Soft Power
Soft power is the persuasive approach to international relations, typically involving the use of economic or cultural influence. But what does that mean for cities, nations, and places? If you can leverage your soft power effectively in your place marketing and place branding strategy, you can create far greater impact and leverage your reputation to meet your goals. Here, we’ve collated a wealth of resources to help you with your journey.
This Soft Power Topic Zone is sponsored by

Brand Finance
Brand Finance is the world’s leading brand evaluation and strategy consultancy. We help place brands evaluate marketing activities and develop successful strategies. Headquartered in the City of London, we are present in 25 countries worldwide.
We have published the top 100 most valuable and strongest Nation Brands ranking for nearly 20 years. In 2020, we launched the Global Soft Power Index – the world’s most comprehensive research study on perceptions of nation brands, surveying opinions of 100,000+ respondents in 100+ markets.
Managing Ukraine’s nation brand during a war
Maria Lypiatska, Head of BRAND UKRAINE and Strategic Communications Advisor for the MFA, outlines how they’re telling Ukraine’s story to the world during a war and shares lessons from crisis communications that hopefully you’ll never need to use.
Moldova for Peace
On the 24th of February 2022, the war in Ukraine started, forcing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to leave their home country. As a multinational country, many of whose citizens had previously expressed pro-Russian views, Moldova faced a communication crisis. Discover how Invest Moldova launched a campaign to unite the nation.
Focusing on what really matters
Understanding the perspectives of different target audiences is central to a successful place brand strategy. Join Brand Finance to discover how to use perceptions research to uncover what really matters and how that differs across audiences.
More from Soft Power
Place attractiveness for all: how should places, and place leaders, be responding to the national conversations around D&I and equitable development?
How can you adopt intentional D&I strategies that really make a difference? Al Hutchinson, Visit Baltimore, Kelly Brough, Denver Chamber of Commerce, and Kevin Eshkawkogan, Indigenous Tourism Ontario, outline ideas for improving diversity and inclusion across tourism and all sectors of economic development - and how you can put KPIs in place to measure more than just box-ticking.
Building wellbeing into your urban spaces
Susan Aitken, Leader of the Glasgow City Council, outlines how they are ensuring equitable development for all areas and for all residents – and how they’re working to embed wellbeing across the city for a more resilient, sustainable future.
Restarting business events to deliver longer-term positive returns
Restarting business events is critical to recovery for many places; they bring visitor spend to the city, facilitate trade deals, and attract media attention. However, we can’t simply hit re-start on the sector and expect it to resume in exactly the same manner. How can you evolve your value proposition to meet new behaviours and expectations?
Beyond buzzwords: revamping nation branding
Senator Claudia Ruiz Massieu outlines how place branding can be adapted to fit our post-pandemic reality and create the path for a more sustainable future.
Berlin’s Culture Project: plans for recovery after a year in lockdown
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’.
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CloseKonrad leads Brand Finance’s place branding and soft power practice. He liaises with clients, directs consulting projects, and is responsible for the creation and promotion of the annual Global Soft Power Index and Nation Brands studies.
Konrad has extensive experience in advising clients in the fields of place branding and public diplomacy. Before joining Brand Finance, he worked at the Polish Embassy in London where he developed and delivered successful marketing communications campaigns as well as media relations programmes of official engagements by the president, prime minister, government ministers, and the ambassador.
In his role at Brand Finance, Konrad has advised a variety of place branding organisations, including New Zealand Story, the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.
Konrad has qualified with the Professional PR Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). He studied European Studies MA at King’s College London and the Humboldt University in Berlin, and International Relations with Political Science BA at the University of Birmingham.