We endorse:Place Branding Manifesto
At TPBO, we support the International Place Branding Association's Manifesto, a vital guide in an era dominated by fake news and media polarization. This manifesto underscores the increasing need for cities, regions, and countries to manage their public image and international reputation effectively, a concept at the heart of place branding.
As a call to action for professionals across public administration, academia, and the private sector, the manifesto highlights the importance of international positioning and reputation management in improving citizen quality of life, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
We stand with IPBA in advocating for a more focused and meaningful approach to place branding, shaping a sustainable future for our global communities.
What's at Stake
Place branding requires strategic investments, mostly of public - taxpayer money. This makes it important to ensure efficient expenditure of public funds; it's about their effective and meaningful utilization. By supporting the Place Branding Manifesto, we advocate for a nuanced understanding of place branding as an essential tool for sustainable development and community well-being.
Why Your Involvement Matters
Challenges in public spending are escalating. Establishing core principles of place branding is imperative. Cities like Barcelona and regions like Greater Copenhagen, alongside IPBA, have taken the lead, and over 100 professionals have already signed the petition. We urge you to join us in signing the manifesto, advocate for its adoption by your administrations, and share its vision.
Objectives of the Place Branding Manifesto
The manifesto seeks to:
- Clarify what place branding is and what it is not and to raise its profile.
- Clarify the main principles that guarantee successful place branding.
- Clarify the scope of work for those in charge of place brand management.
Definition of Place Branding
Place branding transcends traditional marketing. It's about building a respected identity that enhances local quality of life and global perception. This manifesto advocates for a holistic approach, integrating cultural, ecological, political, and technological considerations into place branding strategies.
Perceptions and civic pride matter. Locals deserve opportunity, dignity and the ability to engage internationally with their head held high, because they come from a respected city, region or country. Hence, the reputation of a place is a public good and needs to be managed as such.
Place brands serve that purpose.
Building a positive reputation is a long-term objective and hence it can only succeed by doing “the right thing”, by contributing to local quality of life and wellbeing as well as to humanity and the planet. In the long run, one cannot expect to obtain a positive reputation when damaging others.
Therefore, place branding is not synonymous or even an extension of pure marketing or promotion. It is not simply about attracting more tourists, more business, more migrants, more investment. It is about creating the framework that informs decisions about what kind of places we want for our citizens in the future, based on identity and purpose; how we want to position these places internationally and hence, what kind of tourism, investment, talent, trade we expect to attract or not; and within which boundaries.
More importantly, the domain of place branding reaches far beyond economics; it also deals with culture, ecology, politics, or technology.
IPBA
International Place Branding AssociationKey Principles of Place Branding
TPBO commits to promoting the following foundational principles developed by IPBA that shape effective place branding strategies. These principles are not just guidelines but are the pillars that support sustainable and impactful place branding efforts.
- Based on identity and purpose,
- Through collaboration between all public, private and civil society stakeholders,
- Create a long-term positioning strategy (beyond the logo),
- That is robust and capable of absorbing change and responding to crises,
- That is implemented through meaningful action (policy-, project-, investment-, infrastructure-, campaign-initiatives) contributing to society, humanity and a sustainable planet,
- Using the power of imagination to create original, creative, innovative, captivating and inspiring initiatives that catch the imagination of internal and external audiences,
- Thereby building a distinctive, relevant, authentic, consistent, meaningful image,
- Seeing reputation monitoring and management as an integral part of governance,
- Committing adequate resources and processes to it, and,
- Therefore, requiring constructive collaborative leadership to co-create the future.
More about Ethics in Place Branding
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