In June 2023, Brussels launched their new international city brand to address the fragmentation of their international reputation. visit.brussels' Annemie Verschueren explains how they developed and launched a place brand that shows Brussels as perfectly imperfect and how they’re working with residents and stakeholders to tell the story of Brussels with one voice.

If you want to use an event to create a longer-lasting legacy, you have to be strategic. Tampere's Iina Ojala explores how they built on being named hosts of the 2022 IIHG Ice Hockey World Championship to build civic pride and engage the community in their place marketing and branding.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moldova saw thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing across their border. As a former Soviet republic, the country was facing a communication crisis. Invest Moldova's Irina Tolstousov explains how they launched the 'Moldova for Peace' campaign and what this means for their citizen engagement and soft power one year on.

Nurturing reputation and coming across as an influential player are both essential objectives for building soft power. But how should nation brands go about growing reputation and influence? Drivers analysis conducted by Brand Finance experts on the Global Soft Power Index data provides the answers.

Prioritising growth in terms of visitor numbers alone means that local residents are likely to lose out. The Travel Foundation's Kelly Galaski explores how destinations can embrace a holistic approach to planning that includes a broader range of key performance indicators to ensure you can make informed decisions for residents and visitors alike.

A place brand is far more than a logo. But at the same time, having a clear, consistent visual identity is a key component to unifying the different facets of our place as one voice. However, it’s also very easy to get wrong. After all, how do you capture something as multidimensionally complex as a city or nation on paper without being reductive? And what can you do to avoid your community critiquing the cost of the re-design?

If soft power is the ability of a place to influence the behaviour or actions of other actors in the international arena, what role does place branding have in generating and promoting soft power for your place?

We all know that climate change is happening, the evidence is all around us and increasing every year. So why is it so hard for us to think past the short term and make these adjustments? And how do we get people engaged in solving this issue? 

Sheffield needed a refreshed brand and narrative to help address their challenges in awareness, reputation and relevance. Discover how the city collaborated across private and public organisations to launch their place brand strategy and why it is that the city has had such success in updating their domestic and international reputation.

Costa Rica had a particular challenge: to transmit the essence and values of Costa Rica to every corner of the world, through the design of a new biometric passport. Discover how the team brought their nation brand strategy to life in their new passport design.

Over the years, we've been privileged to see some of the best and brightest of place branding and place marketing campaigns from around the world. As we gear up for the 2023 City Nation Place Awards, we wanted to some of our personal favourites from the Awards archive and to update it with the campaigns from last year that we just can’t stop thinking about!