How can you create a brand that works for your city and your region? And what's the key to leveraging a nation brand to work for all levels of place within a country? Ahead of his presentation at City Nation Place Global, we reached out to Cor Jansen, Director at Utrecht Marketing, to understand how they have worked to create a complementary place brand strategy that works for all levels.

Four years after the launch of Brand Scotland, they're leading the way in sustainable development. We're excited to have Claire Prentice, Head of Brand Scotland Marketing, at City Nation Place Global to share her experience of putting SDGs at the centre of their strategy and balancing the challenges of collaboration and competition. Get a sneak preview of where it all began here with their 2018 City Nation Place Awards entry.

With COP 26 on the horizon, sustainability is perhaps the biggest challenge for place brands. How can you ensure that your strategy delivers against your economic, social, and environmental sustainability ambitions? We reached out to our panel of Experts for their top tips for places looking to authentically embed sustainability at the heart of their place values and strategies…

While 'brand New Zealand' resonates globally, Auckland - the country's largest city - is less well known. Discover how they created a brand strategy that became the focal point of their recovery strategy and won them the 2020 Place Brand of the Year award.

What can places do to foster better collaborative relationships - both internally and with like-minded places around the world?

After over 400 interviews, the team at Brand Tasmania distilled the Tasmanian spirit into six words: the quiet pursuit of the extraordinary. But how do you express that identity through design?

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. 

What if we could conclusively demonstrate the link between place branding and the growth of your economy?

It’s the holy grail of place branding. Which is why we’re delighted to be partnering with Bloom Consulting on a ground-breaking research project to do just that – and we’re inviting place brand, destination marketing, and investment promotion organisations to join the study.

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?

Austin has seen phenomenal growth in recent decades, but what does this mean for the future of the city’s place brand proposition? We reached out to Tom Noonan, President & CEO at Visit Austin, to understand how they’ve been managing the momentum of their growth and what they’ve done to support their local residents and businesses as they recover from COVID-19.

Since 1996, Lithuania has made several attempts to build a national brand. Unfortunately, historically, these efforts have not been very successful. Taking into consideration the previous lessons learnt, the Brand Lithuania Group has decided to build a new strategy for presenting Lithuania abroad based on strict nation brand methodology surveys

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...