Few researchers explore the intersection of place branding, digital platforms and emerging technologies as closely as Ioana Stoica. A Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing at the University of Bedfordshire, her work focuses on co-creation, participatory place branding, and how digital and AI tools increasingly shape how places are experienced, interpreted, and communicated.
Before entering academia, Ioana worked in advertising and digital marketing, an experience that continues to inform her research and consultancy with SMEs and public organisations. We caught up with her to discuss the role of residents in shaping place narratives, the opportunities and risks of digital platforms, and why the future of place branding will increasingly depend on governance as much as communication.
Ioana, you began your career in advertising and digital marketing before entering academia. How did this background influence your decision to focus on place branding?
My early career in advertising and digital marketing made one thing very clear: brands are not what organisations say they are. Brands are what people repeatedly experience, share, and negotiate in public.
That insight translates directly to places, where meaning is even more distributed. A place brand is lived daily by residents, interpreted by visitors, and shaped by institutions, media, and digital platforms.
When I moved into academia, I became particularly interested in the tension between top-down brand management and bottom-up meaning making. My PhD explored co-creation in a place with a challenging reputation, which provided a realistic setting to observe how residents and institutions attempt to align narratives — and how quickly misalignment becomes visible.
Place branding continues to evolve as a field. How do you define it, and what distinguishes it from traditional marketing or destination marketing?
I see place branding as the long-term governance of place meaning — the ways identity, reputation, and lived experience emerge through policies, services, everyday practices, and communication across multiple stakeholders.
Unlike traditional marketing, places cannot be managed like products. Place branding sits at the intersection of civic life and market dynamics. It involves residents rather than customers, public institutions rather than firms, and often contested identities rather than simple positioning statements.
Compared with destination marketing, the scope is also broader. Place branding is not only about attracting visitors, but about improving quality of life, strengthening cohesion, and shaping how a place functions internally as well as how it is perceived externally.
Your research highlights the role of residents and other stakeholders in co-creating place brands. What makes co-creation meaningful and effective in practice?
Co-creation only becomes meaningful when it represents a genuine shift in decision-making rather than a symbolic engagement exercise.
Three factors are particularly important. First, clarity and transparency about what stakeholders can influence. Second, fair processes and credible representation, especially in diverse communities. Third, strong feedback loops that allow participation to continue over time rather than ending with a single campaign.
At the same time, we should recognise that co-creation does not only occur within formal branding initiatives. Much of it happens informally through word-of-mouth, social media conversations, and everyday storytelling that shapes reputation independently of official strategies.
This suggests that place branding needs to move beyond participation as a technique and engage with co-creation as an ongoing social process that often unfolds outside the control of place brand managers.
Digital platforms and storytelling increasingly shape how places are perceived. How do digital tools influence the development of place narratives?
Digital platforms transform place branding in two fundamental ways.
First, they lower the barrier to participation. Residents and visitors can continuously publish experiences and interpretations of places, meaning official narratives constantly interact with organic ones.
Second, they amplify visibility. Stories can travel quickly and widely, which can be beneficial when narratives resonate, but risky when they trigger backlash.
For this reason, I see social media less as a communication channel and more as an environment where place meaning is negotiated. Methodologically, this has led me to analyse user-generated content at scale, for example using social media data to understand different dimensions of place experience.
More recently, my work has also explored the use of AI and advanced analytics in branding and place management, which raises important governance questions about how algorithmic tools influence visibility, representation, and decision-making.
Can you share an example where participatory place branding or digital engagement helped shape perceptions of a place?
One example from my research involved a municipal storytelling campaign that used residents’ stories to promote everyday multicultural experiences and strengthen local cohesion.
The campaign demonstrated both the potential and the risks of participatory branding. While such initiatives can foster identification and pride, they may also create unintended negative reactions if residents perceive the stories as externally produced or disconnected from lived realities.
Another example comes from analysing geotagged social media data to compare place experiences across locations. This approach can reveal distinct experiential “signatures” of places and help practitioners move from assumptions to evidence when diagnosing reputation or experience gaps.
How can academics and practitioners collaborate more effectively so that research insights have real impact?
Three shifts can make collaboration more productive.
First, co-designing research questions so they reflect real decision points faced by practitioners.
Second, translating findings into processes rather than just insights. Practitioners need practical frameworks — for example guidance on storyteller selection, participation structures, or governance models.
Third, developing shared measurement literacy. Co-creation and digital engagement require evaluation methods that combine qualitative insight with scalable indicators such as social listening, narrative analysis, and place experience metrics.
What advice would you give to early-career researchers interested in place branding?
I would suggest four priorities.
First, anchor research in real place contexts because place branding is rarely tidy in practice.
Second, take questions of power seriously. Participation, representation, and legitimacy strongly influence outcomes.
Third, develop methodological range by combining qualitative fieldwork with digital methods.
And finally, build community by engaging with the international place branding research network and presenting work at specialised conferences.
Looking ahead, which themes do you think will become most important for place branding research and practice?
Several themes are becoming increasingly important.
One is the governance of AI in place branding: how places can use AI ethically for insight, service design, and communication while avoiding bias and exclusion.
Another is measuring place experience rather than focusing only on image. This means developing multidimensional and long-term ways of understanding everyday experiences of places.
Participatory storytelling will also remain central, especially in designing storytelling ecosystems that are credible, representative, and resilient to backlash.
Finally, issues such as internal branding, resident roles, and reputation recovery will continue to shape the field, particularly for places dealing with contested identities or long-standing negative narratives.
Thank you, Ioana.
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