A Practitioners View

Place branding: A view at

arms length
Received (in revised form): 23rd February 2010

Jeremy Hildreth
is a London-based adviser working with governments, corporations and creative agencies on all issues relating to marketing,
image, reputation and provenance. He is former head of place branding at Saffron Brand Consultants, and has coached
places ranging from East Timor to Swedish Lapland, and London to Lithuania (for the latter two, respectively, developing a
brand identity for the citys marketing department and creating a national brand strategy for the countrys inward investment
bureau). He also writes travel articles for the Wall Street Journal and contributes regularly to Monocle magazine. He has a BSc
from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Oxford University.

ABSTRACT Editor Simon Anholt asked Jeremy Hildreth for his big picture

PY
thoughts on the state of the place branding field where it is, and where it might
be going. This article employs many evocative metaphors to define and describe
the benefits and hazards of place branding. The article takes the view that, broadly

O
speaking, successful place branding results when certain mistakes are avoided
and certain other challenges are imaginatively and thoughtfully resolved. The article
C
proposes a generic, narrative meta-model of place branding, which any place may
refer to regardless of the present level of development of its product, perception
R
or promotion. Some of the tools of place branding including graphic design,
advertising, marketing communications, architecture and exports are explored.
O

And mention is made of the innovations and refinements that are needed in the
near future, including cross-fertilization of the place branding discipline with insights
TH

from such fields as evolutionary science. The article concludes by likening the
current state of place branding to an old map of the world, where the continents
have all been discovered and are in the right places but some of the landmasses
U

are misshapen and many are are still marked unexplored.

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (2010) 6, 2735. doi:10.1057/pb.2010.7
A

Keywords: successful place branding practice; place of origin labelling; wicked

problems theory; basic nation branding model; avoiding common errors

INTRODUCTION uncontroversial to state that making a

Correspondence:
Jeremy Hildreth
E-mail: jeremy@jeremyhildreth.com
Website: jeremyhildreth.com
Although the definitive textbook on
understanding or doing place branding has
yet to be written, many of the main items
in its table of contents are understood,
metaphorically speaking, and some of
the chapters are relatively complete
and agreed upon. In addition, and very
importantly, place branding has earned an
ethical sanction: it now seems
place better for those who live there or
helping a place become the best it can be
in this competitive world is the true
moral purpose behind place branding.
As far as place branding consulting
goes, the most substantial achievement is
that in the main, modified corporate
identity programmes the ones based on
the modus operandi of the big branding

2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
www.palgrave-journals.com/pb/
 Hildreth
agencies have been discredited as a valid
methodology for place branding. This does not
stop places from using this methodology, or
agencies from selling it, but it does mean that it
is probably on its way out; better models and
methods are emerging.
CHALLENGES AND ERRORS
It must be clear to anyone who has studied the
field that place branding is easier said than done,
and that there are dozens of complicating factors.
There is, as has often been pointed out (Anholt,
2007), the exceedingly common error of using
the word brand to mean multiple distinct
things, namely, of confusing the brand that
is a visual representation of an entity (brand
identity) with the brand that is the collective
perceptions of that entity in peoples minds
(brand image). Consultants need to be crystal
clear in their usage of this word because too
often one senses, from the way clients and others
use their words, that they think by working on
C implementing that solution it doesnt work.
their brand identity theyre necessarily having a
R
direct effect on their brand image. This is, of
course, far removed from the truth.
O
Perhaps the biggest challenge, though, is
the nature of the place-branding problem
TH
itself. Place branding is what is known in social
planning as a wicked problem. This concept
was first named by Horst W.J. Rittel at the
U
University of California, Berkeley in (Rittel
et al, 1973), and brought to the authors
A
attention by Michael Dila, a consultant at
Torch Partnership in Toronto.
Some of the attributes of a wicked problem
are as follows:
1. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
2. The problem is not understood until after
formulation of a solution begins.
3. A wicked problem can be explained in
numerous ways; the choice of explanation in
turn determines the nature of the problems
resolution.
4. Wicked problems are often solved (as well
as they can be) through group efforts, with
members of the group having different frames
of reference and different value systems.
28 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
5. Every implemented solution to a wicked
problem has consequences, and may cause
additional problems, all of which the planner
will be held responsible for.
6. Solutions to wicked problems are not true
or false, but instead better, worse or good
enough.
7. Wicked problems require inventive solutions;
nothing off the peg or tried and true is likely
to work.
8. Wicked problems do not have an exhaustive
set of potential solutions, and there is no
ultimate test of a solution to a wicked
problem (so you never know if youve found
the best answer).
PY
If one tries to solve a wicked problem in the
linear way one would solve a tame problem
(for example, a mathematical problem, which
O
has a definite answer) by defining the
problem, articulating a solution and then
However, this is how most place-branding
tenders and proposals and briefs are written,
with project stages matching those activity areas
and unfolding in an apparently irreversible
sequence.
Indeed, the failure to identify place-branding
problems as wicked is one of the chief barriers
to development of this field, and perhaps the
reason why there have been so few real
successes.
AND YET THEY TRY
The fact that place branding is hard does little
to deter places from trying, or at any rate
wishing, to improve their images. It seems
axiomatic that almost nobody is satisfied with
the brand of his place. Many places want to
really be somebody, or at least to be more
than whatever they are. Of course, most places
are perceived relatively fairly. Some 80 per cent
of the cities examined by the author, when he
developed Saffrons European City Brands
Barometer in 2008, were deemed to have the
reputations they deserve based on the assets the
cities have and which respondents rated as
being important (Hildreth et al, 2008).
Place branding: A view at arms length
Some of the big brand cities appear to have
a brand premium, so to speak, and seem to be
selling a total story that is more than the sum
of its parts. Some cities have assets that appear
to be undervalued or underappreciated in a
brand sense; therefore, awareness is legitimately
their main problem.
But realistically, there are very few hidden
gems in the world, regardless of whether youre
talking about countries, cities or smaller places.
A place that wishes to improve its brand cannot
do so by asking for it or decreeing it; it must
stake its claim and make its mark. Simon
Anholt has commented to this author that he
would like the words a reputation can only be
earned to be engraved on his tombstone.
DEALING WITH NEGATIVE
PERCEPTIONS
O
One important question of the field is: Can
place-branding techniques be used to deal with
negative perceptions and to change a places
C described the most rudimentary place-branding
image? The answer is that of course they can,
R
but the image cannot be faked. It is an essential
truth about perceptions that they cannot be
O
erased, only created. For example, if someone
says, Picture a hamburger the listener will
TH
involuntarily picture a hamburger. If the
listener is then told to stop picturing that
hamburger, it will not remove the image in
U
the listeners mind; but if the command is
given to picture a white bowl with strawberry
A
ice cream in it and chocolate sauce on top, the
image of the hamburger will vanish from the
listeners mind. Getting rid of unwanted
perceptions, then, should be seen as fostering
new and stronger associations that come to
dominate and replace the old ones.
Also, to paraphrase Wally Olins, branding
only comes into it when your product is as
good as the best there is (Olins, 1989). Best, of
course, means sufficient to the consumers
needs. It is hard enough to determine what is
sufficient when one is talking about bar soap,
and harder still when one is talking about a
place that invariably has a range of functions
and stakeholders. The issue becomes a
contextual one because a place will always be
2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
good enough for someone for something. Still,
the point stands: if its reality is very poor, then
the first branding task of a place is to improve.
But the improvement can and should be
carried out while working from a thoughtful
and imaginative brand strategy.
FAME AND LOVE
Ideally, brand strategy development starts
with achieving clarity about what one is trying
to do (knowing why one wants to do it is also
recommended). However the term is defined,
what brand refers to at root is the strength
and amount of positive associations: positivity
must be part of the definition. Otherwise, if
one uses metrics such as unaided recall,
PY
Chernobyl has a strong brand. But it is not,
the reader will agree, a valuable one.
At heart, the most basic issue relates to how
well liked and how well known a place is. In a
2006 speech (Hildreth, 2006a), the author
model imaginable as having two vectors: fame
and love. Even such a crude model allows a
place to make some fundamental determinations
about its reputational situation and needs. Is it
that people arent as attached to the place as
they could be? Or is it that people dont know
as much about it as they could? Or is it a blend
of the two? And which of the two needs to be
addressed more urgently?
From this analysis stems clear actions. Love
is a matter of getting people to identify more
strongly with the place; fame is a matter of
getting more people to know it. Initiatives,
therefore, must be undertaken, which nurture
those goals in the desired proportions. These
are still lofty marching orders, but they are
already far clearer and provide more guidance
than we want to strengthen our brand, which
is truly the level at which many place brand
owners begin.
A NARRATIVE MODEL OF PLACE
BRANDING
Having stated unequivocally that places require
individualized reputational strategies, and that
copycat strategies even when copying the
29
 Hildreth
so-called best practice can lead to poor
results and wasted time and money, the
following could be proposed as a generic model
for rebranding places. It is generic because it
works for places of all types and sizes, and can
be applied no matter how strong or weak the
brand image is at the outset.
Step 1: Identify the current story that
dominates about the place
What are people saying? What do people think
is true? When you say Im from _______,
how do people react and what associations do
they make? This can easily be determined using
formal or anecdotal research (casual empiricism
can be extremely valid).
Step 2: Decide what the story could
and should be
This is a difficult process, and an indefinite
one, with many opportunities for its destruction
by committees, as well as other errors and
C Another helpful notion is Stephen Colberts
misadventures. Many branding programmes go
R
off the rails at this point; they simply pick the
wrong story, or too simple a story, or too
O
complicated a story, or too boring a story, etc
Outside advisors can be a great help here,
TH
simply because they have perspective on the
case being studied.
Step 3a: Find new and better ways to
U
tell the story directly
A
This is an opportunity for the place to redesign
its web sites, reprint its brochures and call in its
advertising agency. Again, if foreign audiences
are the desired target and this is usually the
case the help that a foreign perspective can
provide is imperative, regardless of whether this
comes from paid professionals or helpful
expatriates.
Step 3b: Use even more ways to tell
the story indirectly
Many elements in the story of the place will
not be credible if they are stated using
conventional communications. It is necessary to
have others relating to that message, or to
orchestrate what Simon Anholt calls symbolic
30 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
actions (Anholt, 2007). (Incidentally, when one
is trying to coordinate non-centralized
initiatives is one of the few instances in a place-
branding context when a visual identity
component, or brand mark, is predictably
worthwhile.)
Step 4: Make the story stronger, more
true and easier to spread
The story must be earned. The adage fake it
till you make it contains a powerful truth, but
only works if something is actually being made;
one cant just fake it. Things must be built and
done; policies must be changed; action must be
taken. At the same time, the catchiness of the
story of the place is important, so it is useful to
PY
have a buzz factor embedded in some of these
actions. Seth Godins concept of remarkability
literally, the ability (along with the likelihood)
O
of something to be remarked upon is a useful
one to keep in mind (Godin, 2003).
truthiness. Colbert is an American satirist who
specializes in lampooning journalism and the
media culture. In a 2005 television show, he
coined the brilliant concept of truthiness.
Truthiness is defined as a felt sense of
something being true, independent of evidence,
logic, intellectual examination or actual facts.
I feel its true, and thats what matters is the
underlying position of someone in the thrall of
truthiness. The attentive observer will notice
that many effective brand stories in the
commercial world have this quality of
truthiness. It is, of course, much easier for a
story to have truthiness when it also has some
truthfulness: but they are different concepts,
and its truthiness that matters, ultimately, in
branding. Put differently, truthfulness should
serve truthiness.
Creenagh Lodge, the chairman of Corporate
Edge, a branding consultancy, also put to this
author once an illuminating characterization of
a place brand as the received knowledge about
a place that people think theyve found out for
themselves. This is a profound insight, and a
useful clue about how ideas about places end
up stuck in peoples heads in such an
Place branding: A view at arms length
apparently intractable way. A wise place
marketer is highly respectful of what people
think they already know, however vague,
superficial or incorrect those perceptions
might be.
TOOLS OF PLACE BRANDING
Graphic design
There is, of course, scope for design when it
comes to place branding. The extent to which
design is helpful depends on the situation:
sometimes a design solution is entirely
appropriate, for instance when revamping a
corporate identity for a tourist board, but more
often the main priority is to develop a brand
strategy that lays out actions and policies rather
than design prescriptions.
When countries issue tenders seeking a logo
O
and key messages, it brings to mind the post-
World War II Melanesian cargo cults. The
C
inhabitants of certain islands that had been used
by Allied troops as forward bases had become
R
accustomed to the goods that servicemen had
flown in on the transport planes: sweets, fruit,
O
radio sets and so on. The tribesmen, however,
were genuinely primitive and isolated, and they
TH
lacked a true understanding of what was going
on. So after the war, with the military presence
now absent, the natives built landing strips and
U
control towers out of palm trees, and wore
headsets fashioned from twigs, in order to try
A
to lure back the gift-bearing iron birds. If this
worked for the white army men, they doubtless
reasoned, it should work for them, too.
This, self-evidently, is the mentality of many
countries when they issue branding tenders: If
we have a brush-stroked sun logo like Spain,
we can have success like Spain, too! In other
words, they mistake correlation for causality
and ascribe an almost totemic power to logos.
Logos do sometimes have their place: Nike
needs a tick; airliners need marks for their
tailfins; Apple needs a house style. This is fair
enough: a logo, symbol or distinctive
typography has a role to play, and sometimes
an indispensable one, as an identifier. But to
put it at the heart of an image and reputation
2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
development programme for a place is, in most
circumstances, somewhere between pointless
and counterproductive.
At any rate, marks and other brand elements
accumulate value not because theyre pretty,
but because the programme or entity they stand
for is effective. The greatest marks often do
look good (that is, have intrinsic or decorative
value). But they work and become popular
primarily because they stand for something
worthwhile. Generally, this extrinsic or built
value comes only over time, and it is rare to
have a valuable logo out of the box. Good raw
material can come out of the box, but it takes
time to earn real value for a brand identity.
PY
Advertising and marketing
communications
It is fruitful to address the issue of place
advertising with an analogy to another
discipline. The Canadian economist Robert
Mundell (a Nobel prizewinner and one of the
key intellectual godfathers of the Euro
currency) became known several decades ago
for laughing at governments who tried to spur
economic growth (a fiscal outcome) by cutting
interest rates (a monetary action). His retort
was You cant solve a fiscal problem with a
monetary solution. Thus, in place branding,
what is usually significantly a problem of
substance cannot be solved with a
communications solution. It does not matter
how hard one tries or how much money one
throws at it; it is the wrong tool for the job. As
the American folk wisdom has it, When all
you have is a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. Communications is the hammer of
marketers.
Obviously, advertising can be effective for
promoting awareness, or as a teaching aid of
sorts. The Incredible India campaign, for
instance, works by showing gorgeous photos
of India that are believable because they are in
harmony with what the majority of their target
audience thinks it knows about that nation.
This audience already has a story in its head
about India and is happy to have it reinforced
by a romantic advertisement. If Paraguay ran
31
 Hildreth
similarly delectable ads, the audience might be
suspicious, because regardless of whether those
ads were truthful or not, it wouldnt align with
the audiences prejudices and world view about
Paraguay and South America, and thus the
audience would be far less receptive.
Some people argue against campaigns like
Incredible India on the grounds that they are
clichs. However, this author is reluctant to
dismiss clichs. The balladeer and self-styled
Calypso poet Jimmy Buffet wrote a song called
Clichs in which he stated that clichs are
good ways to say what you mean and mean
what you say (Buffet, 1976). This is a valid
point: clichs are what people already know, or
think they know. As mentioned earlier, good
marketers take that heavily into consideration,
and successful branding often relies on the
original deployment of clichs.
It is worth making a related point about
slogans: a catchphrase such as What happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas is, in the opinion of
C for, and value of, authenticity. But authenticity
this author, brilliant marketing, and a great
R
advertising line. However, not many slogans are
as good: Panama: it will never leave you, for
O
example, a line currently in use, might make
some chuckle as they picture the committee
TH
voting on it, and narrowly choosing it over
Panama: you will never leave it. Everybody
loves a good slogan, but a bad one is probably
U
worse than useless.
A
Architecture and events
Indirect forms of communication, such as
building a great building or hosting the
Olympics, are said to be important in place
branding. This is sometimes true, but they are
no panacea. Architecture in particular has a me
too quality, because so many places have tried
this before, and it is difficult to produce such
effects deliberately.
Most of the worlds icons became iconic
unintentionally. The Eiffel Tower was built for
a Worlds Fair and immediately afterward
people clamoured to tear it down, calling it
a truly tragic streetlamp. More recently, in
1999, the London Eye was installed on the
bank of the Thames. It was intended as a
32 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
temporary amusement, yet is now the most
popular paid attraction in the United Kingdom.
The Sydney Opera House was supposed to cost
AU$7 million and open in 1963; it finally
opened in 1973 at a cost of AU$104 million.
One could imagine the difficulty of being the
project manager on this project and trying to
explain to the politicians or bankers that they
should keep the faith because this edifice would
soon become one of the greatest national brand
assets of any country on any continent. Even if
one believed it, one could never predict it with
any certainty.
The jury is still out as to the efficacy of
events in influencing place image. The Beijing
Olympics arguably meant more to the Chinese
PY
people than to Europeans, Americans, Africans
or other Asians. This isnt necessarily a bad
thing, however, as developing the internal
O
brand of a place is a valid pursuit in itself.
Much is made, too, about the absolute need
is fickle, and not necessarily desirable per se. Las
Vegas, the original manufactured place, is so
fake it is genuine it has its own reality
(a meta-reality, as Baudrillard, many of whose
concepts are germane to branding, would call
it).1 The Strip offers the real imitation of so
many other places: Paris, Venice, New York,
the Caribbean. Certainly, authenticity can be
endearing, but so can pastiche. One can be
inspired by a fake place (although some years
ago the author decided to visit Burma after
seeing the Mandalay Bay Hotel, only to
discover that Mandalay is, in fact, nowhere near
the seacoast) (Hildreth, 2006b).
Perhaps this affection for contrived spaces is
a cultural phenomenon. This (American) author
visited Dubai and immediately loved the
Madinat Jumeirah complex; but his Austrian
colleague was taken off guard by the faux souk
extraordinaire; having spent years in Vienna, he
was unaccustomed to this Disney-like
concocted environment. Undoubtedly, the
pastiche is done well in this instance, and if one
is going to do pastiche, it should be done well,
and done in a way that uplifts the visitor rather
than abjectly pandering to him.
Place branding: A view at arms length
Branded exports
Branded exports (or brand exports the terms
appear interchangeable) represent one pillar,
point or facet of most place-branding models.
Yet relatively few places are really known by
their commercial exports. Cultural exports are
another matter, and there is a good deal of
scope for a small country, or a city, to become
known in this way rather than through a
commercial product. Having said this, for large
emerging countries like India, China and Brazil,
launching famous and respected export brands
on the world market, preferably ones that
represent the countries in a benignly
nationalistic way, should be a top priority.
Naturally, this mechanism only works if
people can link together a product, a
provenance and a positive emotion or thought,
a process that can be abetted with thoughtful
and creative labelling. At a talk in 2009 in
Santiago, Chile (Hildreth, 2009), this author
recommended that the country use its biggest
C most valuable but, by their nature, cannot be
export, wine, as a means of saying things about
R
the country that would engage people. He
suggested that wine bottles be labelled in a way
O
that characterizes (or even mythologizes) and
conveys Chilean-ness and teaches people
TH
something about the country:
Made by Chileans, the British of South
U
America.
Made in Chile, called the thin country by
A
the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda.
Made in Chile, the most stable, safe, prosperous
and democratic nation in South America.
Chile: Latin Americas success story.
Product of Chile, home of 55 active
volcanoes.
These were merely invented examples, and the
possibilities are nearly endless. The point is that
there is physical space on many product labels
for mini-stories like these to accompany the
classic, and usually mandatory, Made in
stamp; it is a missed opportunity not to use that
space to advertise the meaning, relevance, cachet
or emotional resonance of the place.
2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
COMING INNOVATIONS AND
REFINEMENTS
Several avenues or techniques in place branding
seem promising and worthy of exploration and
experimentation.
First, as alluded to above, the techniques for
approaching wicked problems have been
developed in other fields and might be
employed when designing place-branding
programmes or advisory services something to
make the brand development process less linear
by installing feedback loops, rapid prototyping
and/or beta testing.
Other disciplines have their lessons for place
branding, too. In the worlds of zoology and
evolutionary science, one speaks about the
PY
fakeable and unfakeable signals that animals
generate in the competitive search for mates;
some of this seems readily translatable into the
O
place-branding field. Obviously, unfakeable (or
what the scientists call honest) signals are the
designed. It might be possible, however, to
design fakeable signals that help trigger or bring
about unfakeable ones, and this is an idea that
might be worth considering and developing
further.
Related to this is the notion of the self-
fulfilling prophecy: the notion that declaring
something to be so, or partially so, can
sometimes help make it actually so. It would be
valuable to understand when this phenomenon
works, when it does not, by what mechanisms,
and whether this understanding could be used
to manifest positive changes in the reality and
perception of places. Deconstructing this
process might lead to valuable advances in
place-branding technology.
The way film draws people to places is also
fascinating to many people in the place-
branding world. It seems that some 75 per cent
of Americans who visit Salzburg were inspired,
to go there, by The Sound of Music. This is one
of many possible examples of how film can put
places on peoples radar screens evocatively, and
often indelibly.
Some of the side effects of place branding
may be made into the main effects of place
33
 Hildreth
branding. Consultants in the discipline report
that many of the benefits of undertaking a
branding programme have little to do with the
officially designated outcomes of the
programme; rather, the main benefits come
from the positive side effects of encouraging
large and relevant groups of stakeholders (such
as tourism and investment promoters, airlines
and hoteliers) to talk to each other and spend
some time giving conscious attention to the
issue of image. This fact indicates an
opportunity to redesign the methodology of
place branding to incorporate a different set of
inputs and target a different range of results
than the prevalent ones today.
Another area worth exploring, given that
place images can materialize in apparently
random fashion, is how places can maintain a
state of readiness to make the most of accidents.
O
For example, perhaps Estonia would have done
more to associate itself with Skype than it did,
had the country been ready for that kind of
C integral part of what a country is doing anyway
breakthrough. It is massively in Estonias
R
interest that all Skype users should know that
this software originated in Estonia, but in
O
reality few do. Nasim Taleb argues in The Black
Swan that many of the most important things
TH
that happen, in life and in human history, are
totally unexpected and this is critical
unexpectable (Taleb, 2007). The strategy for
U
dealing with this is not to focus so hard on
managing and manipulating the unfolding of
A
things, but rather to expect the out-of-the-blue
and be good at responding to it. The same is
true in place branding.
Finally, people imagine place branding
to be very much a marketing activity,
perhaps with a few twists. And indeed,
most of the place-branding jobs that are
done today could be fairly characterized as
oriented toward marketing or product
development. But in theory, there is a
considerable amount of policy advisory that
should come into place branding, especially
when the client is a government body. In fact,
at the highest levels, and particularly for mature
or well-known places, the platonic ideal of
place-branding activity would actually bear
34 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735
surprisingly little resemblance to conventional
marketing.
The fact that dictators, whether benevolent
or otherwise, have tended to do a better job of
nation branding (because they make the
country into what Doug Holt calls an authored
brand (Holt, 2004)) could be construed as
prima facie evidence that place branding is not
to be the ultimate discipline of statecraft.
Of course place branding can be used
effectively, and used for good. In the not-so-
distant future, it may even become de rigueur to
have a minister of national reputation in every
government cabinet, as some authors have been
predicting for years. What is certain is that
branding techniques and their associated
PY
thought patterns can be incorporated into
nation building, or integrated into economic
development, as well as twinned with
conventional diplomacy and public diplomacy.
Branding works far better when it is done as an
rather than as a separate, stand-alone
programme.
CONCLUSION
Place branding has come a long way in the last
7 years. The disciplines theory and practice
have evolved to the point where, to this
author, they have the feel of one of those early
maps of the world, where seas and landmasses
are located approximately correctly, but some
of them, in the light of later learning, will
prove to have been rather poorly rendered
compared to their actual shapes. But as we
enter this new decade, all of the continents of
place branding appear to have been discovered,
despite many territories retaining the tantalizing
label: unexplored.
NOTE
1 Jean Baudrillard was a French cultural theorist
with interests in, among other subjects, semiot-
ics, simulacra and simulation (see Wikipedia
for an introduction to the man and his
work).
Place branding: A view at arms length

REFERENCES
Anholt, S. (2007) Competitive Identity. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Buffet, J. (1976) Havana Daydreamin. New York: MCA
Records.
Godin, S. (2003) Purple Cow. New York: Portfolio Books.
Hildreth, J. (2006a) Understanding the value of nation and
location branding. Keynote address at the Annual Brand
Finance Forum, London Stock Exchange.
Hildreth, J. (2006b) Match character with destination. Design
Week, 26 January.
Hildreth, J. (2009) Where are you from? is not such a simple
question. Address to the Fundacion Imagen de Chile,
http://www.imagenpais.cl/frmviewnoticia.aspx?idArticulo=
210, accessed 15 February 2010.
Hildreth, J. (2008) The Saffron European city brand barometer,
http://www.saffron-consultants.com/publications.
Holt, D. (2004) How Brands Become Icons. Cambridge: Harvard
Business School Press.
Olins, W. (1989) Corporate Identity. London: Thames &
Hudson.
Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory
of planning. Paper presented to the Panel on Policy Sciences,
American Association for the Advancement of Science,
pp. 155169.
Taleb, N. (2007) The Black Swan. New York: Random
House.

PY
O
C
R
O
TH
U
A

2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 6, 1, 2735 35