the city, as well as his top tip for other destinations looking to grow awareness of their place.  

How can we build attractive communities where people want to live, work, visit and invest? And what does it take to engage your community in creating a vibrant place?

The eight countries in the Nordics might look similar, but they’re pretty different in terms of size, nature, export markets and finally, nation branding. Still, they have a few crucial things in common. Find out how 'Nordic Talks,' a joint branding initiative, worked to enhance the Nordic Commonality and share their core values.

What sells newspapers and subscriptions can be hugely damaging to the respective nation, or city, often blowing concerns vastly out of proportion and creating long-lasting reputational impacts that take months or even years to overcome. So how can places retake control of the narrative to tell a new story?

Getting stakeholders to understand your vision can be a challenge at the best of times. Sweden’s solution to engaging stakeholders in your sustainability strategy? Storytelling. Per Grankvist, Chief Storyteller for the government-funded initiative, Viable Cities, explained to us how they’re pioneering a new approach to driving more sustainable change and how a local-centric approach is key to successfully changing behaviour.

How did Brand Tasmania create a unifying cultural expression to rally the local residents and stakeholders behind their place brand vision? Read this case study from our 2021 winners of the Place Brand of the Year Award here to discover how they wowed our judges.