Social Media and Place Brands
By: Robert Govers, February 7^th, 2013
Earlier this week I delivered a keynote speech at the Holland Marketing Congress (#hmc2013) organised by @NBTC, @AmsterdamRAI and @HSMAI_NL about Nations as Brands, Competitive Identity and Brand Holland. In short, my argument was (as usual) that to consider places (nations, regions, cities) as brands is not about logos, slogans and advertising campaigns but about developing structures, systems and strategies that will enable places to coordinate, stimulate and co-create initiatives (policies, projects, investments) that are...

Thanks to @Nickind @GildoSeisdedos @otgaar @newsmaniac @DualCitizenInc and many others, the 2012 International Place Branding Yearbook is OUT NOW
http://www.mindz.com/plazas/2012_International_Place_Branding_Yearbook_(Go___Govers,_Palgrave)
The International Place Branding Yearbook 2012: Managing Smart Growth and Sustainability is the third annual volume in the Yearbook series and looks at the case for applying brand and marketing strategies to the economic, social, political and cultural development of cities, towns and regions around the world to help them compete in global, national and...

Editorial accessible for FREE: From place marketing to place branding and back
Robert Govers
As this is the author's first editorial as board member for this journal, it felt like an obvious duty to respond to Anholt's (2010a) open invitation to the journal's community to contribute to the discussion about the definition of the field. As a trained marketer, the author is hoping to contribute some valid arguments about why and how the field of place branding needs to be distinguished from place marketing in the following pages.
FROM PLACE MARKETING TO PLACE BRANDING
Anholt (2010a)...

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy
Special Issue on Africa

Call for papers
Africa is the world’s second largest and second most populated continent after Asia. It has a diverse geography and climate, which varies from Mediterranean along the northern coast, desert in the Southeast and North, to a tropical climate in Central and Western parts and even subarctic in its highest mountain areas.
Africa is also a resource rich continent. It has oil, minerals, timber, wildlife, water and a rich soil for agricultural purposes. Due to its wealth of resources, Africa has been a magnet for people...

From March 1st to 31st Palgrave is providing free, online access to their impressive list of more than 60 journals and also to a selection of their online resources and ebooks content. Please access our Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy for free during Palgrave's March promotions: Access All Areas!
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pb/index.html

Today I was invited to give a talk on ‘Place Branding and Tourism Marketing’ on the occasion of the installation of the new Strategic Advisory Council for the Department of International Flanders, Flemish Government.
I was the last of 4 speakers and after that, the Flemish Prime Minister Kris Peeters, was going to deliver a speech during the reception.
However, the presentations were running late and the Prime Minister turned up early, so he entered the room half-way my presentation, just 2 slides ahead of this quote from Simon Anholt:
Although Belgium isn’t the greatest brand...

The International Place Branding Yearbook 2011 defines reputational risk as a consequence of the failure to manage other risks effectively. It provides a unique overview of place reputation indices, such as the Anholt–GfK Roper Nation Brands IndexSM, Country RepTrak™, The FutureBrand Country Brand Index, The East West Nation Brand Perception Index, and The Global Peace Index. The Yearbook also underscores the importance of culture and society and raises a central question: What happens when that deep felt connection between identity and landscape is ruptured? How do such...

It is often said that place branding is growing from infancy to adolescence, but that it still lacks a conceptual framework or agreed analytical and strategic design approach. With our online Prezi tutorial on www.ourplacebranding.com we want to show that this is incorrect and that there is more than sufficient support for such a conceptual framework. Our 2009 book Place Branding elaborately describes such a framework through what we’ve called the three gap model and the 3 times 3 gap bridging guide (depicted in figures 3.1 and 16.1 in the book). It is supported by hundreds of references...