Supported by our Advisory Group, City Nation Place has launched reports, research, and toolkits to support industry leaders in tackling their biggest challenges and opportunities. 

Dive in to our free resources for the information and inspiration you need to shape your own place branding and place marketing strategies...

CONTENTS

Place-led approaches to successful talent attraction and retention

Aligning your event hosting strategy with your place brand ambitions

City of X: Transforming a cultural strength into place brand success

Place Brand KPIs

The private sector perspective of place branding and marketing

The impact of nation and place brands on the local and global economy

Structure & Governance for successful place branding and marketing

The Citizen Engagement toolkit

Place Branding: Solving the measurement challenge

PLACE-LED APPROACHES TO SUCCESSFUL TALENT ATTRACTION AND RETENTION

Published: April 2026

As the competition between countries, regions, and cities for skilled talent increases, this report provides a picture of evolving strategies for talent attraction and retention.  Download this report to understand how places are building their competitive proposition, from leveraging the place brand narrative, to finding new ways to fund strategic approaches, to building organisational collaborations. Sharing results from an international survey alongside qualitative interviews with place branding, destination marketing, and economic development teams, the report provides actionable ideas for your own place’s talent strategy.

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ALIGNING YOUR EVENT HOSTING STRATEGY WITH YOUR PLACE BRAND AMBITIONS

Published: November 2025

Events have the potential to deliver a positive impact far beyond the obvious measurable revenues in venue, hotel, and restaurant spend. Download this report to discover how places are joining the dots between the events they host and their wider place brand strategy, from measuring the impact on reputation to increasing quality of life for your community. As well as insights from event organisers looking to leave a legacy, this report includes case studies from places around the world who are rethinking their event strategy for the better.

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CITY OF X: TRANSFORMING A CULTURAL STRENGTH INTO PLACE BRAND SUCCESS

Published: September 2025

How can a cultural strength become a core pillar of your place identity? This report looks at how sixteen cities around the world have embraced an aspect of their culture to engage stakeholders, highlight the uniqueness of their community, and amplify their place brand storytelling. Discover what the essential ingredients are for success in a ‘City of X’ strategy, what pitfalls you need to avoid, and key learnings from cities who are already on this journey.

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PLACE BRAND KPIs

Published: March 2025

This Report brings together the outputs of design-thinking workshops involving members of the City Nation Place Advisory Group with industry research benchmarking how other places are investing in brand tracking, perception studies, and in media and social media tracking. The Report also includes short case studies of specific place approaches from Hamburg, London, New Zealand, Scotland, and Tasmania.

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THE PRIVATE SECTOR PERSPECTIVE ON PLACE BRANDING AND MARKETING

Published: November 2024

We have seen a growing pattern of best practice around place of origin trading and private sector ambassador programmes over the past ten years of City Nation Place. At the same time, we have been hearing places talk about the challenges of fully engaging private sector board members.

This report looks at how places can engage the private sector in their strategic approaches to building and managing a strong and positive place brand. Discover how to gain a better understanding of the attitudes of private sector business leaders and start-up entrepreneurs to the importance of place reputation.

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THE IMPACT OF NATION AND PLACE BRANDS ON THE LOCAL AND GLOBAL ECONOMY

While place branders know how essential reputation is to the success of your place, it’s historically been hard to prove conclusively the economic impact. There are just too many variables – until now.

Bloom Consulting - in partnership with City Nation Place - have successfully demonstrated the correlation between perception and economic performance. Discover the definitive answer to the economic impact a positive perception has on your place.

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STRUCTURE & GOVERNANCE FOR SUCCESSFUL PLACE BRANDING AND MARKETING

Published: June 2024

This report provides a summary of a survey of just under 40 organisations around the world and seven in-depth interviews to provide a better understanding of the pros and cons of different approaches. Download the report to learn what’s working, where the challenges are, and how places are adapting their structures and funding to better support their evolving objectives. Learn from the diverse approaches taken to structure and governance within place branding and marketing by: Visit England, Essential Costa Rica, Enterprise Estonia, Fairfax County EDA, Office of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, Staffordshire County Council, and 4VI. 

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THE CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT TOOLKIT

Published: April 2024

This toolkit curates best practice in citizen engagement from around the world, giving you a taste of the different approaches taken by individual cities, regions, or nations. Along with how-to advice, this free toolkit provides you with a range of tools and resources used by each place to allow you to dig in and discover the engine whirring at the heart of each strategy.

Featuring fifteen case studies from Canberra to Eindhoven and from Lithuania to South Africa, the toolkit allows you to identify citizen engagement strategies by strategic focus or by population size.

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PLACE BRANDING: SOLVING THE MEASUREMENT CHALLENGE

Published: November 2023

Discover how place brand and marketing teams around the world are investing in data and research to measure the impact of their work and advocate for their role. Along with topline findings from our quantitive survey of place leaders, the report contains summaries of interviews with Brand Tasmania, Cape Town Tourism, Destination Canada, Economic Development Regina, Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo Economic Development & Tourism, Imagen de Chile, LA Tourism & Convention Bureau, London & Partners, Municipality of The Hague, New Zealand Story, and Stockholm Business Region.

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