Intro Placebranding

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of publishing genius, and has probablyblackened the word brand for generations to come. This is a pity,because it risks blinding people to the realeconomic and social values which thediscipline of branding can bring if responsibly and imaginatively applied.

So it is particularly important that,before entering into conversations aboutthe branding of places, there is clarityabout which particular interpretation of the word is intended. Far too manydiscussions about place branding go awrybecause of a failure to establish acommon understanding of the wordbefore starting, and this sets up acognitive dissonance between theparticipants which can go unobserved for a very long time before the argument

breaks down in confusion or acrimony.

THREE DEFINITIONS OF BRANDINGThe words brand and branding areused, broadly speaking, in three ways: a popular way, a simple way and an advanced way. (It is inappropriate to consider herewhat the differences are between brandand branding, as that question providesmaterial enough for a paper on its own.)

The popular understanding of brandingis the least precise: it is used as a vagueconation of several marketingdisciplines, and often interchangeablywith advertising, marketing, PR and salespromotion. It is believed to be amarketing buzzword which refers in ageneral way to all modern selling

Brand is a difcult word. The problemof dening it has spawned thousands of papers and articles in the marketing eld,and it is still widely misunderstood.

Brand is one of those jargon wordslike trauma and phobia which servefor years, performing a humbledescriptive role within their ownspecialist sector. Then, for some reason,the specialist sector suddenly becomesthe focus of public attention, and there isa mad rush for the jargon. Words getappropriated, rst by journalists, then bythe population at large and nally bypoliticians, and used for all the wrongpurposes in all the wrong places. Thewords quickly lose their edge and areeventually discarded because they do notseem to work properly any more.

We may now be seeing this happen tobrand. Now that Madonna andPavarotti are brands and Greenpeace is abrand, US foreign policy, the EuropeanUnion and NATO are brands, the wordis perilously close to becoming asynonym for thing. Thanks to the widesuccess of a slew of anti-global,anti-corporate, anti-this and anti-thatbooks Naomi Kleins No Logo,Alissa Quarts Branded, Eric SchlossersFast Food Nation, George MonbiotsCaptive State and many more besides brand is quickly becomingsynonymous with bad thing.

The linking of this ever-popular themeto the wave of vague but keenly feltsupport for the anti-global, anti-corporateand anti-empire movements was a stroke

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Some important distinctions inplace branding


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recognises that companies are unlikely toachieve a sustainable advantage in themarketplace unless both employers andemployees and ideally other stakeholders too share some beliefsabout the product or service and engagein a degree of consistent behaviour.

This advanced conception of brandingin a company is a total approach tomanaging a business, with the brandproviding the key to company strategyand corporate culture. According to thisde nition, the brand becomes a centralorganising function of the company, andmay prove to be the company s mostvaluable asset.

The popular and simple ways inwhich the word is understood are basedon a belief that branding is simply atechnique or set of techniques, likeadvertising or root canal surgery , andconsequently can be de ned bothsuccinctly and comprehensively. Theadvanced de nition, on the other hand,considers branding to be a eld of theoryand practice, like business or medicine ,which can of course be brie y describedbut not exhaustively de ned exceptthrough a study of its practice and

literature, which, while not as broad asthose of business or medicine, includesmany hundreds of works.

ADVANCED BRANDING AND ITS APPLICATION TO PLACESMuch of the animosity shown towards theconcept of place branding arises directlyfrom the popular or simple understandingof the word brand , leading to anassumption that the practitioners andsupporters of the discipline wish to brandnations like cattle in other words, toslap on an attractive logo and a catchyslogan, and market the thing as if it werenothing much more than a product in thesupermarket.

This is an animosity with which the

activities, and often has a connotation of something aggressive and malevolent,which descends directly from an older use of the term (eg branded as atraitor ), and ultimately to the originalmeaning of the word: a hot iron appliedto livestock, permanently identifying theanimal s ownership.

The simple understanding of brandingis used by marketing services rms andtheir clients and refers to a designedvisual identity name, logo, slogan,corporate livery. It is the way in whichthe identity of the company, product or service is dressed , and thus recognised. Ina subtle way, this dress is also understoodto be a channel of communication; thestyle and content of the design impliessomething about the nature andpersonality of the product, andconsequently its desired target audience.

The advanced denition of brandingincludes the simple de nition but goeson to cover a wide area of corporatestrategy, consumer and stakeholder motivation and behaviour, internal andexternal communications, ethics andpurpose. Companies which espouse thisunderstanding of branding use it to

navigate through the complex web of relationships between the personality of the company, product or service thebrand itself and the people whoproduce and deliver it, as well as thepeople who consume it or otherwisecome into contact with it.

This understanding of brand alsorecognises that in marketplaces where thefunctional or physical attributes of companies and their products becomeless and less relevant, their intangible or brand-related qualities the halo of value and associations, lifestyle,desirability of the marque, the strength of the maker s reputation and the behaviour of the company s representatives become paramount.

Advanced brand theory therefore

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Taiwan being one example of a countrywhich has attempted to promote itself asa whole, using conventional promotionaltechniques. The only single messagewhich an entity as complex and diverseas a country could possibly settle on asrepresenting its pitch to the worldwould be so vague and so bland as torender any expenditure on broadcastingthe message a waste of resources. People,as a rule, are only prepared to give their attention to commercial messages whichare inherently interesting, and no amountof expenditure on media or creativitycan force people to pay attention to amessage which is vague, bland or general. Hence the dismal nature of much corporate advertising, whichusually achieves little more for thecorporation than reassuring shareholdersof its prominence.

For the same reason, corporationswhich produce a number of differentproducts, like Procter & Gamble or Unilever, tend not to promotethemselves directly, but rely on goodgovernance and brand portfoliomanagement to build their corporatebrands. Countries, regions and cities are

likewise best promoted indirectly by aharmonised and strategically informedapproach to the promotion of their products and sub-brands , and their overall reputations built by their actionsand behaviour (which are guided, of course, by the same strategy).

The question which all effectivepromotional activity must address atsome level is the consumer s eternalwhat s in it for me ?. When we aretalking about a country, a region or acity, the question has little or nomeaning.

But whether or not countries, citiesand regions can be promoted, theycertainly do have brands, and thosebrands certainly do affect the views,decisions and behaviour of their friends,

writer entirely sympathises: the idea thatsimply providing a place with a newgraphic device and a new catchphrasecan do anything to change its fortunes(other than by wasting its money) ispatently absurd.

When, on the other hand, the bestlessons, techniques and observations fromadvanced branding are intelligently,responsibly and imaginatively applied toplaces, the consequences are fascinating,far-reaching and potentiallyworld-changing.

Not only are people often confusedabout what branding is: they are alsoconfused about what is being branded.There is a lack of clarity about thedifference between place branding andthe promotion of the nation s individualassets or products , such as tourism,inward investment, culture and exports.Destination branding , a term often usedto indicate a modern form of tourismpromotion, is frequently con ated withnation branding, but this is misleading, asHugh Davidson points out in his bookreview in this issue. Tourism is just onecomponent of the city, nation or region(readers may recall this writer s use of the

nation-branding hexagon to illustratethis relationship), and, unlike the nationas a whole, is a product which needs tobe sold in the global marketplace. Inthis context, simple branding is not onlypossible but also necessary, and the wholepanoply of visual identity, slogans, designand advertising plays a critical role inselling the product.

Components of the place can bepromoted, even sold, but the nation, cityor region cannot. This is partly because,almost by de nition, the nation isunlikely to have a single target market or a single offering, and in such conditionspromotion becomes dif cult and rather pointless. Amine and Chao s paper onTaiwan in this issue presents interestingfood for thought on this subject

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online media planning can make touristboards more competitive; some attractivedesign can help investment promotionagencies in their work; and so forth.

If the usefulness of modern commercialpractice and theory to statecraft really didamount to this and nothing more, itwould be dif cult to justify the existenceof this journal, or indeed to explain theexcitement around the emergence of aeld called place branding.

No, the reason why the convergenceof advanced brand theory and statecraft istruly epoch-making is because brandingis, potentially, a new paradigm for howplaces should be run in the future.

A globalised world is a marketplacewhere country has to compete withcountry and region with region, citywith city for its share of attention, of reputation, of spend, of goodwill, of trust. That places should look to thedisciplines of the marketplace for inspiration about how to prosper in thisworld is entirely logical.

The objection that the commercialmodel is mainly associated with pro tsrather than people does not stand up toscrutiny. Branding in its advanced form is

primarily about people, purpose andreputation, not about money althoughthere is little question that organisationswhich are clear about their brand valuesand brand strategies ultimately stand abetter chance of sustainable pro tabilitythan those which are not.

Flexibility is the essence of modernbrand theory: it has a unique ability toequate soft , human issues with hard nancial and organisational ones andresolve them humanely and intelligentlyinto a functioning and compassionatewhole. It reconciles the needs of theorganisation and the forces of themarketplace with the human capital which is the raw material of both. In thecommercial sector, enlightened brandstrategy embraces creativity and human

enemies, allies, visitors, investors andconsumers. The application of advancedbranding in this context is much morean attempt to manage the reputationalassets of the place than sell it in theglobal marketplace: in other words, to dowhatever is possible to ensure that thecountry s reputation is a fair, balancedand useful re ection of its real assets,competencies and offerings, and notmerely an outdated or unjustly biasedcliche , informed by long-past events or ignorant assumptions.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PLACEBRANDINGSince the most commonly heldunderstanding of branding outsidesophisticated marketing departments tendsto be the popular or, at best, the simple,it is hardly surprising that policy makersare reluctant to accept that this approachcan have anything of truly centralimportance to their work.

Yet there is undoubtedly a growingacceptance in public affairs that afamiliarity with the techniques of commercial marketing is increasingly

relevant. That ministries of foreign affairsand their foreign services must practisesomething called public diplomacy isnow commonplace; likewise the fact thatpublic affairs has become an internationalaffair, and that investment promotion andtourist promotion must be assophisticated as the most sophisticatedcommercial marketing, since both arecompeting for consumer mindshare inthe same space.

But the debate never seems to gobeyond the not-very-challenging truismthat some learnings from the privatesector can bring bene ts to the way inwhich places are marketed: a bit of PRor media training can sharpen updiplomacy in the media age ; aknowledge of internet marketing and


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makes it harder for states to persist insecretive, unethical or authoritarianbehaviour.

The falling cost of international travel,the rising spending power of agrowing international middle class andits constant search for unfamiliar experiences compel more and moreplaces to market themselves as touristdestinations; at the same time, thethreat of product parity among suchdestinations makes a clear,distinguishing and economicallysustainable brand strategy essential sothat they can compete effectively inthe international marketplace.

An ever more tightly linked globaleconomic system and a (currently)rather scarce pool of internationalinvestors being chased by a growingnumber of industrial and servicelocations applies similar pressures tothe business of foreign directinvestment promotion; again, thetendency towards parity between theofferings and the need for acompetitive strategy which issustainable in the long term againstthe threat of highly mobile global

capital drives places towards an ever more sophisticated and brand-ledapproach to developing, managing,positioning and promoting themselvesin the marketplace.

A range of consumer productssourced from an ever wider pool of countries increases the need to buildtrust in both company and country of origin; at the same time, a growinginterest, re ected in the internationalmedia, in the ethical and ecologicalcredentials of manufacturers andservice providers creates a situationwhere it is ever more critical for places to pursue a long-term strategyfor building and managing a positivecountry-of-origin effect.

For poor and developing places, the

resources with administration andnance; so, in the public sector, itcomfortably embraces culture and societywith economics and politics.

WHY THE TIME FOR PLACEBRANDING HAS COMEBig changes in the social and politicalfabric of modern society make the morepublic-oriented approach of placebranding a necessity in the 21st century.This is not a question of governmentsplaying to the gallery or a strategy for legitimising state propaganda, but simplya growing acknowledgment of theinuence of peoples on internationalaffairs. As mentioned in the editorial tothe rst issue of Place Branding , a roughdistinction between place branding andpropaganda might be that propaganda isthe deliberate use of manipulated publicopinion as a tool for achieving a politicalend; place branding is the consequenceof a realisation that public opinion is anessential component of achieving apolitical end .

Just a few of the conditions whichnow make a brand-oriented approach to

statecraft not merely desirable butnecessary are as follows:

The spread of democracy anddemocratic-type governance in manyparts of the world and an increasingtendency towards transparency of government and open relationshipsbetween state players, as well as agrowing interest and awareness of international affairs among publics,drives the need for a morepublic-aware approach to politics,diplomacy and international relations.

The growing power of theinternational media, driven by a moreinformed and news-hungry audienceand more in uentialnon-governmental organisations,

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meant not merely markets for products or funds, but for ideas, for in uence, for culture, for reputation, for trust and for attention) which are rapidly fusing into asingle, global community. Here, onlythose global players be they countries,cities, regions, corporations, organisations,religions, NGOs, charities, political partiesor individuals with the ability toapproach a wide and diverse globalmarketplace with a clear, credible,appealing, distinctive and thoroughlyplanned vision, identity and strategy willsurvive and prosper.

Some claim that such a situationunfairly favours places with the funds topromote themselves more vigorouslythan others, but this view derives fromthe popular view of brands, wherebranding is confused with advertising andother traditional forms of paid-for mediapromotion. A powerful and imaginativestrategy which is more the product of intellectual than of nancial capital, as inthe commercial marketplace, may wellprove a greater asset than huge amountsof money used to thrust uninspiringmessages on to an unwilling audience.

For places to achieve the bene ts

which the better-run companies derivefrom branding, the whole edi ce of statecraft needs to be jacked up andunderpinned with the learnings andtechniques which commerce, over thelast century and more, has acquired.Much of what has served so well tobuild shareholder value can, with care,build citizen value too; and citizen valueis the keynote of governance in themodern world.

The underlying theme of thispublication is that branding, if it is toserve its real purpose in the world, is notsomething you add on top: it issomething that goes underneath.

Simon AnholtManaging Editor

intense competition for internationalfunds, technology and skills transfer,inward investment, export markets andtrade makes a clear positioning, awell-de ned sense of nationaleconomic, social and political purposeand a degree of in uence over nationalreputation more and more essential.

Countries, regions and cities are alsocompeting more intensely and morewidely than ever before for talentedimmigrants, whether these are foreignnationals in search of ideal social,cultural, scal and living conditions, or returning members of the diasporalooking to reinvest in their homecountry. Again, a clear positioning, abelievable and attainable set of promises in these areas and awell-maintained and well-deservedreputation become essential attributesof the competitive nation-state.

A growing demand on the part of consumers for an ever wider, richer and more diverse cultural diet, enabledand stimulated by the rapid growth of low-cost global digital andcommunications media, means that theglobal marketplace is open as never

before for places with unusual anddistinctive traditional or inventedcultural products to punch above their weight in world affairs, and use their culture to communicate more of thereal richness of their society to ever more distant audiences.

The currently depressed popularity of American culture, policies, productsand services will create a vacuum inthe global marketplace for clearlypositioned and consistently presentedplaces to build real competitiveadvantage.

The list could continue for page after page. The driver of the new paradigm issimply globalisation: a series of regionalmarketplaces (and by marketplaces is


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Intro Placebranding