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 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.




Contact the team

image
Konrad Jagodzinski Place Branding Director Brand Finance Bio

More from Soft Power

Trends & Ideas

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.

label_outline Advocacy Citizen Engagement Cultural Heritage Destination Management Soft Power
Strategy Toolbox

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?

label_outline Collaboration Destination Management Economic Development Place Branding Soft Power
In The Spotlight

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’.

label_outline Destination Marketing Place Branding Reputation Tourism Soft Power