Our Services

Placebrands offers a range of services that are available in combination and as separate modules. Here’s a sample of our offering. If you require specific place branding services that are not listed here, please feel free to contact us with your requirements.

Masterclass on Managing Image and Reputation

This Masterclass enables the key stakeholders of a place to fully understand what is involved in place branding and how a place brand will enable them to better manage its image and reputation. The core of this programme is a two-day class which is preceded by a short period of desk research and interviews with the key stakeholders to identify the key issues which need to be addressed in the regeneration of the place. The outcome is clarity on place branding and its relevance to the development of places.

Leading Places - Clarifying Purpose and Vision

The basis for the brand of a place is agreement among its key stakeholders on its purpose and the vision. This programme enables the leaders of a place to come together to clarify its current purpose - its economic, social, cultural – and to reassess it in the light of changing circumstances. The outcome is agreement on the desired future purpose and vision for the place.

Brand Strategy Development

A place branding strategy must be based on a clearly defined vision of the future for the place while being firmly rooted in the existing policies, resources, intellectual capital, capabilities, motivations, manifestations and perceptions of the place. We have developed a range of methods, models and tools to undertake the task. This programme is designed to enable the key stakeholders to come together to develop a brand strategy that will realise the agreed vision and purpose for the place. We facilitate a series of intensive one-day workshops for the leadership and staff of the brand partners during which we help them to identify alternative scenarios for the brand strategy, to test them and to select one for detailed development.

Turning Brand Strategy into Action

This programme enables a place to bring its brand to market and to bring it alive in many and very creative ways. It involves the detailed development of the chosen brand strategy through the creation of a comprehensive programme of on-brand plans, investments, activities, events and communications that exemplify the brand of the place. These can include new urban plans, proposals for new buildings and new uses for existing ones, proposals for employment generation, cultural, sports and entertainment activities, new activities for spaces, new designs for landscapes and for environmental improvements, and a range of events such as concerts and theatre programmes. We assist the brand partners to create, cost, assess, evaluate, select, prioritise and timetable on-brand proposals that will demonstrate the brand in action and its benefits. The outcome is an agreed and funded action programme ready for implementation.

Implementing the Action Plan

A place brand strategy is, of course, only as good as its implementation, and it is when people actually experience the brand that they begin to form positive attitudes and behaviours about the place. Implementation involves devising actions for each of the stakeholder groups that are in line with the brand strategy, creating the right 'internal' communications to reach, inform and engage them, devising the correct delivery mechanisms to ensure uptake, developing funding and taxation that will assure success, and training staff on whose enthusiasm and dedication the final outcomes depend. We provide support in appropriate areas, such as public diplomacy, product and service development, brand training, and the construction of rewards and monitoring systems. For example we design and deliver an Internal Communication Programme to inform and align all of the staff of the brand partners with the agreed strategy to enable them to “live the brand” and act as effective ambassadors for it. We also design and implement a Marketing Plan to demonstrate the brand to people in the target audiences. We design and run key events that exemplify the brand in action and that bring the brand alive.

Magnets

Placebrands offers three kinds of Magnets: Investment, Talent and Events Magnets. Our Magnet Programmes enable places to strengthen their ability to attract (foreign) investment, talented people and specific events that are aligned to and reinforce the place's brand. The programmes identify those investments (and investors), people and events that are 'on brand', help shape environments that are conducive and develop offers that are attractive to them. In addition, the programmes include actively targeted recruitment of specific investments, talent and events to the place. The programmes are very valuable additions to a place brand strategy development process, as they assist in realising the brand through relevant investments, talent and events.