Place branding in a bottle: management strategies for unplanned messages

Purpose This paper explores an important yet overlooked concept in place branding literature, unplanned messages. Focusing on unplanned messages, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the concept of spontaneous order in place branding and how to manage the unplanned communication process so as to ensure a high reputational status for a place. Design/methodology/approach This paper builds on past research on place brand communication and proposes a conceptual framework for unplanned messages. Findings Classification schemes for places and place brands are proposed, contributing to place brand management in three aspects: reviewing of decisions and strategies undertaken, assessing current situation and planning way forward when it comes to priorities for place management and development. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that introduces the emergent image and presents a classification scheme for places that contributes to a strategic management program of unplanned messages in place branding.

Place Brand Co-Creation through Storytelling: Benefits, Risks and Preconditions

Co-creation in place branding is used as an umbrella term for the complex brand meaning emerging through stakeholders’ participation in place activities, their contribution, collaborations and interchange of ideas and resources. Co-creation is often an aspiration for places to create and promote their brands collectively. In this context, storytelling—an old technique used in corporate marketing to instigate brand stakeholders’ participation—serves as a method which facilitates place brand co-creation through shared place stories. With the rise of online interactions, the chances of place stakeholders’ participation in brand meaning creation increase, and place stories are effective in allowing diverse place meanings to emerge from various stakeholders. However, when storytelling emerges as a marketing tactic, mostly from a top-down campaign, the stories are not always accepted by all place stakeholders, and they create contrasting brand meanings. The paper aims to investigate the benefits and risks of participation in “Many Voices One Town” (2018), a top-down campaign from Luton, UK, which used storytelling to instigate place brand co-creation. The campaign was created by the Luton Council with an external advertising agency. The campaign attempted to tackle the town’s segregation issues and foster community cohesion through the promotion of seven selected Lutonians’ stories about their diverse and multicultural experiences of living in Luton. The study employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the MVOT case study. Interviews with the council and participants in the campaign and netnographic data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were used to gain an insight into residents’ participation in a top-down approach and examine the outcomes of co-creation. Residents’ participation in such a campaign shows numerous benefits but also risks for the place brand. The findings show that participation can sometimes intensify disputes about the town if people’s needs are not properly addressed. The study highlights the importance of open communication between all parties involved in the process, bringing into focus the need for careful coordination of top-down initiatives in line with stakeholders’ needs. It also demonstrates the ‘power of the people’ in the sense that stakeholder engagement with the shared stories led to negative outcomes that were not predicted by the Council.

Place Branding through Resource Integration and Gastro-Cultural Experiences: A Transnational Perspective

Place branding often builds upon gastro-cultural features. Yet, the convergence point between gastro-cultural place identity and the experience on offer could (and should) further benefit from contemporary studies in emerging fields, such as value co-creation and the identity-based approach to place branding. This study contributes towards this direction by examining the practices of relevant actors with main place branding authority. Drawing from their online information and presence, a thematic analysis of relevant brands in Greece and Turkey illustrates that operand and operant resource integration reflect the synergies developed between the gastronomic culture in, for, of the place. Further, actors’ intention to co-create the brand influences and is influenced by the brand. Theoretical and practical insights are derived from this study, which may direct future research and inform policymakers about sustainable, inclusive approaches.

Repositioning the Swellendam Municipal Area as a Tourist Destination: Trends, Destination Marketing and Place Branding

In 2017 the Swellendam Tourism Bureau’s board adopted a new marketing brand for the municipality under the banner Cape Trade Route. The brand was introduced without using any market intelligence to inform it. The Swellendam Municipality subsequently resolved that any new tourism strategy had to be informed by current market research, including media, trade and industry sentiments about the region. This paper reports on five sets of empirical evidence collected by various means to better understand Swellendam’s tourism brand and marketing strategies. They are (1) workshops with business and community roleplayers; (2) an online questionnaire survey conducted with tourist-aligned enterprises in the Swellendam municipal area; (3) a content analysis of traditional and social media relating to Swellendam; (4) a visitor interview survey; and (5) a snap review of sixteen tour operators’ opinions about Swellendam as a tourism region. The findings highlight the crucial role of sound market intelligence in creating tourism marketing strategies for municipalities. The reported findings and the recommendations made have subsequently informed the municipality’s spatial development framework and tourism strategy.

Does entrepreneur perception of the city’s decline matter to place attachment?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between local entrepreneurs’ perception of the city’s decline and their place attachment (measured in terms of commitment to the declining city and sense of how the declining city compares to other cities). Design/methodology/approach The authors surveyed entrepreneurs in a relatively small sample (N = 105) from a declining city of about 78,000 residents in the USA. Findings The authors found significant inverse correlations and found that, after controlling for length of residency, the entrepreneur’s perception of the city’s decline predicted lower place attachment. The authors also tested a moderation hypothesis and observed that, whereas professional-service entrepreneurs with both stronger and weaker perceptions of the city’s decline showed similar place attachment, non-professional entrepreneurs showed significantly more variation, displaying both the highest place attachment when weak in perceptions of the city’s decline and the lowest place attachment when strong in perceptions of the city’s decline. Research limitations/implications The authors discuss implications for place attachment, place image and place branding research, as well as for the study of place context’s effects on entrepreneurship. Practical implications Results hold implications for place branding’s participative development and for reasons to expect some difficulty in place branding when the context is a declining city. Originality/value Relative to prior research in place management, the research features a neglected segment of the city’s population, business owners, to study place attachment. Relative to prior entrepreneurship research, the authors advance the study of context’s effects on entrepreneurship by extending it to the place context of declining cities, which are not usually featured in entrepreneurship studies.

La “Marca Ciudad” y su comunicación como vector de desarrollo

Este trabajo de investigación parte de la premisa de que los territorios urbanos tienen una identidad cultural subyacente y distintiva; que cuenta además con ciertas potencialidades y recursos que pueden generarle posibilidades concretas de desarrollo. Parte de la certeza de que un territorio no puede reinventarse de cero, como sí podría hacerlo un producto/servicio si es que cuenta con recursos suficientes. Los territorios responden a una identidad en constante evolución, dotada de plasticidad adaptativa que se conforma de acuerdo a la acción de sus ciudadanos, la historia que los define, el impacto de los cambios sociales en sus rasgos singulares y su capacidad de adaptación e innovación frente a las nuevas condicionantes de orden mundial. El objeto de la investigación considera distintos enfoques sobre planificación y desarrollo económico, así como el papel de los gobiernos locales en la gestión y desarrollo de las ciudades, enfocándose en aquellas de países en desarrollo. A lo largo del trabajo se considera que las ciudades y las regiones se ven abocadas a gestionar directamente los recursos para satisfacer eficientemente las necesidades de su población. En este contexto, se analiza y propone la concepción, construcción y desarrollo de una marca de ciudad (place branding) o marca de destino (destination branding), que represente y proyecte a la ciudad, a la vez que se constituya en una manifestación del poder comunicativo del espacio, cuya gestión de imagen, resulta decisiva como generadora de recursos, facilitadora de bienestar para sus pobladores, así como para su crecimiento y desarrollo sustentable a largo plazo. Abstract This research work is started from the premise that urban territories have an underlying and distinctive cultural identity; that it also has certain potentialities and resources that can generate concrete possibilities for development. It starts from the certainty that a territory cannot reinvent itself from scratch, as a product/service could if it has sufficient resources. The territories respond to an identity in constant evolution, endowed with adaptive plasticity that is shaped according to the action of its citizens, the history that defines them, the impact of social changes on their unique features and their capacity for adaptation and innovation in the face of the new conditions of world order. The object of the research considers different approaches to planning and economic development, as well as the role of local governments in the management and development of cities, focusing on those in developing countries. Throughout the work, it is considered that cities and regions are forced to directly manage resources to efficiently satisfy the needs of their population. In this context, the conception, construction and development of a city brand (place branding) or destination brand (destination branding), is analyzed and proposed, which represents and project to the city, at the same time be constituted in a manifestation of the communicative power of the space, whose image management is decisive as a generator of resources, facilitator of well-being for its inhabitants, as well as for their growth and long-term sustainable development.

Geobranding as a technology for sustainable development of an agricultural region

The article is devoted to the theoretical issues of geo-branding as a technology for the development of an agro-industrial region, the origin and development of research on branding and marketing of territories is considered, the content of the concepts of “place branding” and “place marketing” and the relationship between them are analyzed. The work examines the main components of geo-branding: development, implementation of a strategy for the development and promotion of an agro-industrial region, attraction of investments and the most efficient use of the region’s resources. Geo-branding is viewed as a technology for implementing the strategic goals of sustainable development of an agro-industrial region, which includes an analysis of the specifics of the region in the past, present and future based on the socio-cultural resources and potential of the region. The article proposes a geo-branding model that includes archetypal and narrative components that are reflected in the public consciousness of representatives of different target audiences. Particular attention is paid to the study of the specifics of the use of special events and digital communications by geo-branding entities as tools for promoting the potential of agro-industrial regions in the domestic and foreign markets.