After two years of virtual conferences, we were excited to be in Pittsburgh this week for our first in-person City Nation Place Americas since 2019! Not only was it wonderful to meet old friends and make new ones, we also heard from a line-up of trailblazing industry leaders how place branding is evolving to face new challenges and take advantages of new opportunities. It’s always a challenge to summarise a day and a half’s worth of content into a single article (the wine at the after party almost certainly didn’t help!), but here are our key takeaways from the conference.

What makes a legendary place brand

There was – of course – a lot of discussion around what makes a truly great and effective place brand. Scott Beck, President & CEO at Tourism Toronto, suggested that “it’s not about us creating a brand. Toronto is the brand – we just need to lean into it.” Places who can move beyond sharing ‘what’ they are and focus instead on the ‘why’ will likely have a much bigger impact. Your place brand is essentially your reputation, how your place is perceived by the people who live there, who might visit, or who might invest, and this will be based on assets and people and values. Place branding is the strategic process of understanding what your brand is, understanding if there’s a disconnect between how those who live there and those who don’t perceive your place, having a vision for how you want to be perceived and putting in place the investment and policies need to create those changes. And a place brand platform is the communication of that reputation and that vision.

However, as destination marketing, economic development and place brand organisations, it’s important to be flexible and fast-reacting, predictive and aware, and to embrace innovation and disruption in your operation. In his keynote speech, Adam Burke, President & CEO of Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board said that “we need to become our own disruptor rather than waiting for something else to disrupt us,” and that sentiment will allow our industry to be far more resilient to future crises.

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