Hot on the heels of being voted in for a second term, Cardiff’s BID is aiming to position the Welsh Capital as the UK’s first Equality City. Before she joins us at City Nation Place UK this November, Carolyn Brownell, Head of Marketing and Communications at FOR Cardiff, explains how the city has taken it’s first steps towards realising this ambitious vision.

How does place branding evolving during a pandemic? Mark Thomas, President of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance - and one of our jurors for the upcoming City Nation Place Awards - joined us to explain the thinking behind Pittsburgh's re-brand and how they're putting the focus on inclusive recovery. 

We talk about the key ingredients for a successful place brand strategy, but what about the reverse? Here are the six roadblocks to watch out for if you’re launching or managing a place brand strategy…

People are places, and places are people – but residents often have the quietest voice at the stakeholder table. How can we change this?

Last week, we welcomed over 300 place branding leaders organisations across North America for two days of inspirational and thought-provoking discussions on how places can adapt and evolve to meet the new realities we’re facing. It was a challenge boiling the conference down to just a few key takeaways, but these are the four themes that resonated most for us throughout the conference...

Correcting past injustices is critical to  a more positive and equitable future for all our citizens – and to lay the foundations for a more resilient future for our places. To address these challenges, we reached out to our panel of Experts to hear their top tips to ensure your strategies are driving equitable development...

As we recover from COVID, there will be lessons from this that continue to affect and shape longer-term strategies going forwards. But what does this mean for the KPIs that we use to measure success? We reached out to Kelly Brough, President & CEO at Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, to understand how they’re evolving KPIs to match new success-criteria and what this means for the future of economic development.

Restarting business events is critical to recovery for many places; they bring visitor spend to the city, facilitate trade deals, and attract media attention. However, we can’t simply hit re-start on the sector and expect it to resume in exactly the same manner. How can you evolve your value proposition to meet new behaviours and expectations?

Many economic development advertising campaigns follow the same predictable formula, serving up a laundry list of forgettable facts, features, and financial incentives. Find out how Mount Pearl broke away from the formula by creating an attention grabbing rap video to tell the city’s story in an irresistibly funny, but honest way.

Promoting a place is a hugely complex task, and collaborating with the other local players creates much firmer foundation for your place brand strategy. But what do you need to do to ensure that you’re collaborating effectively?

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!