A few weeks ago, the Nordic Place Branding Conference 2013 was held in Stockholm. Representatives from cities, regions and government agencies in the five Nordic countries met to listen to speakers discussing their various place branding efforts.
Several of the speakers talked about the challenge to get stakeholders, such as citizens of the location and business, to support branding efforts. Another issue that came up was what was place branding is all about: is mostly it a matter of marketing yourself by creating clever campaigns and taglines or of developing your place and its people and live by your values? Words or deeds? Or both?
The need to put the Baltic Sea Region on the map, both in terms of creating a ‘we-feeling’ in the region and making the region known globally, has been a much-discussed issue for some time.
For the Baltic Sea Region, building a brand is obviously about smart communication: telling people in the region and outside world that we exist, and that we do a lot of good things here, in each country and together, in collaboration. Come and visit, invest, start a business, live, work or study here should be the messages.
But it is also about working together and solving real, concrete problems and unlocking opportunities in order to build a better, cleaner, more prosperous and attractive region – through common strategies, projects and activities.
In short, it is both about showing and telling – both about words and deeds. And to align the communication and the development of the region, we need to find out what we are good at, what we have in common and how we can build on our commonalities to create a better region. That is place branding, at its best.