A question we asked our City Nation Place Awards judges what was the most important skill for place branding teams – creativity or diplomacy – and the breadth of responses we received demonstrates that perhaps the greatest challenge for place brands is how to put together a clear vision for your place brand and communication strategy whilst listening to a myriad of different opinions and voices, including the voices of your citizens. Perhaps Adam Joyce, VP of Acceleration at Calgary TELUS Convention Center, sums it up best: “Both are equally important skills, and I think creativity is enhanced through diplomacy and diplomacy requires creativity”.

The dangers of not listening are clear. There are numerous examples of places that didn’t listen to their community and launched communications campaigns which were then lambasted by citizens who disagreed with them (Vilnius’ ‘G-Spot of Europe’ campaign springs to mind quite quickly), and of places who are facing a citizen backlash to the success of their tourism attraction strategy, or even – as the case of Long Island in the USA and the rejection of the new Amazon HQ plan – a rejection of successful investment attraction and economic development.

“The trick is to take the citizens on the journey with you, so that they understand why you are focussing on the place’s brand and what benefit it could bring to them” stated Cat Leaver, Director of Brand Scotland, one of our jurors looking forward to reading the entries in the “Best Citizen Engagement” category. Engaging your citizens in the place branding process is essential to creating an effective place brand strategy and this can mean a lot more than focus groups and researching opinions. Increasingly, we’re seeing more places actively involving their citizens in the strategic approach to achieving economic and tourism development goals; the sense of ownership over the place brand that this provides is key to getting your community on board with your brand. Take India City Walks. By spreading awareness about the lesser-known monuments in Delhi, they were able to build an interest in the younger generations about their own cultural heritage and create new employment through a tour guide scheme that in turn created diverse and authentic experience for their visitors.

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