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?

Vauxhall is the central part of Europe’s largest regeneration area. Find out how they tapped into their fascinating history as London's Pleasure Garden to create a truly unique place brand identity.

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.

On average, only 5% of Vilnius's target market knew where the city was located. Discover how Go Vilnius re-imagined this disadvantage as a way to capture people's imagination and put Vilnius on the map - literally!

The pandemic has altered the way that we live and work – perhaps irrevocably – and with it, cities, regions, and nations need to re-think what it is that makes their place attractive. How can places adapt and evolve their strategies to respond to these changes?

Berlin is arguably one of the cultural powerhouses of the world. With the global cultural sector devastated after a year of lockdown, we reached out to Burkhard Kieker, CEO of Visit Berlin, to discover what the city’s plans were for recovery, and how they have reframed their approach from ‘attracting tourists’ to ‘having guests’.

What learnings from the past year will continue to shape and evolve place branding and marketing strategies as we plan for the future? We reached out to our Expert partners to understand what they considered essential lessons for destination marketing and economic development teams around the world.

Achieving cut-through and investment in a crowded and competitive global marketplace requires delivering complex narratives in a compelling way. Citizens of Manchester achieves that by providing a powerful platform for The People Who Make Manchester The Place That Shapes The World. 

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?

Ireland became the largest English-speaking nation in the EU in 2020, and Limerick City and County sought to maximise this opportunity, creating a brand position that unifies everything that Limerick does - and included the entire community in the re-brand process.

Creating a nation branding strategy is no small challenge. To be successful, it needs to be grounded in the everyday reality of that country, and to achieve that, you need data. Eglė Kudzmanienė, Chief Advisor at Brand Lithuania Unit, detailed how the nation created a data-centric approach to country branding that allowed them to react rapidly to changing perceptions of Lithuania.

We talked last week about the importance of having reputational resilience as a place brand or marketing organisation, but of course, this is only one facet of the solution. You have to be able to secure the future of your own organisation to be able to continue delivering on your place brand and place marketing success.