A vibrant place needs three things: a strong place brand acting as a north star; an impactful marketing and communications strategy; and a placemaking vision to bring the brand to life. However, while place branding and marketing are hot topics of discussion, integrating this into the physical spaces in your city or region often isn’t even on the agenda for place teams.

We wanted to know – what should place brand and marketing teams be doing to contribute to or deliver a placemaking strategy that will build the attractiveness and reputation of their place? Below, we’ve collected fifteen expert perspectives to ensure that you’re ready to take your strategy to the next level.

You need branding, marketing, and placemaking to succeed.

Place marketing, place branding, and placemaking should never be treated as isolated expertises; their true power emerges in their integration. Place branding unveils a place’s singularity, place marketing communicates that identity through accessible formats and narratives, and placemaking translates it into vibrant urban experiences. They actively inform spatial decisions, elevating placemaking from intervention to strategy. Together, they align narrative and experience, cultivate belonging, engage communities, and embed the place in the collective imagination. More than promotion, because they are meant to be co-created, they help shape desirable futures, turning place into a strategic asset.

Caio Esteves, Managing Partner, N/LF

Break down the silos to deliver greater impact.

Place brand and marketing teams shouldn’t be working in a silo. By encouraging cross-departmental collaboration, and bringing key stakeholders, decision-makers, and community members together, you have a more authentic and stronger foundation to build place attractiveness and reputation. Empowering your marketing team to come up with ideas to implement with other departments and vice versa helps create cohesion, reiterating your place brand, and creating a halo effect. This allows for a greater connection with your key audiences no matter how they engage with your place brand

Jessica McCarthy, President, Joy Riot

Make sure you’re walking the talk.

Don’t just decorate; demonstrate. If your brand value is all about being welcoming then ensure you design spaces that truly are welcoming. Most city's say they are welcoming but their built environment tells a different story. If creativity is a core value, then the environment must show creativity through form, function, and experience. When brand values come to life physically, they become more than words.

Ryan Short, CEO, CivicBrand

Don’t try to be everything to everyone.

Placemaking can be a challenge for DMOs specifically because of the seemingly unspoken rule that a destination should have "something for everyone." The rub, however, is that destinations that try to appeal to every type of traveller wind up looking and sounding like everywhere else. The most successful placemakers start with a strong brand essence. Identifying that one core value or characteristic that is so unique to your region that no other place can claim it and using it as a common thread as new experiences are developed is the best way to break through the noise.

Trey Williams, SVP of Strategic Planning, MMGY

Provide the brand filter to guide the placemaking strategy.

We could argue that placemaking strategy develops from the bottom up, from the communities who live in a place, the landscape they shape, and the experiences they create. Once those elements are understood, we hand them over to the creative bods to build a brand and develop the marketing.

Or we can flip the question and ask: Can you even develop placemaking strategies that build attractiveness and reputation without input from brand and marketing teams?

Placemaking is about people and collaboration. Of course, brand and marketing teams should contribute, not just by crafting campaigns, but by listening, looking, experiencing, and filtering what they see. And then doing it again, as the strategy evolves and the plans take shape. Iteratively. Consistently. In step with the place itself.

Jim Dawson, Head of Marketing, Go To Places

Bring the brand to life in the physical environment.

Place brand and marketing teams not only contribute to placemaking strategy, they make sure it’s visible both on the ground and online. Working with place strategists, they ensure the identity and story of a place comes through in real, tangible ways, using audience insight to push for big ideas and projects that matter, giving people, places and communities what they actually want and need. They bring stakeholders voices to the table, get alignment, and help move things forward, even when interests compete. They roll up their sleeves, set priorities, and make sure every strategic action strengthens place experience and reputation."

Barry Rogers, Destination Strategy Director, TOPOSOPHY

Supply the data and insight to inform placemaking strategies.

We often talk about storytelling in place branding, but sometimes it’s about creating the story—shaping a place’s identity by involving communities and helping spaces come to life. After all, destinations are full of public spaces, but not all are used, celebrated, or even well known. Marketers act as the bridge between people and place. By analysing where people gather (or don’t) and what they say about those places, we uncover what works and what doesn’t. That insight directly informs placemaking strategies—guiding activations, highlighting underused areas, and building reputation through real-world relevance and meaningful experiences.

Mirko Lalli, CEO, The Data Appeal Company

Translate data into action.

Great place marketing starts with great research. The same is true of placemaking, and marketing teams are a significant part of that. Perception surveys, intercept studies and feedback analysis can go beyond measuring brand sentiment to identify specific gaps between what places promise and what people actually experience. While more common among destination marketers, it is less so for investment and talent organisations, but should not be. The data reveal exactly which improvements matter most to target audiences. Marketing teams can translate these insights into clear recommendations for city officials, ensuring placemaking investments address real audience needs rather than assumptions. The result is more strategic development that builds both place attractiveness and marketing credibility.

Steve Duncan, Managing Director, C Studios

Integrate data and place branding expertise into your placemaking approach.

Place brand and marketing teams play a critical role in shaping placemaking strategies by leveraging data-driven insights—especially when combined with AI—to understand what truly resonates with target audiences. By identifying evolving traveller interests, from sustainability to culture and unique local experiences, brands can help inform on-the-ground developments that enhance a place’s attractiveness and strengthen its long-term reputation. A cohesive narrative, supported by public, private, and community stakeholders, ensures alignment and impact. When place branding expertise and a data-driven culture are integrated into placemaking strategies, destinations remain relevant, engaging, and competitive—ultimately driving longer, more meaningful stays, higher visitor spend, and increased repeat visitation.

Luca Romozzi, Commercial Director, Europe, Sojern

Bring emotion into public spaces through interactive installations.

Marketing teams have the power to shape how places are remembered. Over multiple past collaborations, we’ve seen how interactive public art bridges the gap between strategy and space: bringing meaning into place and emotion into branding. By turning public spaces into memorable experiences, interactive installations don’t just support attractiveness, they help anchor identity in collective memory. When marketing and placemaking align, places become more than destinations; they become stories people live, share, and carry with them.

Alexandre Lemieux, Director - Business Development and Co-founder, Creos

Weave your public spaces into your place narratives – and vice versa.

Wireframe always believed that place branding and marketing teams are essential to transforming public art into lasting placemaking. By shaping narratives, amplifying visibility, and aligning artworks with local identity, they help turn temporary installations into powerful community experiences.

When we activate a public space, whether it’s a downtown plaza, a waterfront, or a transit hub, our large-scale installations invite people to slow down, participate, and connect. These moments of wonder and interaction become forever tied to where they took place. With strong branding support, they can also become defining symbols, showcasing a city’s creativity, inclusivity, and cultural vitality.

In short, marketing teams don’t just promote public art, they help co-create the story of place.

Souha Kasbi, Sales & Marketing Coordinator, Wireframe

Build a cohesive voice for your place.

One of our main roles when a part of the place brand team is to help build a cohesive voice for the location. By engaging stakeholders, marketing discipline partners, and leading companies in the region, and sharing resources such as key messages, visuals, branded products, we can help ensure that the way any place “faces” its public can be heard as a singular voice. In addition, by positioning any place’s brand within highly credible places like top-tier media outlets, high-calibre paid platforms, or with well-regarded influencer partnerships, it can also help a great deal with influencing a place’s reputation in a positive direction.

Nicole Marshall, VP, Violet PR

Connect strategy to storytelling.

Place brand and marketing teams shape how a place is understood and experienced. By aligning placemaking efforts with a region’s identity and values, they help ensure that physical developments reinforce the brand. Through research, storytelling and design, they craft narratives that guide decisions, build pride and attract investment. Their campaigns — from festivals to digital content — amplify placemaking impact and bring local character to life. In short, marketing teams connect strategy to story, making sure that what’s built on the ground also builds belief in the place

Rachel Deloffre, VP – Brand Strategy, DCI

Avoid reductivity. Embrace the complexity of your place.

It’s the responsibility of a place brand team to ensure the authentic, distinctive and independent cultures of their place are captured and carried through into place marketing. This enables a place to represent its diverse and multiple voices and narratives. By surfacing the grassroots, you are telling the stories which distinguish your place from the next. This isn’t about diluting the singularity of place messaging, but is more about reflecting the full reality of your place. Places are complex. Celebrating that shows and inspires confidence. More importantly, you have to follow through. The famous quote, “Manchester: a city that thinks tables are for dancing on”, describes the energy and vitality of a city that uses its soft and cultural power to maximum effect. Another quote, adopted by clubs and civic leaders alike is: “This is Manchester. We do things differently here.” So, it’s worth asking how long can Manchester honestly make that claim?

Amy Lewis, Culture & Place Consultant, CTConsults

Celebrate your arts and culture.

Imagine being a town that hits the headlines for being the “happiest place to live" in Britain. Berwick upon Tweed has recently achieved that and continues to achieve media coverage that is sure to create inward investment, increase visitor numbers, and engender pride. When HemingwayDesign worked with the community and stakeholders on the Berwick upon Tweed place brand maybe part of the success of the project emanated from a creative team experiencing the town for the first time and falling in love with the place and seeing the intrinsic joy in this non-conforming town with incredible scenery and beautiful built environment. Rather than just relying on its incredible heritage and scenery for place marketing, we encouraged the community the celebrate the fact that their town punches well above its weight in terms of arts and culture. We developed a brand narrative based around the pillars of discovery, independence, natural beauty, and imagination. This has broadened the town appeal and enabled a much broader set of tools to communicate the wonderful place that Berwick upon Tweed is.

Wayne Hemingway, Partner, HemingwayDesign