Behind the Scenes of Place Branding: Unraveling the Selective Nature of Regional Branding

Abstract

Processes of globalisation, internationalisation and rescaling of statehood have led to an increased competition between regions. Place branding has become one of the central concepts for promoting local competitiveness and for capturing significant mind and market share. It is a promotional strategy that includes all activities that increase the attractiveness of an area as a place for working, living and spending free time. Place branding involves the development of a place brand, which entails selecting place-specific attributes and values to represent the place. A vast number of different actors contribute to the creation of the regional brand and the way it will be developed and communicated. This paper focuses on place branding at the regional level and investigates the selections that are made by the regional actors involved in two regional branding projects in Flanders. Furthermore, it unravels which underlying factors influence these selection processes.

The multi-level governance of formulating regional brand identities: Evidence from three Mega City Regions in China

“…The focus on the regional scale in place branding theory originated in globalization and state-rescaling (Björner, 2006;Messely, Dessein, & Rogge, 2015). This regionalization process invites new governmental bodies or private entities in into decision-making on urban development and reshapes the existing power relationships.…”

Representation and power – Discursive constructions of stakeholder positions in regional place marketing collaboration

“…Another issue that has been addressed are the conflicting interests between stakeholders, which have been shown to have negative effects on the content of the place marketing activity (Eshuis et al., 2018; Halme, 2020). At the core of these conflicts is often the fact that place marketing and branding is inherently a selective process where certain symbolic and geographic aspects of the place are chosen to represent the place, in order to create a unified core message or brand (Boisen et al., 2011; Clegg and Kornberger, 2010; Messely et al., 2015; Warnaby and Medway, 2013). Inherent selectivity also means that place marketing collaboration is susceptible to power struggles between stakeholders (Clegg and Kornberger, 2010; Kasabov and Sundaram, 2013; Messely et al., 2015; Warnaby and Medway, 2013).…”

“…At the core of these conflicts is often the fact that place marketing and branding is inherently a selective process where certain symbolic and geographic aspects of the place are chosen to represent the place, in order to create a unified core message or brand (Boisen et al., 2011; Clegg and Kornberger, 2010; Messely et al., 2015; Warnaby and Medway, 2013). Inherent selectivity also means that place marketing collaboration is susceptible to power struggles between stakeholders (Clegg and Kornberger, 2010; Kasabov and Sundaram, 2013; Messely et al., 2015; Warnaby and Medway, 2013). This discussion underlines the notion of space and place (including regions) as being socially constructed, and endlessly produced and reproduced via spoken and written word in different ways by different people, through a process of conflicts of interests and power struggles (Flyvbjerg, 1998; Massey, 2009; Warnaby and Medway, 2013).…”

“…However, managing stakeholder relations in the context of place marketing and branding has been considered as problematic as it deals with cross-sector stakeholders who have potentially conflicting interests and understandings of the practice. Indeed, issues such as power struggles and the inclusion-exclusion bias of stakeholder groups has been identified (Boisen et al., 2011; Kavaratzis, 2012; Messely et al., 2015; Warnaby, 2009; Warnaby and Medway, 2013). As a response, finding common ground between stakeholders that can accommodate multiple interests has been found to mitigate such tensions (Botschen et al., 2017; Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013).…”

La relación de los productos agroalimentarios de calidad diferenciada con el turismo en España y Portugal

“…Por lo tanto, la asociación de un producto agroalimentario con una ubicación geográfica es una estrategia alrededor de la cual se ha acuñado el nombre de Indicación Geográfica (IG), con la que se trata de identificar un producto de calidad contrastada de un ámbito territorial determinado. En estos procesos, y aunque no exista un intento consciente de vincular cualquier supuesto atributo del lugar/territorio con el producto (Messely et al, 2014), los beneficios existen y son fundamentales tanto para el producto como para el lugar/territorio (Lopes et al, 2018).…”