Investment in a place brand strategy typically derives from a new five- or ten-year strategy document. There’s a vision of what the city or town could look like, and how many new businesses and residents you need to attract to reach this aspiration, and someone floats the idea that this could all be achieved with a new narrative to take to market. The challenge is that if you’re not careful, an external-facing strategy like this can look like it’s designed entirely to attract new audiences rather than to support existing residents and businesses.

“This puts resident engagement at risk from the very start,” shared Lyndal Kearney, Strategy & Client Director at Cúpla. “If fosters, understandably, a collective sense of scepticism, even suspicion that the place brand isn’t for them, and that can lead to ambivalence at best, active antagonism at worst.”

The solution, as Lyndal went on to explain, is to ensure that your strategy is framed in terms of how the place brand can serve for your community – not how they can serve your brand. Hannah Belsito, Chief Experience Officer at Destination Cleveland, shared a similar sentiment, highlighting the importance of “ensuring your organisation’s focus is on working with the community, not for the community.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but one that’s much easier to say than it is to action. You need to understand not just how your residents feel about their place, but also what they need from you as an organisation and what their own aspirations are for the future. We reached out to our CNP Australasia x Mainstreet Australia speakers to understand what common challenges they faced in their own citizen engagement strategies, and how you can effectively position your residents as co-creators with an active involvement in the development and implementation of your place brand strategy.

Successful co-creation means listening – and listening often.

Citizen engagement isn’t – or, at the very least, it shouldn’t be – a tick box exercise. But if you approach conversations with your residents openly and honestly, you can identify what it is that makes your place unique.

“The only way to engage, in any meaningful way, is to listen politely but relentlessly to the ways people talk about their cities and regions,” explained Todd Babiak, CEO of Brand Gold Coast. “I’m not sure that you can do it with social media scraping and three sticky-note sessions with decision-makers.” Instead, Todd advocates for investing in one-on-one sessions with the people who will be most impacted by your place brand strategy and listening deeply to them.

Renata Davis, Manager – Regional Activation at Armidale Regional Council, concurred with Todd’s perspective: “People are craving person-to-person interaction in a world of social media and keyboard warriors. Having people on the ground, having real conversations, will trump faceless options like email surveys and socials, not only for the quality of responses to but also by creating ongoing relationships that will facilitate continuous participation and feedback.”

Renata’s advice for fostering engagement that generates detailed, quality responses? Encourage people to think long-term and be future stewards for the next generations. If you ask questions like “‘What improvements would you want to see for your children’s children?’ or ‘It’s 2040 – what three words describe this place if it is the best place for you, your family, and friends?’, it takes away from immediate obstacles and gets people to take personal responsibility in creating their future vision,” she explained.

Addressing conflicting perspectives and identifying a unifying narrative

When we talk about resident engagement, it’s easy to fall into the myth that if you just ask enough questions – or perhaps the right questions – you’ll eventually identify a single narrative that you can build your place brand strategy around. This simply isn’t true: if you ask 100 people to describe a single place, you’ll invariably get 100 different takes. As Neil Frauenglass, CMO at Visit Philadelphia, shared with us, “the biggest challenge wasn’t resistance from the community – it was finding the common thread across a city made up of many different neighbourhoods and micro-communities.”

What you want to find is that sweet spot where everyone can see themselves reflected in some part of your place brand narrative, if not its entirety. Attempting to do more than this can often lead to beige-ification, where in trying to please everyone, you create something that loses what’s unique and special about your place.

“It’s not surprising to hear competing views and priorities expressed through a community engagement project on a place’s identity and future direction,” explained Jess Radford, Acting CEO at Brand Tasmania. “Make sure you design your engagement processes to allow those differences to be expressed and respected, rather than simply trying to smooth things over.”

Places are messy. Humans are messy. But that conflict and difference of opinions and lifestyles is where the real magic happens.

This is not to say, of course, that all conflict is positive. “The biggest challenge is online,” reflected Brand Gold Coast’s Todd Babiak. “Social media at its worst is an ugly destructive force, where 30 angry and well-organised people can sound like 30,000.”

However, the solution to this is still a strong approach to citizen engagement. Todd continued on to tell us that the most effective way to tackle an angry barrage of social media posts is to remember that your work is rooted in what you learned from your citizen engagement and continue working towards that end. The more effective your citizen engagement is in the development of your place brand strategy, the more confident you can be that you’re heading in the right direction.

Accessible engagement is authentic citizen engagement

One of the most commonly cited pieces of advice from our speakers was the importance of accessibility. Marie Scalia, CMO at Destination Cleveland, stated that “in the first iteration of our brand, we found that our brand focus did not fully represent the community. To address the gap, we went into our neighbourhoods to listen and explore.” This work included meeting with community development organisations and a wider breadth of residents and offering “a la carte opportunities to engage rather than assuming one programme would help all.” This more varied, resident-centric approach resulted in much broader and deeper engagement with their brand narrative.

When speaking to Yoge Biju, Coordinator Placemaking & Revitalisation for City of Greater Dandenong Council, she also shared how they had worked to reach time-poor and low digital confidence residents – particularly those who were already less inclined to participate in formal planning processes. “These challenges were addressed through place-based engagement approaches that met community members in familiar settings and employed culturally responsive methods aligned with how people interact with and experience place,” Yoge explained. “Overall, the findings demonstrate that inclusive, place-based engagement practices contribute to more robust, trusted, and enduring revitalisation outcomes.”

Transparency builds trust…

Effective engagement is about more than just asking people for their perspective. It also involves being open about how and where their opinions are being used. You have to be able to prove that you are truly listening to them.

According to Cúpla’s Lyndal Kearney, “too often, ‘have your say’ engagement approaches neglect to close the loop, leaving the community feeling their involvement was purely a tick box exercise – probably because it was!” Instead, Lyndal recommends a regular reporting process to demonstrate how you’re integrating and acting on the feedback from the consultation.

Brand Tasmania’s Jess Radford re-iterated this view: “Whether it’s getting to know communities, working with partners on a collaborative project, or seeking input on decisions, being clear about our purpose helps us continually build and grow trust.”

…and trust builds champions. 

Done right, a strong citizen engagement strategy also lays the foundations for a network of ambassadors and champions for your place brand. Visit Philadelphia’s Neil Frauenglass said it best: “When [residents] believe in that narrative, they naturally amplify it and become ambassadors for the place. When they don’t they won’t reinforce it – which makes it harder for your story to travel.”

In effect, your residents act as marketing directors for your place. They shape the ‘product’ and they communicate what it feels like to live, work, and visit. The only difference is that they are operating without your brand guidelines. By engaging regularly with residents across your community, and by consistently proving that you’re listening to residents and iterating on their feedback, you’re far more likely to nurture a cohort of people who will lend their voices to your strategy.

Destination Cleveland’s Hannah Belsito flagged the need to build a network of super-connectors, with emphasis on those who already communicate with your external audiences. “Always tell them why what you share is important to residents. By bringing residents along, you can create an engaged community that understands the value of and amplifies your place brand,” she stressed.

When Austrade began developing the nation brand for Australia, engagement with key stakeholders was at the heart of their approach. Because as we’ve already explored, a successful place brand isn’t something that happens to your residents, but for them. “A strong nation brand not only helps the world better understand who we are,” explained Sarah Holder, Head of Communications & Marketing at Austrade, “it helps Australian businesses leverage a reputation that’s more commercially meaningful and insightful.”

Transparency and accessibility are two key components to ensure that you’re co-creating your place brand strategy with your residents. It also helps you build the relationships and trust that you need to convert residents from passive actors into active supporters of the place brand strategy.

Ultimately, “engagement fails when the vision is too broad or the benefits too unclear,” as Amanda Wellgreen, Director of Impact(ful) Management and Town Manager of Panmure Business Association, explained. “You manage resistance not with more marketing, but by consistently proving that a structured, professional approach leads to better outcomes for everyone.”

Engaging residents isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a vital component of a long-term strategy that will continue to deliver returns for decades to come.

Todd Babiak,  Hannah Belsito, Yoge Biju, Renata Davis, Neil Frauenglass, Sarah Holder, Lyndal Kearney, Jess Radford, Marie Scalia, and Amanda Wellgreen will all be taking to the stage at CNP Australasia x Mainstreet Australia. Join us in the Gold Coast this 6-7^th August to discover how they’re evolving their place brand and marketing strategies to respond to new challenges and opportunities and to inspire your own strategies. Check out the full agenda here to learn more.