We caught up with Jess to discuss the ongoing efforts to strengthen Tasmania's brand through key initiatives like the Tasmanian CTM, health recruitment, and the Tasmanian Youth Story. Jess shares how a focus on community engagement and innovative place branding strategies is helping to promote Tasmania's unique identity and connect people with the distinctive qualities of the region.

I’m really interested in how we’ve been able to connect regulation (a pretty traditional tool of government) with the concept of place branding (a practice that’s still a novelty for a lot of governments). From a regulatory point of view, our CTM allow us to confirm that certain standards have been met, we can help reduce information gaps between producers and consumers, and the CTM can help grow consumer trust and confidence in products and services from Tasmania.

But beyond achieving regulatory outcomes, the Tasmanian CTM also helps us activate our brand strategy, particularly in export markets. Premium products are routinely counterfeited, and we know that consumers are increasingly interested in the origin of the products they buy. A provenance-based Tasmanian CTM acts as both a quality and a place-of-origin marker allowing us to build our reputation, grow brand recognition, and promote Tasmania’s competitive advantages.

We’ve seen our partners unite around the Tasmanian CTM. They tell us that the Tasmanian brand is an intrinsic part of their stories, that they couldn’t do what they do anywhere else in the world. For our partners, the Tasmanian CTM speaks to their passion, their hard work, and commitment to quality: the pride they have in what they are making.

In our interviews with Tasmanians, we heard a lot of stories that were connected to sensory experiences: the taste of the food, the sounds of birds, the smell of fresh air. Scent came up a lot: the unique fragrances of leatherwood honey or Huon pine, the smell of gum trees on a bush walk, seaweed on the coast at low tide.

We experience places through all our senses, and the Tasmanian scent project is one part of the sensory journey we were keen to explore further. We originally toyed with this idea in the early days of Brand Tasmania, but things came together for us in early 2023 when we recruited a new team member with a passion for scent who happened to meet a talented perfumer at a Brand Tasmania workshop. Suddenly this project felt like a real possibility.

We had a very clear brief for this project: the Tasmanian scent needed to evoke the Tasmanian brand story and to positively connect people and place and showcase Tasmanian products. There’s lots of evidence that shows the strong connections between scent and memories, and ambient scent and consumer behaviour. I think what our perfumer has created for us is something special and unique, an opportunity for Brand Tasmania to showcase and celebrate our unique products and growers. It’s also a point of curiosity for visitors – a new way for them to take a piece of Tasmania home with them – and I hope that it will help further strengthen Tasmania’s reputation as both a producer of premium products, but also as a leader in creative place brand activation.

At the very beginning of our ‘Brand Tasmania project’ we undertook an audit to better understand key success factors for place brand organisations so we could build them into the model we were creating. The audit identified four key elements, and I think they are a really useful way to think about this work. They form an easy checklist for places regardless of where they are on their place branding journey.

Firstly, you need a story. And this story has to emerge organically from the community, it can’t be imposed from above. You need to make sure the story is reflective of the views and experiences of the community, and the story should be cohesive across government, businesses, communities, and individuals. The story might evolve over time, so you need to check in with your community to make sure the story continues to resonate with them.

Secondly, you need to ensure the brand embodies, empowers and engages the community. This is the spirit of the brand. You need to continue to find ways to keep the community at the heart of the branding efforts.

Thirdly, you need a sound and coordinated governance structure. There are lots of different approaches, but whichever is chosen, it needs to facilitate collaboration between government, business, and the community, and support the ongoing development and management of the brand. And remember, as the brand evolves so too can the structure behind it.

And lastly, science. This bit doesn’t seem to get easier, but you need to find a way to measure your work against defined performance measures. Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to ensure you are getting a complete picture of the relevance and effectiveness of your efforts. Then don’t forget to adapt, respond, and evolve as required!

We need to always look for opportunities to connect with people in our community who are often overlooked from traditional engagement activities. A key focus for us across the past couple of years has been to create engagement opportunities for young Tasmanians aged 18 to 25 years.

Last year we released the Tasmanian Youth Story which was a project that aimed to understand the unique experiences of what it is like being a young person living in Tasmania – the good and the bad. We wanted to find a common story that could help decision makers better understand what young people want from Tasmania.

We heard a strong message from young people that they feel proud and confident coming of age in Tasmania, that they understand why this place is special, and they want to protect what makes us unique. But they also told us that their voices are excluded or ignored when it comes to policy making and agenda setting. We heard that young people don’t want to only be engaged on ‘youth issues’, they want to have a say on all of the challenges and opportunities that Tasmania is facing.

We know that we can’t afford to take our young people for granted – no place can. The opportunity for organisations like Brand Tasmania and our counterparts around the world is to find tangible ways to bring young people (and other marginalised groups) into the conversation, and to use their skills and insights to help design better projects and solutions for our communities.