Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 

About: Place Branding and Public Diplomacy is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Public diplomacy & Diplomacy. It has an ISSN identifier of 1751-8040. Over the lifetime, 599 publications have been published receiving 12975 citations.

Place branding: Evolution, meaning and implications

Abstract: Place image has traditionally been important in areas including tourism, country positioning in international relations, the protection of local producers from imports through ‘buy domestic’ campaigns and the export promotion of agricultural and manufactured products. Research and practice in each area, however, has developed independently of the others, even though they all revolve around the same notions of place-based marketing, whether practised systematically or not. More recently, the opening of new emerging markets, health scares including mad cow disease and avian flu, the events of September 11, 2001, labour shortages in technology, and the overall globalisation of markets, have resulted in greatly intensified global competition for increasing exports and for attracting everything from investment and tourism to foreign students and skilled labour. In turn, this has served to focus attention on place equity and systematic marketing, which is likely to have a major impact worldwide: developed nations now weigh-in the global arena with coordinated country branding campaigns, leading to intensified competition among them and a potentially significant disadvantage for weaker countries. This paper reviews place branding, discusses implications for government, business and research, and calls for integration of the various streams of thought in order to enhance our understanding of the field.

Branding the nation: towards a better understanding

Abstract: A nation brand is a complicated multi-facet construct. Even the critics of nation branding have admitted that nation brands exist. What they dispute is what nation branding refers to, and how a nation can be branded. This article aims to clarify some misunderstandings about nation branding. A conceptual framework is developed to illustrate the origins and different interpretations of the concept. Detailed comparisons are drawn between nation branding and commercial branding. A new definition is offered, which emphasises the need to shift from ‘branding’ the nation to nation image management. The use of nation image management is not only a change of terms but also helps overcome the public scepticism over the use of branding, and clarifies what can be ‘branded’ and what cannot be branded.

An analysis of terminology use in place branding

Abstract: The inception of place branding evolved from research within various fields including place image and marketing. The literature reports on studies focusing on the application of the branding concept to various geographical entities ranging from countries to towns and the challenges of branding the multidimensional construct ‘place’ especially in relation to stakeholder engagement. There seems to be a recognisable gap in the literature regarding the application of the term ‘place’ and its associated vocabulary: location, country, nation, city and region. While a ‘destination’ indicated tourism only, there is no agreed language for the holistic or all encompassing brand. This exploratory research attempts to identify the application of the term ‘place’ and it associated vocabulary. The application of place brand terms was examined by discipline and in relation to geographical entities using the sample population of place-branding case-study research. Content analysis was used to elicit place brand terms and geographical entities within various articles published in various disciplines. The data were analysed using the chi-square test for independence. The content analysis affirmed that the focus of place branding has shifted from the discipline of tourism to branding and business. The research also affirmed that a ‘destination’ indicates tourism only, articulated in various geographical entity forms, while the absence of ‘town’ as a possible place brand term became apparent as did the lack of case-study research relating to towns; countries and cities commanded the majority share of the case-study research. The results of the study depict the application of place brand terms in a generic manner from which guidance for the specific application of place terms may provide future consensus either implicitly or through the formation of distinctive place term definitions.

Cities and their brands: Lessons from corporate branding

Abstract: First, this article attempts to clarify certain issues involved in treating cities as brands, which have significantly limited the application of city branding. Secondly, it draws from corporate-level marketing theories important lessons for cities, and, thirdly, it contributes towards a clear city branding framework that is evidently missing and required. The article directly addresses whether city brands should be treated as corporate brands. It then concentrates on the similarities between these two forms of branding and extracts major lessons from corporate-level marketing concepts. Essential similarities are identified, especially in their complex and multi-stakeholder character and their dependence on a wide cooperation that runs across a city or organisation. Corporate-level marketing is suggested as the closest that marketing theories have ever come to addressing the distinct demands of cities, not disregarding the need to fine-tune relevant tools. The article then compares several city branding frameworks found in the literature exploring their common ground, which leads to the identification of eight components of an integrated city brand-management framework. The paper substantially contributes to the academic discussion on city branding and fills a significant gap in the literature by bringing together the fragmented suggestions on how city branding should be implemented.