How Emotions Influence Place Branding Success

Emotions play a key role in place branding and marketing, judging by the many answers on the topic provided by our virtual expert panel. Emotions are what connects communities with their place brand, and often are the decisive factor for decisions where to live, visit or invest.

Here's how our panelists describe the role and importance of emotions in place branding (in alphabetical order):

Adriana Campelo (Brazil):

"Place branding is extremely linked to emotions and sensations. Bad or good emotions will be fundamental to create place image. There is no place branding without emotion. We are always being impacted by some kind of emotion. The goal of place branding is to inspire, to touch, to make people think about places, to make people desire places."

Andrew Hoyne (Hoyne Design, Australia):

"A place brand is doing a great job when it generates pride because this means it is tapping into the honest, authentic, central idea or emotion of a community. Good place branding is a reflection of the spirit or personality of a community and connects directly with residents, businesses, investors and visitors. Capturing the right emotional resonance will increase community cohesion and improve economic performance."

Aparna Sharma (India):

"Emotions can be considered the soul of a campaign. Whilst not adequate on their own to drive campaigns, emotions certainly help create interest across stakeholders and sustain the place brand initiatives, especially through the troughs and the political vagaries.

In fact, to give an example - Dilli Tere Ishq Mein - which literally translates into - Delhi for the love of you - is the brand positioning and tagline for the campaign created by a group of volunteers in Delhi, India's capital city. Slowly and steadily driven through social media, it has struck soft chords amongst the people of Delhi and created curiosity.

Whilst various events and initiatives are being planned to create a robust campaign, the tagline is founded on emotional appeal. In other words, emotions can well provide the seeds to sow the campaign, but must be backed by strategy to remain relevant. "