As COVID-19 travel restrictions begin to ease in many countries, destination brands are preparing to spearhead the economic recovery, welcoming new guests and finding ways to ensure they visit again. However, it can be difficult to tell a truly engaging story across multiple channels, so how can destination brands get it right?

Over the years, we've been privileged to see some of the best and brightest of place branding and place marketing campaigns from around the world. As we gear up for the 2021 City Nation Place Awards, we wanted to revisit this list to share some of our personal favourites from the Awards archive and to update it with the campaigns from 2020 that we just can’t stop thinking about!

It's critical that a place brand strategy is representative of your community - and that your community is engaged with your approach. Al Hutchinson, President & CEO at Visit Baltimore, joined us to share the story behind Visit Baltimore's brand re-design, and how they put community voices in the spotlight with their messaging.

Launched amidst the pandemic and the BLM protests, the goal of Baltimore's new brand wasn’t to sugar coat any of Baltimore’s challenges, but to tell a holistic story that differentiates the city, while celebrating the people committed to making a better Baltimore. But how did they achieve this?

As an iconic city and region, Bergen naturally comes with an inheritance of many clichés and tired symbols – and so did the former Visit Bergen profile, created in 2000. The identity wasn’t made for digital surfaces, and the positioning of ‘Gateway to the Fjords’ could communicate that it was only as a stop-over destination on the way to somewhere else.

"The future of the city is the future of us. It’s who we are," says Jonathan Woetzel, McKinsey Global Institute. The question, then, is what changes do we need to make to bring people back to the city? And how do we do this safely, equitably, and in a way that makes us more resilient to future shocks?

Instead of collaborating together, the smaller municipalities tend to interpret the city of Utrecht as an authority. In order to make a change on the international playing field, the local marketing teams need to team up and form a strong alliance and form a cohesive design identity for the region.

Like many small communities, Waupaca, Wisconsin, needs to attract young talent, businesses and tourists, but also to preserve the values of the community and what has made it a great place to visit and live for decades. How did they reverse the brain drain with a new city brand identity?

Azerbaijan took the world by storm with their 2018 “Take Another Look” campaign which encouraged travellers to see the nation’s wonderful diversity. We reached out to Fidan Aliyeva, Azerbaijan Tourism Board, to understand the key to their successful design identity and how an organisation that is still forging its path adapted to the new challenges of COVID-19.

What will the investment promotion landscape look like post-coronavirus? We reached out to Sirpa Tsimal, Director of Investment Promotion at Switzerland Global Enterprise and a creative thinker in FDI promotion, to understand what kind of response might be needed after COVID-19.

We can never say this enough: there’s more to place branding than a logo and a tagline. But what can we learn from the success of Melbourne’s place brand design? What’s the key to creating a brand identity that lasts?

The place branding strategy of Eindhoven is a long term project: to serve the community of Eindhoven and to raise self-esteem of the inhabitants as well as creating economic value and make local society future proof. But how have they achieved this?