How to turn places into brands with place branding

Sil­van Wyser | 26 April 2023 | 5 min read­ing time

Placebrand­ing in­creases the at­tract­ive­ness of places – cit­ies, re­gions, set­tle­ments, des­tin­a­tions – and strengthens their iden­tity and re­pu­ta­tion. With tar­geted place brand­ing, a "place" is po­si­tioned in or­der to achieve a de­sired ef­fect with vari­ous stake­hold­ers and to be able to sur­vive in com­pet­it­ive mar­kets.

Place brand­ing is not an­oth­er buzzword from the mar­ket­ing scene. The term ori­gin­ated in the 1970s when the ad­vert­ising agency Wells Rich Greene was com­mis­sioned by the New York City au­thor­it­ies to cre­ate a strong cam­paign for New York State. The res­ult went down in his­tory. In a taxi wait­ing at a red light, graph­ic de­sign­er Milton Glaser scribbled the simple idea "I♡NY" on a piece of pa­per with a pen­cil. (The ori­gin­al design is on dis­play at the Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art). This logo las­ted for dec­ades, was copied 100s of times and ex­per­i­en­ced the ab­so­lute peak of its pop­ular­ity after the ter­ror­ist at­tacks of 11th Septem­ber 2001. Milton Glaser died at the age of 91 on the 26th of June 2020 his birth­day and is con­sidered the spir­itu­al fath­er of place brand­ing from "I♡NY". Re­cently, the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the logo was presen­ted. De­sign­er Gra­ham Clif­ford was re­spons­ible for re­pla­cing that the sweep­ing serifs with a simple Hel­vet­ica. The red heart was re­placed by an emoji and the "I" be­came a "We". New York­ers are dis­mayed and Milton Glaser is prob­ably turn­ing in his grave.

What dis­tin­guishes place brand­ing from cor­por­ate brand­ing?

The brand­ing of com­pan­ies – or products – is part of a mar­ket­ing strategy and serves to mar­ket them. Place brand­ing is about the de­vel­op­ment of a big, vis­ion, which is first worked out; i.e. what you stand for and what you are good at or want to be good at. This vis­ion is al­ways cre­ated by in­volving vari­ous stake­hold­ers, usu­ally the loc­als. The sub­se­quent com­mu­nic­a­tion of this vis­ion is un­der­stood as place brand­ing. Or to put it more simply: while cor­por­ate brand­ing should have an im­pact on turnover, place brand­ing fo­cuses on sat­is­fy­ing vis­it­ors, ten­ants or res­id­ents. In this sense, place brand­ing also dif­fers from clas­sic loc­a­tion or des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing.