When it comes to marketing, we often talk about moving “customers” through the funnel – in place branding terms, what it takes to convert your target audience into visitors, investors, or residents.

But what about when it comes to attracting, developing, and nurturing brand ambassadors?

Stakeholder engagement and management is crucial to a successful place brand strategy. It takes far more than a quarterly newsletter; you need a strategic, long-term approach to convert your stakeholders into advocates for your place vision.

Every city, region, or nation brand strategy is structured differently, with different governance and with different demands on their time. However, broadly speaking, place brand teams need to work with two types of stakeholder organisations: government and private sector.

We sat down with place leaders from around the world to discover how you can develop effective approaches to engaging each of these stakeholder categories – and to discuss what you can do to convert them into champions for your cause.

Mapping your stakeholders

On the CNP Accelerator course, we identify four key types of organisational stakeholders involved in place branding:

BRAND CREATORS who lead and shape the brand, including:

• Initiators: Decision-makers who fund the brand, set its strategic direction and framework, and hold the mandate for its development
• Shapers: Organisations whose actions contribute to your place’s reputation and who represent it to the world

BRAND DRIVERS who amplify and interact with the brand, including:

• Extenders: These organisations amplify and promote your place to broader audiences, creating visibility and reach without shaping its messaging framework
• Users: Individuals and organisations who experience your brand and whose feedback and referrals will impact on your reputation

 These are broad categories, and some organisations may sit in multiple locations. For example, IKEA is a major ‘shaper’ of Swedish reputation and, as such, has been invited to sit on the newly created Council for Brand Sweden. However, they are also ‘extenders’ who are able to provide additional reach and amplification to the Swedish nation brand communications.

It’s vital to take the time to identify the stakeholders who are impacting your strategy and to understand what role they play in your place’s reputation. Once you’ve identified the key players at an organisational level, it’s also worth undertaking this process as an individual level. Oftentimes it’s not the CEO or Department Leader who is most valuable person to be speaking to; you need to find the ‘doers’ – the people who are passionate about your place and can get things done, whether their role is leadership, marketing, or even HR. Keenness and passion can be far more valuable than seniority.

Taking an individual-centric approach also allows you to be more strategic with your stakeholder engagement, as you can target your communications to their specific requirements, preferences, and motivations. For example, are they proud residents who wanted to further the growth of their home? Or can they see the economic value a strong place brand would deliver for their own work? Once you understand what they want from place branding – and what moves them – you can make sure that you respond to these drivers in your own communications.

Below are some key considerations to get both government and private sector stakeholders to buy in to your vision.

Engagement tactics for government stakeholders

In many ways, government is the easiest stakeholder to get on-side; for the vast majority of place organisations, government is often one of the major funders of their place brand strategy.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s easy or that it doesn’t present complexities. Election cycles ensure that place teams frequently find themselves trapped in a continuous loop of educating and re-educating new leaders on the value of their work. Government departments can also fall into the trap of short-termism, believing that investment into a place brand strategy means diverting funding away from more immediate challenges – education, healthcare, infrastructure.

A strategic, considered approach is needed to ensure that your place brand strategy is as apolitical as possible and to build a network of advocates within government who will champion your work.

Here are key activities that you should be undertaking to keep your government on side – as recommended by place leaders from around the world:

• Lean into your values or unifying narrative that should enable different departments to align behind your strategy, despite their disparate objectives.
• Identify areas where you can fill a crucial need. By positioning yourself as a client service agency, you make yourself invaluable to your partners – and can pre-empt concerns that you’re competing for budget.
• Invest in evidence-based reporting and deep qualitative research, both to demonstrate that their perception of their place is not the dominant one, and to demonstrate the real-world impact of place branding as a discipline. Our research with Bloom Consulting is a great place to start, as it demonstrates the correlation between perception and economic performance.
• Invite people to participate in boards or working groups to give them agency in your strategy but make sure to rotate members to build advocates across government and to welcome in fresh perspectives.
• Supplement regular communication with events and bi-lateral / non-formal meetings to provide new opportunities for interaction and engagement. And crucially, ensure that these act as cross-party initiatives to prevent being tied up with a specific political agenda.
• Embrace the power of early adopters. The right people create concentric waves of influence that ease the path for others to become advocates of your strategy. Make sure you’re also including new and future leaders to ensure a future pipeline of ambassadors.
• Acknowledge the challenges you face but remember to amplify and celebrate the successes as well.

Engagement tactics for private sector partners

An engaged private sector adds credibility to your strategy. It demonstrates a bottom-up commitment, which can be beneficial in getting government partners on side but is also vital in establishing your work as a place-wide project rather than a government initiative.

Beyond that, your private sector is already living and creating your brand in the spaces where you want to communicate. They’re influencing your reputation whether they see it or not – so getting them behind your strategy is critical to ensuring they are amplifying the right narrative.

Here are some ideas on how you can successfully engage your private sector in your place brand strategy:

• Identify the right people who have a long-term vision for your place and will be impactful players in your strategy. For example, entrepreneurs are typically ‘doers’ who can act fast and are passionate about their place. Our research shows that 82% of startups and early-stage businesses said place reputation was very important to their business, but 59% had no contact with any place brand or marketing organisation. These individuals represent an untapped opportunity within your community.
• Give your private sector a voice at the table by inviting them to act as ambassadors or to co-chair development teams or projects. Offering the opportunity to participate in trade missions and media opportunities is also key.
• Use quantitative and qualitative research to demonstrate how your place brand provides them with differentiation in their sector.
• Make it as frictionless as possible for people to amplify your place brand strategy – but before you invest in a tool like a brand kit, make sure it’s something that your partners want and need.

From observer to champion

Place brand teams aren’t the owners of their brand – they merely steward it on behalf of their community. As such, having strong buy-in from your government and private sector partners is vital to ensuring an authentic place narrative that will deliver long-term returns for your community. By prioritising strategies that reinforce the strategic importance of your strategy, you create a strong foundation that will continue to support your place brand activities for years to come.

Thank you to all the place brand and marketing leaders who joined the CNP Lab discussion at the Global conference last week and contributed their wealth of expertise, as well as our guest moderators:

Todd Babiak, CEO, Brand Gold Coast
David Downs, CEO, New Zealand Story
Enzo Abbagliati, Digital Development Director, Imagen de Chile
Beryl Koltz, Head of LuXembourg – Let’s Make It Happen, Ministry of the Economy, Luxembourg
Mark Mobbs, Place Brand & Marketing Lead, Sheffield