Faced with an ageing and declining population, many rural communities today are having to fight to preserve their economies. But rather than competing against major cities on an unfair playing field, rural areas are recognising that there is an opportunity to capitalise on their own assets.

Estonia and Costa Rica have learned how to turn nation and place branding theory into practice - but what is the key to their nation branding success?

The City Nation Place Awards set the benchmark for quality place brand and communication strategies around the world – what lessons can we learn from the winning case studies of 2019?

A central facet of our ongoing age of uncertainty is the increasing overlap of political and commercial behaviours. Identities and spaces that were a generation ago seen as separate have increasingly overlapped, leading to new challenges in shepherding organizational reputations. Nowhere is this trend more apparent than when chaotic political environments impact how people view the health of nations. The United Kingdom's ongoing struggle with the implications of Brexit and the responses from the rest of the world provide a fascinating case study.

Digital presence, search results and online reputation. In today’s fast-paced world there’s no way around the growing importance of this correlated pyramid. Countries, regions and cities already know that their Place Brand needs to be strategically managed in terms of having a strong digital presence to achieve great search results, based on a positive online reputation.

Doing good by the world whilst simultaneously improving brand image is a win-win for everyone involved. A sustainability agenda is no longer an optional extra for companies that want to maintain or improve the support they receive from customers, employees, investors and beyond; it is an essential part of doing good business in an open and transparent manner.

So what can cities, regions and nations do to improve their approach to sustainability and encourage more efficient output from the companies that reside there?

Following the terrorist attacks of 2015, the Paris Convention & Visitors Bureau had to add to its usual B2B marketing focus with communications to reassure the consumer audience. Alice Rampelberg, Marketing B2C and E-Commerce Director at the Paris Convention & Visitors Bureau, explained how Paris have reinforced their global tourism brand as well as how collaboration with London is opening the door to more American tourists.

We asked Federico Moreno-Nickerson, Vice President of Development, Apple Leisure Group, to share his take on the key trends affecting place branding.

The FutureBrand Country Index measures the strength of perception of countries around the world in the same way we study consumer or corporate brands. Now in its second decade, the Index reorders the World Bank Top 75 countries by GDP according to strength of perception.

The Index examines what transforms a country from a spot on a map to a place our survey respondents ultimately want to invest in, live in, visit, and buy goods and services from. Countries have traditionally been measured and ranked by measures of might — GDP, population size, even a sovereign’s nuclear arsenal. However, in the current day when our world is defined by rapid change, do these measures continue to make sense in the ranking of nations?