As destinations promote themselves as good places to do business, Oliver Bennett reveals how countries are improving their ‘brand’.
You may not have heard of “place branding”, but it’s likely your travel plans have been touched by its dark arts. It’s an industry that has captured the imaginations of officials in charge of cities, regions and countries. And it’s growing, with destinations around the world clamouring for a brand makeover.
Take the portfolio of Saffron Brand Consultants. The firm has augmented a traditional corporate client list – Orange, BT and Shell, among others – with an increasing roster of places including Poland, Portugal, Northern Ireland and London. Such destinations now want to grab the public’s attention as if they were corporations, and place branding has become the fashionable fix in government offices and boardrooms across the world.
Wally Olins, chairman of Saffron and one of the UK’s most well-known brand consultants, says: “Almost a decade ago I wrote a monograph for the UK Foreign Policy Centre called Trading Identities: Why Companies and Countries are Taking on Each Other’s Roles. By that point, I’d been thinking for some time about the parallels between corporate identity programmes and national identity. It became obvious that symbols and graphic design could be potent tools for shaping national identity.”
Olins believes that, just like corporations, places have to present a singular idea of themselves to make a noise in a competitive world and differentiate themselves from their global rivals.
Saffron has created a “European City Brand Barometer”, an at-a-glance list which shows the places that are going somewhere and the ones that aren’t pulling their weight. It’s fun – a bit of a horse race. Antwerp, Lisbon and Naples are down, while Barcelona, Berlin and Paris are up. In the UK, Glasgow and Liverpool punch above their weight, while Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield are undersold and “risk obscurity”.
A bit Top of the Pops, then, but there’s a serious point to it, says Jeremy Hildreth, Saffron’s head of place branding – to regard underperforming places as if they were undervalued stocks and put them on the map, thereby creating wealth and saving ill-spent money. “We can save people from dead ends in their communication,” says Hildreth, who adds that places have to acquire a “story line – to be tellable, sellable and visible”.
For example, when Saffron undertook some work for Visit London, the task was to establish a tone of voice. “London’s reputation takes care of itself to some extent,” Hildreth says. “It’s the largest city in Europe, if you don’t count Moscow.” So Saffron aimed to “maintain the long-running image assets, such as Big Ben and the Queen”, while simultaneously creating a more contemporary perception. Slogans devised for Visit London included “Visit London. Est 50 AD”, “Black cabs in 12 colours” and “It rains more in Rome”.
Part of a brand evaluation involves facing up to inconvenient truths. So how does one spin London’s notorious costliness? “I’d point out that a front-row seat is expensive,” Hildreth says, highlighting the fact that you pay for quality.
The key is to get the facts and present them in a positive light. When Saffron worked with Northern Ireland, Hildreth found tourists were interested but had security fears. “The biggest perception problem there is related to danger,” he says. “But Belfast is one of the safest cities in terms of crime in the country. The region needs to persuade people coming from the US that a visit to Ireland isn’t complete without coming to the north, where the sights – the mountains, the Giant’s Causeway – are world class, and that they won’t be hurt.”
A successful branding job builds on reality. “You have to make sure what’s going on in your head is reinforced in reality as a feedback loop,” Hildreth explains. So in Munich, you expect good beer, cleanliness, low crime and prosperity. “And the reality of Munich adds up to the mind’s eye view,” he says.
According to Hildreth, branding can also fix those places that are underselling themselves. For example, Saffron recently examined Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, which is lesser known in Europe. “We found that Sofia’s most significant story was its background as a major Ottoman city and that it is one of the oldest cities in Europe,” he says. “Once you know that, it stops being characterless.” Indeed, Sofia “could become one of the new wave of magnetic European cities, along with Krakow and Vilnius”, says Hildreth. Also clambering up the scale are the city states of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore.
Placebrands, another consultancy, has worked in destinations including Botswana, Ecuador and the Overhoeks district in Amsterdam. Its founder, Sicco van Gelder, says: “It’s never about tourism alone, or slogans and logos. It’s about proper planning. We work with the stakeholders, who draw up plans to help decide the future of the place and bring them together in a shared vision. We analyse the economic, social and cultural factors, then the brand comes in to promise value. We have to make that brand real.”
Yes, but do people actually understand place branding? “Well, at parties people often assume I have something to do with architecture or advertising,” Van Gelder says. “But it’s easy to understand if you use an analogy. If a friend rings you and says, ‘Do you mind if I tell you something?’ you say no. If it’s a stranger, you shut the door in their face. It’s the same with a place.”
Placebrands has also worked on Southampton’s image. “It was badly bombed in the Second World War,” Van Gelder says. “Its old image was of the UK’s cruise-ship town.” While Southampton remains a big container port, it has experienced industrial decline. “But it has good educational institutions, and some high-tech spin-offs,” Van Gelder explains. “We said, ‘The sea is not the future of this place, it’s the past,’ and recommended that it be reinvented around the themes of innovation and transportation.”
So what do the clients think? Some appreciate the self-examination a place-branding exercise brings. Violeta Makauskiene, marketing director at the Lithuanian Development Agency, accepts that her country needs a boost. “We need an action plan to tell people about us, as we don’t have much of a presence in the world,” she says. “Sometimes it’s difficult to see what your strengths are from the inside.”
And it’s not only emerging economies that need to gain an edge – even established places have to keep an eye on how they are perceived. Joss Croft, head of business visits and events for Visit Britain, says: “It’s such a competitive world. We have to identify our values and put them across. I liken place branding to walking into a bar and grabbing someone’s attention.”
Croft explains that Visit Britain used a three-pronged approach extolling “the depth, heat and vitality of Britain. The depth is the heritage. The heat is the service sector. The vitality is the country’s modernity.” The result is a rounded view of Britain that is not just about tourism numbers, and Croft says he works closely with the British Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to achieve global recognition.
Despite the often mind-numbing jargon of “touchpoints” and “connectivity”, it’s easy to see why place branding is called upon. But its effects are hard to quantify, and some fissures are showing. Even the person commonly referred to as the “guru” of place branding now hates the term, which he coined in 1996. “The fault is partly mine,” says Simon Anholt, a British government adviser specialising in place branding, who has teamed up with global research firm GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media to develop the authoritative Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. “It’s all a bit ‘flavour of the month’, and is often misinterpreted. More and more places employ place branding and it’s very fashionable.
“To politicians it’s a magic potion, as it promises a good reputation. But they don’t understand that it might not achieve much, and that taxpayers’ money may be spent on something akin to propaganda.”
Anholt works with three countries at any given time and is currently assisting Chile. “I understand the importance of a good identity and the implications of reaching your audience,” he says. “But people often get it wrong.” Image alone is difficult, and where it really works, he says, is on a “sectoral” level. “I tend to work with trade and culture ministers rather than PRs. We talk about the country and what it can do to gain a competitive identity.”
Slogans and logos are all very well, but places are usually judged by real change rather than by playing with perceptions. “Glasgow and Barcelona are successes, but they’re judged on what they’ve done rather than what they’ve said,” says Anholt. He recommends that destinations make strong “symbolic actions” to create a shift in perception. “When Spain legalised gay marriage it put the nail into Franco’s coffin,” he explains. “When Estonia declared internet access was a human right, it was a terrific move. And when Slovenia was getting confused with the Balkans, I persuaded the Slovenians to give aid to its neighbours. This communicated that Slovenia wasn’t part of them.”
Anholt credits place branding with some notable successes, citing New Zealand and its “100 per cent pure” platform. “It was very effective,” he says. “New Zealand has been able to convert a disadvantage – remoteness – into an asset. It’s more effective than a generic, ‘discover us’ type appeal, and it’s truthful.”
Branding is also appropriate for transition economies such as Bulgaria. “It’s a way of showing aspiration,” he says. “The trouble is, it goes wrong all the time. If you’re saying, ‘Please change your mind about my country,’ then it’s difficult. If you think people can be convinced that a scruffy backwater can be transformed into a world-class city, tough.” Hildreth agrees: “You can’t solve a product problem with a communication solution. If a place is trying to fake it, then it’ll be exposed,” he says.
Wally Olins believes place branding remains the way forward, but that we shouldn’t expect it to be a panacea. “If it were truly a science, it would be much easier to get it right every time,” he says. It sounds like a case of hedging one’s bets, but as the world’s axis of power continues to shift, the concept will surely grow. “I think it will become even more relevant,” says Visit Britain’s Joss Croft. “For example, China and Singapore are extremely well placed to attract conferences. We’re competing with them – and we’ve got to make an impression.”
Case study: Lithuania
Last autumn, Saffron Brand Consultants was appointed by the Lithuanian Development Agency to help develop the country’s economic image. It’s an important process for a place that feels it has an image deficit, and Jeremy Hildreth and Wally Olins visited in September to begin the research, which is set to continue for a few more years.
Saffron’s aim, says Hildreth, is to enhance “the economic image of Lithuania, with an eye towards the country’s commercial aims, interests and endeavours”, and to look at the various components of its image – culture, sport and politics – that affect investment decisions. This year is important as the capital, Vilnius, is the European City of Culture.
“Our approach to economic image goes well beyond hard factors,” Hildreth says. “Much of what Lithuania has that would positively influence a foreign investment decision actually falls into the category of ‘soft factors’. A sense of place, the mentality of Lithuanians – these are vital economic assets, and are every bit as seductive as the country’s low tax rates or stable currency.”
These “soft factors” are also more easily branded because it is easier to build compelling, unique stories around them. “As it happens, Lithuania is quite economically competitive,” Hildreth says. “But the most important part lies in characterising and promoting its virtues as a whole.”
This is done in creative ways. For example, Hildreth says: “Lithuania’s eccentric streak comes out in a national passion for basketball, plus they are productive workers. So we can say: ‘Lithuanian basketball players are known for being team players who are intuitive and cerebral, and Lithuanian employees have the same reputation in the workplace.’”
The idea can then be developed by publicising surprising facts. “We’d like people to know that Lithuania is a more stable and secure country than others in Eastern Europe, and is therefore well used as a middleman,” he says. “To demonstrate this, more cargo flows through the country’s only port of Klaipeda than through all the ports of Ireland combined.
“And apparently, Lithuanian lorries carry more European cargo than Latvian, Estonian and Russian lorries put together. This speaks volumes about the country’s government, people and its infrastructure,” he adds.
