Laying the groundwork for a successful place brand strategy

Listening is paramount

Place branding stands apart from more traditional, commercial branding, in that you’re not creating a new product. Your city or region has existed for hundreds of years – what you need is a new way to articulate what’s baked into the DNA of your place.

“I think the first step is to listen to your place,” suggested Jessica Dyer, Cultural Manager at Brixton BID. “Who are your local communities, what history and heritage is embedded in the architecture, markets, roads, and people? Who is it that has made this place and who is it that continues to make it day in and day out?”

Amanda Davies, Director for Wrexham City of Culture, concurred with Jessica’s perspective, stating that “a place-led narrative by definition comes from the place, which means people.” Places aren’t buildings or landscape; your uniqueness comes from the people who have lived and breathed in your place - past, present, and future. Amanda continued onto state that it was the “responsibility of place leaders to both listen to and hear the views of constituents in forming that narrative” since it is essential that they recognise themselves in that story and are willing to embrace it.

Luca Romozzi, Europe Commercial Director – Corporate & Destinations for Sojern, also highlighted the importance of bringing your stakeholders together to develop a shared vision and narrative for your place. “Once that foundation is clear, the focus should shift to aligning messaging across the board, making sure that everyone is telling the same story in their own voice,” Luca recommended.

Articulating your values

You need both breadth and depth when you’re engaging with your residents. But after you’ve listened to how your communities speak about your place, your place values should resonate through their answers.

“These values could be about equality, togetherness, and social justice, or they could be about creativity, revolution, and diversity,” explained Brixton BID’s Jessica Dyer. “Whatever they are, these are now the core of your work. As you move forward, you must always be checking in and asking yourself if you are staying true to those values.”

Your community is what sets your place apart, and leading with your values is essential in ensuring that the place narrative you’re developing is one that residents will recognise and adopt. As Barry Rogers, Director of Destination Strategy at TOPOSOPHY, put it, you can “avoid generic, safe, and ‘designed-by-committee narratives’ by identifying and highlighting your place’s distinct and local narrative advantages, making your narrative truly memorable, unique, and place appropriate.”

Your strategy can’t – and indeed, shouldn’t try to – be all things to all people. It’s not realistic, and it dilutes your offer and what makes you truly individual. Leaning into your values helps you to focus in on what will be most impactful.

Take the Humber region, which has benefited from more than £72bn over the past decade. To take advantage of the new opportunities available to them, they needed a bold, unified narrative with which to communicate their new reality to the world. “Future Humber stepped up to lead this evolution, creating a brand strategy grounded in real, lived experience, one that’s optimistic yet honest, and deeply rooted in the values that define us: revolutionary, resourceful, remarkable, and real,” explained Dr Diana Taylor, MD at Future Humber. “We’ve seen the values unlock real momentum, from shaping policy conversations to inspiring local collaborations – building identity for economic, cultural, and community/social prosperity purposes.

Being consistent and walking the talk.

Once you’ve undertaken a period of listening, and you’ve identified the values that permeate your place, the next step is to make sure that you’re putting your money where your mouth is and that you are really living by those values.

“[Your] narrative must be integrated across policy, practice, and promotion, such as local growth plans, investment strategies, and cultural programming,” shared Dom Stevens, Head of Destination Chesterfield. “Consistency in messaging, bolstered by compelling storytelling and place branding, then embeds the narrative within internal and external perceptions.”

Perceptions take decades to build, and they take just as long to change. By aligning your messaging across verticals and ensuring that you’re activating your brand values across touchpoints, you build the foundations to make those long-term changes.

For Wrexham, aiming to become the UK’s next City of Culture is just one of the ways in which they are bringing their unified, place-led narrative to life. “By listening to Wrexham’s diverse communities and shifting the dial on involvement and representation,” continued Amanda Davies, Director of Wrexham City of Culture, “we intend to united people around a powerful mix of their own personal identity and their Wrexham identity, which will support our placemaking ambitions and convert the narrative in to regenerated, active places.”

Co-ownership of your brand story

The final step to ensuring that you have an organisational culture that supports a strong place brand is ensuring that the brand doesn’t live solely in your own organisation. A place brand is the sum of its history, its assets, and its community – and you need the community buy in to ensure that everyone is telling the same story about your place.

“We must move beyond consultation and empower residents, businesses, community organisations, and the public sector to shape and own the narrative,” advised Destination Chesterfield’s Dom Stevens. “This collective purpose can assist places in creating and conveying an authentic story that endures over time.”

There are several practical ways that cities, regions, and nations can structure this. TOPOSOPHY’s Barry Rogers shared that you should “give your place brand away.” He continued on to say that to ensure that your place-led narrative truly flourishes, you have to “empower people to feel part of it and share it by providing them with the necessary tools and permissions to do so.” This can be done by developing brand toolkits, white label solutions, or even making your entire brand open source, so anyone can access it.

An alternative to this, as recommended by Sojern’s Luca Romozzi, is co-operative marketing. Running joint digital campaigns allows you to amplify your message in a consistent, targeted manner. “This approach doesn’t just strengthen the destination’s visibility across channels – it also enables a full-funnel strategy, from awareness to conversion, rather than relying on short-term tactical actions,” Luca continued. “Plus, with shared reporting and transparent results, all partners stay aligned and engaged.”

Future Humber have adopted another approach; they’re encouraging their private sector to join as place ambassadors, with more than 200 representatives providing a shared language and visible alignment across sectors. “This isn’t just branding,” stressed Dr Diana Taylor. “It’s a movement. Our story is no longer being written for us; we’re writing together, from the classroom to the boardroom, showing the world what it truly means to belong to the Humber.”

City Nation Place is heading to Glasgow this September 24-25^th, bringing together city and region leaders to share best practice on how they can co-write their own place brand narratives with their community. Join Amanda Davies, Jessica Dyer, Barry Rogers, Luca Romozzi, Dom Stevens, and Dr Diana Taylor to learn from industry-leading best practice and to take home actionable strategies to develop your own strategy. See the full City Nation Place UK agenda here to learn more.