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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 measure their marketing activities and develop successful strategies. Headquartered in the City of London, we are present in 25 countries worldwide.
We have published the Brand Finance Nation Brands study into the strength and value of the world’s top nation brands for 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 150,000+ respondents in 100+ markets and ranking all 193 member states of the United Nations. Our Brand Finance City Index – published for the first time in 2023 will be extended in the coming years to cover more city brands in regional rankings across all continents.
The Global Soft Power Summit is returning on February 28-29th, 2024. Learn more here.
Strategic applications of place brand measurement
Brand Finance's Konrad Jagodzinski and Artur Bryzghalov joined three place brand leaders at City Nation Place Global to share practical examples of how place brand measurement can inform your strategy and improve results.
Listen in to learn from Carla Urbano Donayre, Promperu, David Downs, New Zealand Story Group, and Enver Duminy, Cape Town Tourism, as they share their practical experience on how analysing perceptions data can help you identify strategic priorities, develop a licensing programme, and communicate the added value of your work to key stakeholders.
#WhatWeAreFightingFor
#WhatWeAreFightingFor showed the world over 600,000 reasons to fight, presenting each region of Ukraine to the world and explaining why each square kilometre of their land is essential.
Learn about Ukraine's Award entry for Best Communication Strategy: Place Brand
How to build reputation and influence: A roadmap to setting strategic priorities
Nurturing reputation and coming across as an influential player are both essential objectives for building soft power. But how should nation brands go about growing reputation and influence? Drivers analysis conducted by Brand Finance experts on the Global Soft Power Index data provides the answers.
More from Soft Power
Nation branding and soft power: a guide to best practice
What makes a successful nation & place branding campaign? David Haigh and Parul Soni, Brand Finance, share how a well-managed nation & place brand can help overcome reputational challenges.
Pura Vida: Costa Rica's brand essence
From inter-institutional collaboration to ambitious decarbonisation plans, discover how the Costa Rican nation brand became the core of the national consensus for the new century in their award -winning case study.
Now is the time to rethink our communities
In our recent survey looking at Place Branding for the 2020s, we asked our respondents whether their storytelling was rooted in place values or focused primarily on place assets – the answers suggested a slightly stronger focus on assets. The COVID-19 pandemic has given us an opportunity to pause and think about whether we want to continue on the same tracks we've been running along for the last five decades or if there's time for real change in the way that we think about what we are doing, and what our places stand for.
Soft power superpowers: learnings from the Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index
Brand Finance unveiled the Global Soft Power Index at a summit in London on February 25th, in front of an audience of over 400 international diplomats. What were the key findings from the index, and what can place branders learn from soft power experts?
Branding a good country
Finland is currently ranked as the happiest nation in the world and number one on the Good Country Index - so where does it go from there? And what questions should those responsible for communicating place brands be asking themselves?
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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, Nation Brands, and City Index 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 the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Campaign, Austrade, and Cape Town Tourism.
Before moving on to grow the place branding practice, Konrad was the Communications Director of Brand Finance and Managing Director of Brand Finance’s PR agency – Brand Dialogue for 5 years. He has a proven track record in executing integrated communications strategies, having been responsible for publishing nearly 100 industry and country reports on the world’s most valuable brands on an annual basis.
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.