Hall of Fame: 15 of the best place branding and place marketing examples
Over the years, we've been privileged to see the best and brightest place branding and place marketing campaigns from around the world. Looking for global inspiration for marketing a city, country, or region? We’re delighted to spotlight the most innovative and impactful campaigns from across destination marketing, investment promotion and economic development.
As we gear up for the 2025 City Nation Place Awards, we wanted to highlight 15 of our personal favourites from the Place Brand Portfolio, the world’s largest collection of place branding and place marketing case studies.
BEST EXAMPLES OF CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES
Brand Tasmania
Tasmanian Youth Story | 2024
With graduation levels well below the national average, the plight of young people was a major concern for Tasmanians. Were they dropping out of school because of systemic issues? Something at home? How could they be encouraged to stay on and enter into industries that were facing desperate labour shortages? Young Tasmanians were trained in how to conduct one-to-one interviews with their peers to identify what made them proudest to be Tasmanian – and where and why Tasmania was letting them down. This research has led to the development of a Youth Voice Network, a panel that allows government and other organisations to tap into the experience and ideas of young Tasmanians, allowing Tasmania’s younger residents to co-design government policy and build a Tasmania they can be proud of. This isn’t a dusty policy document – it’s an action plan to drive real change.
Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo Economic Development & Tourism
The key to revealing your regional identity? Listening. | 2021
Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo desperately needed to start sharing their own story, instead of it being dictated by outsiders. The team began an inside-out approach to identify the region’s place brand – and it started with listening. In-depth interviews with a range of people identified a ‘master story’ that was then taken back to the community and refined based on their feedback. Ultimately, the team’s measure for success was that any resident could speak about Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo and naturally touch on the strengths and assets in the place brand strategy framework – without ever having seen it. It’s a textbook approach to both citizen engagement and developing a place brand strategy that will provide the foundation for Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo to build on over the next decade and beyond.
Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland
Checkout 247 | 2018
Sometimes, the simplest idea is the most effective. And you can't get much simpler than a live-streaming of a grocery conveyor belt. On the eve of Finland's centenary independence celebration, the live-stream allowed a moment of togetherness for Finns to connect with people around the world to share the story of everyday life in Finland.
The Citizen Engagement Toolkit:
The how-to advice, resources, and best practice you need to launch or improve your citizen engagement strategies.
BEST COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES FROM NATION, REGION, AND CITY BRANDING TEAMS
Action Greensboro
Boomerang Greensboro | 2024
This idea is both deceptively simple, and impressively impactful. Having noticed that there was an increase in ex-residents becoming cornerstones of the community upon their return to Greensboro, the team decided to lean into the phenomena. Residents were invited to nominate old friends or much-missed family members who had moved away to receive a care package by post. These custom boxes were packed with goodies from home, information about how Greensboro was developing, and a cost-of-living comparison with their current hometown. On top of what was already high-touch, targeted outreach, Action Greensboro offered a concierge service to ease the transition back into town, including reaching out to prospective employers or schools.
Business Iceland
Welcome to the Icelandverse | 2022
You have to commend an organisation who can turn around a destination marketing campaign in less than a fortnight. Just twelve days after Mark Zuckerburg announce the launch of the Metaverse, Business Iceland was in market with their parody film, “Welcome to the Icelandverse” – an entirely immersive experience that is actually based in reality. The tongue-in-cheek campaign caught the world’s media by storm, and Mark Zuckerberg himself weighed in less than 23 hours after the campaign went live, saying “Amazing. I need to make a trip to the Icelandverse soon.”
Visit Faroe Islands
Closed for maintenance, open for voluntourism | 2019
Visit Faroe Islands have a history of innovative campaigns that capture the imagination of people around the world – whether that is taking on Google Translate or releasing sheep with 360-degree cameras strapped to their back. However, as the popularity of the Faroe Islands grew, so did the need to preserve the beauty of popular tourist sites and ensure that residents could see the value of tourism to their own lives. The team took a bold approach: they closed the Islands for the weekend. Instead of visiting, people could apply to join as a ‘voluntourist,’ working hand-in-hand with residents to repair walking paths, construct view points, and install signs to help with wayfinding. The campaign was hugely successful, with more than 3,500 applications in just four days. As well as generating a tremendous amount of positive press coverage, the initiative delivered over 1,600 hours of work done by voluntourists, local villagers, and farmers which has made a real difference to the community and the environment.
BEST USES OF DATA FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Destination Canada
From insights to impact: Canada’s Tourism Data Collective powering a transformative future | 2024
Like many countries, Canada needed a centralised, trusted source of tourism intelligence that could inform policy, market destinations, plan investments, and monitor international trends. Enter the Canadian Tourism Data Collective, which harmonises more than 145 data sets and processes over 9 billion data points from over 5000 Canadian regions. Featuring a suite of AI-enabled data products, this Collective provided tools to measure tourism’s economic, social, and environmental impact, provide detailed profiles of Canadian communities, and segment audiences based on behaviour. This monumental undertaking is plugging critical data gaps and enabling informed decision-making and economic growth.
Glasgow City Council
Using data storytelling | 2023
One of Glasgow’s greatest assets was their emerging technology ecosystem – but no one had been able to effectively map it. Any data that did exist was gated, creating challenges to developing a data-driven approach to storytelling. Rather than treating data as something to be hoarded, Glasgow City Council is making open-source intelligence available to the tech community through a bespoke, comprehensive database of the rapidly growing ecosystem. The platform provides the insights needed to inform the decisions of founders and investors operating in, entering, or investing in the Glasgow startup market. On top of this, it is creating the foundation for a data-driven storytelling approach that will continue to build awareness of Glasgow’s flourishing tech ecosystem.
Place Branding: Solving the measurement challenge.
How place brand and marketing teams are investing in data and research to shape their strategies, engage stakeholders, and stay ahead of the curve.
BEST USE OF DESIGN AND PLACE IDENTITY BY PLACE BRANDING AND MARKETING ORGANISATIONS
Imagen de Chile
Chile, We Care | 2024
Chile’s international promotion was fragmented: a joined-up approach was needed to deliver a more impactful return on limited resources. After eight months of discussion, a new, adaptable narrative was launched for Chile built around sustainability, democracy, and diversity as three key pillars. However, this new narrative positioning needed a graphic identity that would provide a unified presentation for Chile whilst being adaptable to the needs of each stakeholder. To address this, they adopted a ‘Lego’ graphic. These graphic systems allowed each area to use the images they wanted to promote into a common mosaic or photo montage format. This approach prioritised flexibility to respond to individual needs, while still providing a distinctive and authentically Chilean visual identity.
Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority
Seattle Southside gets a brand new identity | 2023
Just 15 minutes south of Seattle, Seattle Southside had been positioning itself as ‘Seattle’s Backyard’ – a story that was overly functional, uninspiring, and did little to counter the perception of the region as a place you would pass through rather than seeking out. Backed by a series of one-to-one interviews to understand current perceptions of the region, the team landed on the idea of ‘micro-adventures’: short trips, filled with quick hits of adventure that people were looking for post-pandemic. The brand platform, ‘Curiously Wonderful,’ is expertly captured in a new playful new design that captures the region’s vibrant energy through ‘micro-widget’ illustrations that use the region’s logo to represent the breadth of adventures waiting for you in the region.
BEST EXAMPLES OF PLACEMAKING INITATIVES IN ACTION
Marketing Sheffield
Look up | 2023
The team at Marketing Sheffield wanted to get people looking at the city differently: to get outsiders to see beyond pre-conceptions, and to encourage residents to be proud of what the city can make. Enter an augmented reality campaign that made Sheffield the canvas for a technology-enabled art installation. The app is free to download, encouraging visitors and residents to look up and fully appreciate the city around them, whilst also affirming Sheffield’s world-leading talent in digital and tech.
Wonderful Copenhagen
CopenPay | 2024
Wonderful Copenhagen believed that tourism could be a force for good in their community. They just needed a pathway to incentivise eco-conscious behaviour amongst their visitors. CopenPay turned sustainability into a currency by rewarding activities like collecting litter or cycling with free access to the city’s major attractions. This strategy delivered a better experience for tourists, enhanced profile for tourism businesses, and a better environment for residents. And on top of all that, it also solidified Copenhagen as a world-leading sustainable destination.
BEST PLACE BRANDING EXAMPLES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
City of Ghent
The Ghent State-of-Mind | 2024
Ghent is a city with a rich heritage, inspiring food scene, growing tech scene, and a fine quality of life. However, all those are equally applicable to many other cities around the planet. In an increasingly globalised world, the city launched a participatory process to identify just what it was that made Ghent ‘Ghentian’. The end result was a focus on the way that Ghent handles things differently and the development of a brand filter that asked whether activities reflected the Ghentian brand or if it could be ‘copied-and-pasted’ to another city. The strategy makes reflecting and strengthening Ghent’s DNA a top priority across multiple verticals.
Essential Costa Rica
Our brand essence | 2019
The Costa Rican place brand strategy is a holistic approach that shapes and directs all their actions with inter-institutional collaboration as the foundation of their efforts. Their journey from tourism brand to nation brand is inspiring, and with an ambitious decarbonisation plan by 2050, we're excited to see how their place brand can continue to provide resilience and direction.
New Zealand Story
Defining a country’s values - Ngā Mātāpono | 2024
New Zealand were looking to unite their government and exporters around a cohesive brand proposition – but first they needed to agree on the values that expressed New Zealand’s identity. The team landed on four Māori concepts that underpinned New Zealand’s care for people, connection to place, and the ingenuity and adventurousness of the country’s spirit. However, there was some hesitation in adopting these values due to fears of cultural appropriation or misunderstanding. To tackle this, the team embarked on a mission to educate all stakeholders involved in the international promotion of New Zealand to empower them to tell this story authentically and confidently.
If you’d like to dive deeper into the initiatives listed below and access all 350+ campaigns from the Portfolio, start your Place Brand Portfolio subscription for just £49/yr.
