Articles

What makes a healthy place?

Today, the buzzwords of ‘wellbeing’, ‘wellness’, ‘sustainability’, ‘eco’, and ‘regenerative’ lay heavily on the imperatives of developers and placemakers. Hunter Design's Crispin Reed explores five factors for how places around the world are rising to the challenge and building health – both personal and environmental – into the DNA of their designs.

label_outline Destination ManagementPlace MakingSustainability

What Ukraine is fighting for

One year after the invasion began, Brand Ukraine launched a new campaign - #WhatWeAreFightingFor – which gave Ukrainian citizens the opportunity to share the reasons they kept fighting for their homeland. We reached out to Maria Lypiatska, Head of Brand Ukraine, to discover how the team are leveraging strong, authentic communication in the face of adversity, and how they’re giving a voice to more than 40 million Ukrainians.

label_outline Citizen EngagementCrisis ManagementPlace BrandingReputation

A tale of two business improvement districts

The Brixton X Harlem festival reached across continents to celebrate shared stories and weave together the rich tapestries of two iconic neighbourhoods that are deeply rooted in the African and Caribbean diaspora. We sat down with Gianluca Rizzo, Managing Director, and Jessica Dyer, Cultural Manager at Brixton BID, to understand how they put community at the heart of this placemaking initiative and what it took to make the twinning partnership successful.

label_outline CollaborationPlace MakingPrivate Sector

How Vilnius leveraged global news coverage of mass layoffs from the tech giants into a successful talent attraction campaign

When the headlines broke that Meta and Twitter were laying off huge swathes of their staff, Go Vilnius launched an opportunistic, guerilla marketing campaign to tempt people into moving to the city. Pija Ona Indriūnaitė, Head of Marketing for Go Vilnius, shares what inspired the strategy and what it means for the future of Vilnius as a Tech Hub.

label_outline Economic Development Place BrandingTalent Attraction

Travelling Bahamian style: How The Bahamas are connecting visitors with their residents

For 45 years, the team at The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Investments and Aviation has been connecting visitors to residents for a truly authentic experience. Bernadette Bastian, the Ministry’s General Manager and the driving force behind the People-to-People programme, joined us to talk about how they’re transforming tourists into temporary locals and creating lasting memories that unite residents and travellers. 

label_outline Citizen EngagementDestination MarketingTourism

Micro-adventures with major impact: Crafting a visual story for the Seattle Southside region

Explore Seattle Southside’s new visual identity is a testament to the power that a creative design can have in shaping perceptions of your place. Bringing together three distinct cities under one brand narrative, this new strategy celebrates micro-adventures and the quirkiness you can find under the surface of the most unexpected of places. To understand what the secret was to Seattle Southside’s success, we sat down with CEO Mark Everton to find out how they breathed new life into the region’s tourism marketing.

label_outline CollaborationDesignPlace Branding

The Leiden Equation: Unpacking the city’s successful formula for place branding

The Dutch city of Leiden is steeped in history – and is home to the country’s oldest university, founded in 1574. Fast forward some five hundred years, the city is leaning into its long heritage of scientific innovation to create an impactful place brand strategy that is engaging residents, businesses, and government alike in celebrating their proud history.

label_outline Citizen EngagementPlace BrandingPrivate Sector

Inside Fiji's award-winning place marketing campaign, ‘Where Happiness Comes Naturally’

Fiji’s stunning landscape has never been in question – but you need more than beautiful beaches to stand out from the crowd in an era of overwhelming competition for attention. Recognising that tourists were looking for more authentic travel experiences and that the Fijian need for storytelling was deeply rooted in their culture, Tourism Fiji set out to overhaul their strategy – and in the process, were named winners at the City Nation Place Awards for their efforts.

label_outline Citizen EngagementDesignPlace BrandingReputationTourism

Data wizardry and the future of Glasgow’s tech ecosystem

At the 2023 City Nation Place Awards, Glasgow became the first city to take home the trophy for Best Use of Data, in recognition of the comprehensive and innovative work undertaken to map out the city’s tech ecosystem and create a foundation for data-driven storytelling around the sector. We sat down with Glasgow City Council's Gavin Smyth to understand precisely what it is that led to this data-driven triumph.

label_outline DataEconomic Development Investment PromotionPrivate SectorTalent Attraction