I hadn’t heard of place branding until today. At first I thought it seemed odd that a place like city would need branding, but then I thought of Las Vegas. New York City. Those places definitely have brands attached to them. Now it’s starting to all make sense.
Place branding is being used by more and more locations around the world to compete for their share of foreign and domestic investment dollars and capital. One good example is Cincinnati USA’s communication of its brand – the tourism site and campaign is all over the place! Of course, living only a few hours of Cincinnati maybe I’m more inundated by the TV commercials and ads than others. But being in the Midwest and about the center of the United States, I bet Cincinnati USA has reached much farther than the crossroads of America.
Cincinnati USA’s campaign shows that Cincinnati is not a boring city – it’s got sports, recreation, “family fun” and culture.
I’ve found 7 tips from the Branding Strategy Insider blog that work well for place branding:
1. Get marketing advisors on your team. Before you even start thinking about how to incorporate place branding, you need to get some people on your side that can help you understand the jargon used by ad agencies and place branding consultants. You might even be able to find a marketing pro on your Board of Directors that can help you recruit a few more marketing minds. These people can help you plan your strategy so that you don’t waste any money or resources and get the response you want.
2. Include thought leaders from your community in your plan. These community leaders can help influence others in your community to get on board in your branding initiative. When you brand a place, you have to have the community’s buy-in or it’s not going to work.
3. Focus your branding to a few industries. All of the companies in your place want to be part of your branding effort. Anytime you include them, it’s like free advertising for them. But at first, you should focus mainly on the big money makers in your town. A nicer way of saying this is include those who represent the majority of your gross domestic product. To balance the focus, you should include one or two emerging industries in your branding.
4. Get to know industry experts in your community. Become buddies with the execs at the companies of which you’ll be touting in your branding. Local experts can let you in on emerging trends in the area that will affect how well your place is received nationally and internationally. Use them to keep your branding info current and relevant.
5. Translate your place’s features to benefits. A marketing mantra is to sell benefits, not features. Do the same with your place. A state-of-the-art hospital is a feature; having experts near that up your chances of surviving a heart attack is a benefit.
6. Partner with nearby communities. If your place is interdependent with another close-by, there’s no reason you can’t both share the region’s assets. A capital investment made in either place can contribute to the region’s brand.
7. Make sure you have the time and money to do the branding. Branding doesn’t happen overnight. You need to make sure you have the resources to devote to building up your place brand. This is a hard challenge, but it can be done. Look at Cincinnati for inspiration when you think it can’t be done.
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