By Ihor Chava, PhD Lecturer, Kyiv School of Economics

We tend to think that the primary purpose of place branding is to make a community better known. And there is a certain logic to that. Greater recognition helps attract visitors, investors, new residents, and businesses. That is why, when we talk about place branding, we usually think of logos, visual identity, marketing campaigns, and communication.

But I increasingly feel that we spend too much time talking about the outcome without asking where it actually begins.

If we take a closer look at most communities, it becomes clear that their biggest challenge is rarely the absence of a brand or a marketing strategy. Much more often, it is the absence of a shared vision for the future. Local government has one perspective, businesses another, educators another, and young people yet another. The issue is not that one group is right and another is wrong. Rather, each sees the future of the place through the lens of its own experience and interests.

That is why even good ideas so often remain just good ideas. Not because they are flawed, but because everyone is moving in a different direction.

Yet there is another, deeper dimension. I have come to believe that the greatest value of place branding is not creating a new image of a place. Above all, it creates a space where people begin to agree on their future. Not on which problems need to be solved today, but on what kind of place they want their community to become in ten or fifteen years.

At that moment, place branding stops being merely a communication tool.

It becomes a process of aligning a shared future. At first glance, this may seem like only a shift in emphasis. Yet it explains why, after a place branding project is completed, unexpected things begin to happen.

People start reaching agreements more quickly. Not because they stop disagreeing or suddenly begin thinking alike. Different perspectives do not disappear. But once a shared vision of the future exists, most discussions move from "Where should we go?" to "How do we get there?"

Those are fundamentally different conversations. And that is when collective decisions begin to emerge much faster.

I started noticing this pattern across different projects. For example, while working with the Medzhybizh community (Khmelnytskyi Region, Ukraine), our conversations were rarely about designing a logo or launching a promotional campaign. Instead, the community was trying to answer a different question: how to create conditions for local entrepreneurship, new businesses, and new jobs. Tourism was simply one of the tools for achieving that goal.

But what impressed me most was something else. More than 65% of the project's budget was financed by local businesses.

To me, this was far more important than any presentation or brand book. It meant that local entrepreneurs no longer saw community development as the sole responsibility of the local authorities. They had begun to see themselves as part of a shared future.

I witnessed a similar pattern in the Skole community, located in the Ukrainian Carpathians (Lviv Region, Ukraine). Some time after the project had been completed, one of the local schoolgirls represented Ukraine in an international educational programme in the United States organised with the participation of NASA. In the official photograph, she was holding the flag of Skole. Nobody had asked her to do that. Nobody had prepared a communication plan for her.

It was entirely her own decision. That was the moment when I realised that a place's true reputation does not begin when other people start talking about it.

It begins when its own residents want to say: "I am from here."

But this idea becomes evident not only when people begin to take greater pride in the place they call home. It is often most visible when a community faces a crisis.

While working on the place branding of the city of Drohobych (Lviv Region, Ukraine), home to the world's oldest continuously operating saltworks, which has been producing salt since the 13th century, I observed an important pattern. By the time the branding process had been completed, the community had developed a much deeper appreciation of the saltworks as an integral part of its identity.

When the saltworks was later threatened with closure, people did not first begin searching for arguments to justify why it should be preserved. They already shared an understanding of its value. As a result, residents, local businesses, community activists, and many other people quickly came together to support the enterprise, help secure its future, and promote its products.

That was when I realised that place branding does not prevent crises from happening. What it does is help communities respond to them differently. The most important agreements are not made once a crisis has already begun—they are made long before it arrives.

Yet this idea has another dimension. Today, more and more communities are joining forces. They create shared destination management organisations, develop joint tourism routes, and launch intermunicipal projects. At first glance, it may seem that they are simply collaborating on tourism, economic development, or investment.

In reality, they are agreeing on something much bigger. They are agreeing on a shared future. That is why I believe we are gradually reaching a point where we need to evaluate the success of place branding differently. Perhaps its first indicator is not the number of visitors, media mentions, or even a new visual identity.

Perhaps the first real sign that place branding has succeeded is the moment when people begin reaching agreements more quickly, businesses start investing in their community's shared future, and residents begin to feel that they are part of the same story. Reputation, tourism, investment, and economic development remain just as important as ever.

But I have come to believe that they are no longer the beginning of the process.

They are its consequence.

Perhaps, in a few years, we will measure the success of place branding not by how well a place is known, but by how quickly its people have learned to agree on — and build — their shared future.