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The undeniable appeal of this conference is to offer in a convivial setting a fruitful meeting between academics and professionals working for cities, regions and countries all over the world, interested in the implementation of place branding and marketing concepts, in order to attract and retain wealth : residents, visitors, investors, companies, talents, events etc.

This strong international dimension of CNP16 manifests itself by the presence of consultants, leaders from economic promotion agencies, tourism offices, local governments as well as institutions representing a whole range of place brands, with respect to their size and nature : Costa Rica, Israel, Tatarstan (Republic of Russia with a population slightly under 4 million), Great Britain, Slovenia, Morocco, Estonia, Poland, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bahrain, Qatar, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, New York, Maastricht, Oslo, Edmonton, Amsterdam, etc. Like last year, cities and countries are the predominant place brands represented (see who attended).

Meeting delegates there, you realize that behind each place brand, there’re dedicated individuals, men and women from various parts of the world, who strive (but also compete !) to mobilize all the energies and resources available to value their place and its people. What a tough but rewarding vocation !

Here are some of the key ideas (not exhaustive list) that were raised during the CNP 2016 conference :

The high-performance destination syndrome : New York and Amsterdam have outlined the rocketing, nearly out-of-control growth of their visitor attractiveness in recent years, evidencing the undeniable success of their marketing strategies. Nevertheless, this situation has entailed some undesirable effects : overcrowded city hearts due to mass tourism, nurturing tensions between visitors and locals (ref. photo showing a wall in Amsterdam where one can read : "refugees welcome, tourists go home!" and this video). To tackle these rising hostilities, the two cities have undertaken approaches fairly similar in terms of branding and marketing : the New York city inhabitant is strongly encouraged to get involved in the tourism development of his neighborhood through training and a dedicated program #Seeyourcity, an app developed in partnership with American Express. Amsterdam, wants to focus on preserving the 'soul of the city', cornerstone of its strategy targeting key stakeholder groups (residents, tourists, and business circles). With "Discover Your Amsterdam", the Amsterdam marketing board wants to turn more peripheral neighborhoods into destinations, following a logic of sub-brand development. This includes new media and visual content showcasing the unique character of each of Amsterdam's districts (shopping, cultural festival, restaurants, architecture etc.).

Managing place brand reputation crises : a truly hot topic which was discussed through the cases of Iceland and mostly Nepal, two countries that have managed to reshape their image, turning a natural catastrophe, such as a volcanic eruption or a earthquake, into an event forging the character of the place. For crises are seen as unexpected opportunities for some places to demonstrate their resilience, sense of anticipation, but also their creativity, their ability to tell a story that arouses curiosity and sympathy, especially for the media. Nepal, following the earthquake, deployed an effective strategy of influence on social media (success of the I am in Nepal Now campaign), highlighting the tremendous dynamism of local cultural life In the aftermath of the disaster. As a result of its efforts, Nepal was voted "World Best Value Destination 2017". The presentation of the Digital Country Index by Bloom Consulting, a powerful monitoring tool of online country brand appeal, also stressed the importance of a place's reputation as an essential asset particularly vulnerable to external events : How brand USA has been affected by the electoral successes of D. Trump and at the same time benefited the brand Canada ? how the image of Brazil was affected by the social disorders that punctuated the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016.

The power of language : it might be relevant to distinguish between soft and hard place branding narratives. Some places, mostly countries, have sought to make their branding message as audible as possible, to maximize stakeholder support. Luxembourg's, whose nation-branding approach was met with strong local support, made the case for the idea of co-creating a collective "signature" rather than a "logo". Britain, which annually wins a best branding award for its Britain is Great campaign, demonstrated the virtues of its umbrella country brand model (smart use of the word GREAT). Never mind the Brexit, the successful communication apparatus has become the spearhead of Great Britain's promotion abroad (direct and indirect benefits valued at nearly € 2.2 billion, support of nearly € 94 million and patronage of influent people such as the royal family , David Beckham, etc.). It has served as a major international gateway for UK cities and regions, and has generated coherence across various communication channels for activities and sectors that embody British excellence. For the campaign's manager, the choice of the right words matters : "we do not talk about Place Branding or Nation Branding, we talk about a program to create jobs and economic growth". More on a city-level, Berlin's systemic approach of place branding was presented. Behind Berlin's undeniable city brand success, the leadership of Berlin Partner, a remarkable public-private partnership (membership of more than 270 companies and scientific institutions) which manages the be Berlin flagship brand and coordinates the overall marketing strategy of the German capital  (recent example : the pop up lab Berlin). More than ever Berlin is mobilizing its efforts to position itself as "the place to be" for startupers.

Unburied treasure, leveraging a place’s hidden branding opportunities : this phrase coined by the iconoclast Jeremy Hildreth sums up well all the complexity but also relevance of place branding as an approach aimed at uncovering and leveraging, rather than merely « manufacturing », the distinctive assets, the "genius loci" of a place. Take the city of Edmonton, rather than opting for a costly advertising strategy, it has developed an offline and online place-makiing platform to engage the local civil society, encourage it to take risks, and "take their idea into reality", to deliver the new city’s rooted ambition "Make Something Edmonton".

The CNP 2016 awards focused on 4 place branding items (see the award list) :

• best expression of place brand identity awarded to Make Something Edmonton program
• best communication strategy awarded to GREAT Britain promotion campaign
• best use of social media awarded  to Finland Emojis
• Place brand strategy award to The Hague

We can only regret that the quick pace of the conference, despite the numerous workshop sessions, did not always allow delegates to take a step back on the cases presented, to draw useful lessons for their practice. Then, the very expected intervention of Charles Landry, renowned speaker who coined the "creative city" concept, though very inspiring and instructive about the upheaval effect of digitalization on society and urban living, appeared somewhat disconnected from the rest. France and its territories, which normally have a lot to say on place marketing, shined again by their absence. That's unfortunate because French cases would have provided the opportunity to address the crucial issue of institutional transformations and its effects over place branding policies (merger of regions, new regional entities, brand reshaping etc.).

Still a young conference in the place branding game, City Nation Place has the full potential to establish itself as the world reference in the field (an edition is planned in 2017 in New York and then a second in London). 

David Aboulkheir

City Brand Explorer editor

The main international meeting for place branding practitioners 

For those passionated for the practice of place branding, we are now approaching the 2nd edition of the highly-expected City Nation Place 2016 conference. City Nation Place has established itself over the last years as a major think-thank and hub, especially for professionals responsible for building, developing and communicating place brands to attract talent, tourism, trade and investment.

Last year's edition was a great opportunity to share and learn valuable knowledge from high-level delegates (read my feedback) : interactive workshop, high-class organization and speakers, relevant topics discussed, stimulating debates, and mostly a truly international and vibrant community of place branding thinkers and doers (see the attendees for 2016). But, the format of this coming edition sounds even more promising. Above all, It provides much more room for workshop sessions, allowing place brand practitioners to concentrate on their priority challenges :  inspirational ideas for using social media, leveraging a place's hidden branding opportunities (hosted by Jeremy Hildreth, the "Indiana Jones" of place branding ! ), best practice location marketing for FDI and economic development, hands-on place brand management for cities and regions, user experience in tourism, engaging the locals, joined up thinking for place making and place branding (Malcom Allan will present the Experience Masterplan approach).

Other interesting plenary sessions include : Amsterdam and New York jointly sharing their insights on their successful marketing strategies, how to deal with place branding in challenging times (think of the impact of recent geopolitical earthquakes), the showcasing of the inspiring Nation brand Luxembourg, setting up the right KPIs to assess and drive place brands, and a panel on the issue of coo-petition among various place brand layers (cities, regions, nations).

The preconference afternoon working session, hosted by Keith Dinnie, key author on place branding, will address some major challenges regularly faced by practitioners such as sound multi-stakeholder management and the process of deciding when the time is right to evolve a place brand.

On top of that, Charles Laundry, an international authority on urban development as well as one of the first having conceptualized the Creative City, will host the closing keynote, on the Digitized City and the Future of Place.

Without going into further details, you can have a look at the dense agenda and the impressive list of speakers.

I will be there as a critical observer and contributor to the paramount issues, last trends and practices in the place branding area, that will be debated over these two days.

The CNP 2016 conference takes place in London on the 9th and 10th of November.

After summig up some of the main ideas and cases debated during the Place Marketing Forum 2016, which took place from the 9th to 11th of October (see previous article), time has come to share some critical and constructive thoughts on regards to the conference format :

Why do place marketing researchers and practitioners need each other ? Reconcile further research and practice around place marketing still stands as one of the most problematic issues in the structuring of the discipline. Following the presentation of an explosive mixture of trends, innovative and efficient operations launched worldwide in the place marketing area, it was tricky to step back and introduce some conceptual and theoretical guidelines. The newly appointed director of the organizing Chair, Christophe Allaux, did attempt to question the scientific nature of marketing and especially place marketing, and Mihalis Kavaratzis (of the University of Leicester) also brought out some methodological tips on rethinking place branding. Yet, the conference overall showed a somehow unclear contribution of researchers side by side with practitioners in the debate, despite their visible presence in the various panels. 

What about place-making and place story-telling ? The cases of Detroit, Barcelona or French urban regeneration projects in deprived neighborhoods, were timely occasions to address the topics of place-making and place story-telling, put into perspective with place branding and marketing. However, contrasting with the intense discussions around co-opetition, governance, digitization, sharing economy and customer relationship, too little was said on the importance of understanding and harnessing sense of place, place identity and history. Still, these notions, often referring to the « DNA of places », are key drivers of place uniqueness, belonging, attachment and development. 

A French-centered conference with international input. The event needs a clearer positioning. While having all the ingredients to stand out as an international meeting, at least referring to its title, its ambition, best practices and speakers from various continents, the PMF still remains overwhelmingly francophone (which is not a problem in itself but needs to be clarified). Despite the simultaneous translation going on through the event, the animation and discussions were largely French-speaking. Mihalis Kavaratzis in his speech, pointed out this language barrier, not without a touch of sarcasm, as one of the reasons on French researchers and practitioners’ inability to showcase worldwide, except maybe for Onlylyon, their indisputable know-how in place marketing.

The conference needs a new momentum. For a third edition, the almost identically repeated format of the conference (presentation of remarkable achievements, debates and awards) reached its limit : panels with more than five speakers tend to dilute debates with the risk of loosing sight with the main topic discussed. Dedicating more time to deepen some major issues through real workshop sessions should be further considered.

The uneven quality of main speakers. The cases shortlisted were awarded for iconic new ways of managing, promoting and enhancing places. Yet, the key strengths of these initiatives were not always made clear at the end of sometimes too monoteneous presentations.

Renewing emphasis on interaction. There was much talk about « building lasting relationships » during the conference. In this respect, the PMF16 managed well to gather a community of around 400 skilled and passionated place marketing professionals. However, overall interaction with the audience was relatively poor. It appears crucial in this type of conference, to set up a real-time interaction tool to engage dialogue with the audience in every debate and to avoid one-way communication (see the exemple of the City Nation Place conference). The management of breaks and networking opportunities, is another aspect that can still be significantly improved.

Be that as it may, the Place Marketing Forum is establishing itself as a conference not to be missed in the place marketing/branding area, at least in France. Provided it addesses its main flaws, it is likely to ramp up further thanks to an already well-functioning organisation. The decision to change the hosting city for the next edition is a good step towards impulsing a new momentum for the PMF.

You may not totally agree with this summary, other thoughts are welcome !

Link to the Place Marketing Forum.

David Aboulkheir

Chief editor of City Brand Explorer

Following three days of intensive exchanges and encounters, the French main conference on territorial marketing, the Place Marketing Forum 2016 ended last Friday. For this third edition of the event, expectations were high with respect to the appetizing program (see previous article) including the presentation of outstanding territorial achievements worldwide and the participation of a range of experts in the discipline. Among the countless ideas to remember, here are some insights and personal views on what took place during these three days :

The Place Marketing Trend Report 2016

Joël Gayet, French marketing expert and acute observer of place marketing trends, opened the event on a frantic pace, listing the latest innovations, disruptive models and practices identified worldwide. Although the trend inventory may have ben exiting, it legitimately raised some societal challenges : we are not just experiencing one global revolution, but an unprecedented multiplication of significant changes, amid rising citizen and customer empowerment, technological breakthroughs, but also, and more worryingly, hyper-competition, saturation of information, immediacy and a loss of bearings. I would add as well a global climate crisis. Technological advances were particularly stressed, highlighted for instance, by the trend towards the full integration of robotics, as in the Japanese hospitality industry (and the financial gains it leads to), or the capability of datas along with smart information systems, to transform as well as upgrade place management and promotion.

Anchorage, consolidation and scaling-up of trends

The main trends analyzed, updating those already pinpointed in the previous editions, highlighted a process of anchorage, consolidation and scaling-up : more place marketing integration framed around the corporate marketing pattern, greater collaboration, partnering (use of crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, sharing plateforms) and especially the rise of business oragnizations in ever more cross-sectoral modes of governance. This is being followed by the increasing setting up of global and shared place brands, following the models of Onlylyon or Iamsterdam, where local citizens and mostly the private sector are to play a key role. These brands, along with their vision and strategy, are expected to better resonate with local identity and interfere in the very development of places' values ​; For instance the Be Berlin city brand and slogan (be open, be free etc.), originally business centered, are increasingly and opportunistically associated with political or symbolic events such as the historical anniversary of the Berlin Wall fall.

Beyond these trends that overwhelmingly emphasize the declination of the "co" and "hyper" terms in all aspects of territorial development (co-branding, co-creating, co-innovating, hyper-segmentation, hyper-customization etc.), the focus was also put on the need to prioritize « people » and « relationship » in tomorrow’s place marketing. With digital technology having a predominant role and hailed for its virtues of being a great means of disseminating information and managing the place quality offer, it was necessary to recall that technology must always be placed in the service of humankind.

Some of the cases and topics discussed

Destiination relationship management

The presentations made by the tourist offices of Picardy (former administrative region in Northern France) or the Val Thorens ski resort, put emphasis on the concept of customer experience as an optimization tool and value driver for the entire hospitality chain. Offline and online, customer experience is thought as the core framework guiding the place’s strategy and the actions implemented to meet the expectations of an even more demanding visitor base. As also recalled by Gayet, experience customization is paramount because it involves the creation of strong and lasting relationships between service providers and beneficiaries of the place offer, built up around trust. This is supposed to radically transform the traditional relation between supply and demand in the destination industry, with the advent of a destination relationship management system.

Endogeneous marketing, sharing and public-private management

No doubt, Place marketing is no longer just a matter of attractiveness to exogenous targets (visitors, high-income residents and foreign direct investors), it now revolves strongly around endogenous dynamics. This involves the urgent necessity to address the needs, expectations and dreams of local stakeholders (residents, entrepreneurs, associations, local businesses) seeking to realize their projects and  thrive.

The Detroit Home Coming campaign, led by an independent local PR organization, achieved to encourage celebrity and influencer expats affectively tied to Detroit to reconnect with their city during few days and consider opportunities for future investment. Like the well-known initiative of Connect Ireland, DHC underlines the key role of ambassadors as an untapped source for revitalizing places in crisis. The virtues of bottom-up dynamics in a knowledge-based economy, were also highlighted by Bordeaux’s Darwin project, consisting in the conversion of former military barracks about to be destroyed, into a start-up and cultural hub (6 500 m2). The Darwin ecosystem epitomizes a process of hybridization of urban uses and social practices in the heart of a city (largest co-working space and organic canteen in France, a skatepark, art, conference and concert venues etc.).

Beyond all these revitalization movements, the issue of the social groups that benefit from them was also raised. With regard to that, the discussions also focused on the relevance of adopting place marketing thoughts at the neighborhood scale, including the most disadvantaged ones. This is what the French state urban renewal agency (ANRU) has been trying to do, with a new investment program of 5 billion € to bring back to life and light overlooked neighborhoods.

The idea of harnessing co-building at all levels was abundantly raised during the debates, particularly with the city council of Turin, recognized for having launched a major call for ideas to its 10,000 municipal employees, aiming the designing of innovative public services. Another aspect of this phenomenon is the the Smart City concept being progressively replaced by the Sharing City mantra, namely the city capable of balancing the collaborative (peer-to-peer lucrative exchange) and the sharing (peer-to-peer barter exchange) economy. This was illustrated by the presentation of Seoul’s global sharing city vision and Share Hub. The latter aims to turn a metropolis of 20 million inhabitants into a high-scale laboratory for disseminating the principles of the sharing economy. 

Flagship marketing and city-making

Place flagships are still considered strategic place marketing elements. Take the District Museum in Vienna (MQW), the great iconic urban project - of which you can also be very critical for its massive look - that has helped position Vienna as a top art and cultural destination. The case of Barcelona was largely on the spotlight, not only for the Barcelona Global non-profiit think-thank, which has achieved to involve the local civil society and influence policy makers in the long-term branding of the city, but also for the specificity of its regional marketing model. Barcelona appears as an anti-model : without relying on a verbal and visual formal brand, the city has managed to strategically capitalize on major events, such as the Olympics back in 1992 and today the Mobile World Congress, as well as more informal city-making policies, to engage a profound transformation of its urbanscape and position itself as a world leading tourist and cultural destination. Other side of the coin, this worlwdide success has been questioned by the growing discontent expressed by local residents who increasingly see mass tourism as a threat to the identity and quality of local life.

Digital marketing and content strategy

The digital marketing era requires communities to undertake at least partial if not complete digitization of their communication material and media. Though image, video, and experiential contents have been prevailing over the textual one, what seems to matter most is the content strategy. The case for digital marketing efficiency was highlighted again through the 123Subsidie.nl initiative launched by an alliance of three Northern Dutch provinces. The program involves a single web portal set up to match local and supra-local businesses with the tailor-made support and funding they need. In another area, an academic institution, the University of Saint Joseph, showed how it cleverly redesigned its web portal and launched an engaging communication campaign called I will, to boost its enrollment rate of international students, benefitting overall the State of Connecticut.

The PMF 2016 was hosted by the Chaire Attractivité et Nouveau Marketing Territorial of Aix University. 

All information is available on the website.

David Aboulkheir

On the next 9th and 10th of March, I will be attending the Place Marketing Forum 2016, in Aix-en-Provence, France, event I had the opportunity to co-host in 2013 and 2014. Speaking to a French but also to an international audience (content translated), the forum is worth attending for any place marketing practitioner, researcher or simply enthusiast, for several reasons:

- The diversity of participants and the relevance of topics as well as task areas discussed ; the PMF stands for the (bi)-annual lighthouse event dedicated to place marketing in France, bringing together nearly 400 participants with the contribution of dozens of high-profile experts. Its program dares to cover with consistency, one of the most prevalent sectors of regional attractiveness such as economic and social development, tourism, culture, higher education or citizen participation. Task areas include : qualifying the place offer, designing virtuous communication and event ecosystems, digital marketing, place-making, experiential marketing, governance, place management or place branding. Though only city, province and regional scales are represented, lessons learned are likely to be relevant whatever the territory scale.

- The event also allows to draw up a much needed inventory, on place marketing research, trends and new models worldwide. It will do so, not only through the sound highlights provided by international guests of honor such as Juan Carlos Belloso (Barcelona Global), Mihalis Kavaratzis (author of the book "Rethinking Place Branding" ) or Lionel Flasseur (Director of the OnlyLyon program), but also through the showcasing of a range of outstanding initiatives, though not necessarily well-known, set up by pragmatic, innovative, risk-taker and visionary place stakeholders.

- The excellence of the cases presented, scrutinized and then debated in round tables :

• The Seoul Sharing-city program which shows how Seoul, already considered for many "the world's most wired city", has undertaken to spread and implement on a large scale the principles of the sharing economy, to tackle the impeding challenges of quality of life, sustainable development and attractiveness.
• Barcelona Global, the global and strategic marketing platform developed by Barcelona’s stakeholders, ​​to ensure lasting regional attractiveness, wealth and influence.
• The Picardy regional tourism committee determined  to revolutionize institutional practices in tourism, through the implementation of a quality management system, experiential as well as personalized marketing, embodied in a place brand, Esprit de Picardie.
• The Detroit Homecoming program, a case of endogenous place marketing that illustrates the way a declining city can reinvent itself and rise from its ashes, by leveraging together the senses of belonging, of initiative and innovation of its inhabitants.
• The digital marketing strategy successfully implemented by a higher-education institution, the University of St. Joseph (Connecticut), to boost its brand recognition and lure new talents.
• The MuseumsQuartier, an impressive art and cultural cluster within the heart of Vienna. The Austrian capital was recently ranked first among European cities in terms of quality of life (article).
• The program Innova.To, led by the he city of Turin, aimed at encouraging its 10,000 municipal employees to become innovators, submitting their ideas to upgrade public services. This practice will give the opportunity to embrace from a different angle, the smart city issue.
• 123Subsidie.NL, a very effective business support, facilitator and funding system, targeting small and medium companies, and led by an alliance of three Dutch northern provinces.

The PMF 2016 is hosted by the Chaire Attractivité et Nouveau Marketing Territorial of Aix University. 

All information is available on the website.

David Aboulkheir