By Clare Dewhirst, Director, City Nation Place

This is the first article in a new series where our Director, Clare Dewhirst, will be drawing on countless conversations with place leaders around the world to identify emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities. 

Place branding is more important now than perhaps ever before. And we need to stop thinking of place branding as an initiative or project, but as an institution or essential piece of good place governance.

I mean, place branding is always important. We’ve done the work with our partners at Bloom Consulting to put a value on the impact perception of place has on the willingness to visit, invest in, or live in a city or country – and therefore a value on the economic impact of perception. Perception impacts 86% of the willingness to visit, invest, or live in a place. And crucially, if a city [for example] improved perceptions by one decimal, it would equal 15% of international tourism receipts, 21% of international migration, and 17.5% of FDI inflows. As Jose Torres, CEO of Bloom Consulting, said when first presenting this work at the Global conference in 2024, it’s almost irresponsible to not be working to manage reputation and improve perceptions. Translation? It’s irresponsible to not have a place branding strategy in place.

But why am I arguing that it’s more important now than ever?

Well, we heard from Nick Cull at the 2025 Global conference how he believes that soft power is evolving into ’reputational security', making the case that a strong reputation is an integral part of national defence. You can see why; we’re living through a period of particularly risky and dangerous geopolitics, and mankind's success in developing digital communications is currently creating a tsunami of misinformation and a polarisation of views.

Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos set out his perspective on a new world order, where mid-tier and smaller nations need to create new alliances – alliances built on trust, on positive perceptions, on being "known". Nation branding strategies are necessary to give countries the best opportunity to achieve this security.

And, of course, geopolitics and politics don’t just impact nations but also regions and cities. President Trump is not only causing shockwaves around the world with his foreign policy but also with his domestic policies, and global attention has focused on the cities and regions that have borne the biggest impact of his government’s crackdown on immigration. This has highlighted that cities and regions can build a reputation that is separate from the nation brand – even if they are still impacted by the policies of the national government. Minnesotans, for example, have demonstrated the strength of their communities; a neighbourliness that has overcome attempts to divide them; a gentle humour; and a strength of character that has translated well to international audiences. Out of everything that has happened, there’s a real opportunity to take this moment to proactively and strategically tell the story of Minnesota and its cities in ways that continue to build these positive perceptions.

The teams responsible for marketing Minnesota are probably not surprised by the community spirit that has shone through over these first weeks because, when they are doing their job right, place brand and marketing teams have a great understanding of what makes their city, region, or country tick. With digital media algorithms, disinformation, and bad actors in the digital space encouraging social division, a place branding strategy and team can take an effective role in supporting social cohesion. 

Who's doing it well?

One interesting example of how place teams are stepping up in this area is Visit Philadelphia. As a DMO, Visit Philadelphia is taking the lead on a research and data-driven approach to building civic pride. Whilst the argument made for the funding to support this work focused on the benefits of your own citizens being your advocates to potential visitors, the team are also already seeing positive results in terms of behaviour and citizenship neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

Over in Australia, the Brand Tasmania team have dived deep into what makes the island State special, into what drives Tasmanians to live their lives the way they do. Their articulation of their place DNA – “the quiet pursuit of the extraordinary” – has created opportunities to add purpose and pride and the team’s deep and evolving understanding of what it is to be Tasmanian is informing and contributing to public policy – whether to support strategies to build greater literacy or to attract essential healthcare workers whose character and approach to life will fit in well with their community.

In Europe, the city marketing team for Eindhoven has evolved their purpose. Initially, the team at Eindhoven 365 were charged with building the reputation of the city around their core pillars of technology, design, and knowledge and helping to deliver economic impact so that the city and region are now the fastest growing in the Netherlands. Now it’s a question of using their understanding of what works in their city and how their community approaches challenges to lead on a strategy to manage growth in a human-centric way. The team are initiating projects to, for example, help newcomers to integrate into the community – and then ensuring that these projects have a firm foundation and a “foster parent” as their CEO Roland Kleve describes it, meaning the right city-based organisation to take over what they have started to ensure it has a sustainable impact.

The place branding journey

When we’re outlining the purpose and function of place branding in the CNP Accelerator training course, we talk about where you’re at on the place branding journey. For example, does your place have a “passive brand” – one that is shaped by the conversations of outsiders? Where are you on the journey of being “defined”, “activated”, “embedded”, and finally “iconic”, where you have built the world’s knowledge and understanding of your place and the internal articulation of your brand is embedded into your place DNA?

However, I think it would be misleading to suggest that this is a journey from A to B. It’s important to recognise this as a circular journey because there is always an inherent danger that politicians and stakeholders will think, “Great work! We funded and supported this team in creating a place brand, we’re all using it, it's working, job done. Let’s save some money and reallocate those lovely people in the place branding team to other jobs.” I’ve heard recently of a couple of examples of place brand teams being victims of their success in this way, even though they fully recognise that the job is never “done”. It is only too easy for an “iconic” brand to move back to being a “passive” place brand if you take your hands off the steering wheel.

For a place brand team to deliver, they need a foundation of stakeholder support; a coalition of thinking around a vision for what that place could be and how it should be seen. That coalition of the willing could, of course, deliver on that growth and investment without a place brand strategy being in place – but it all works so much better when there is a place brand strategy that articulates what everyone wants to achieve, that provides the language and the story to galvanise even more support, and that drives the narrative that builds those valuable positive perceptions. And as the place succeeds, the challenges change, and the place brand team and strategy are then able to evolve the narrative and help everyone to work together for continued success.

This, then, is why we have to move the world on from thinking of place branding as a "nice-to-have-when-budget-allows" or viewing it as a project that can be “done”. Place branding expertise should sit alongside place governance, whatever the colour of the politics of the day. It’s vital to build and manage positive perceptions of a place to enable politicians to deliver on their vision and their communities to thrive.

Place branding teams provide the essential glue that makes it all work.