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 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.


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Konrad Jagodzinski Place Branding Director Brand Finance Bio

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.

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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.

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