The Case For Place Branding

Contributed by: Ed Burghard, Harley Procter Marketer, Procter & Gamble/Executive Director, Ohio Business Development Coalition

In my current role, I am often asked why I believe place branding is a right strategy for accelerating the economic growth of a location.

Global competition for capital investment in increasing, driven in part by companies deciding to increase their capability and capacity to service emerging markets in Asia. This puts pressure on the amount of practically available capital for investing in developed markets. Additionally, advances in telecommunications are making it possible for companies to service developed markets from virtually any location that can provide a high-speed internet connection. Limited dollars and increased choice are the classic conditions that demand effective place branding to attract capital investment and drive accelerated economic growth.

Place branding is a strategy being used by an increasing number of locations around the world to effectively compete for an increased share of foreign direct investment dollars and capital expansion of resident companies. However, too often place branding initiatives are little more than sales campaigns with limited sustainable impact.

I think the work supported by Cincinnati USA to communicate the region's promise and the purposeful integration with the Ohio branding work to ensure delivery of a consistent and persuasive message, is among the best in class examples. The Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland business communities are supporting similar initiatives. From my vantage point, this is a very positive development that will make Ohio even more competitive for capital investment.

However, other locations like St. Louis, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, Triangle Park, and so on, are strengthening their investment and capabilities in place branding as well. We need to continue to focus efforts on improving our state and local business environment, and on effectively communicating our Ohio and Regional brand promises to potential capital investors.

I thought you might find it interesting to read the following 7 tips I provide to economic development professionals to help ensure maximum return on investment from place branding efforts. The greater Cincinnati region does a good job across all seven. Continuing to keep these in mind will help ensure long-term success.

TIP #1 – Create a team of trusted advisors.
It is important you seek the guidance of marketing professionals to cut through the jargon used by advertising agencies and place branding consultants. They can help ensure the process being recommended will deliver the results you expect, and the price is reasonable. These experts can easily be found in private industry companies. Your board of directors is a good place to start looking for a marketing professional resource to provide you guidance. Often, just a couple of meetings with professional marketers during the strategic phase of your place branding initiative can make a huge difference in ensuring a positive outcome.

TIP #2 – Enroll your business community thought leaders as ambassadors.
One sure way to cripple a place branding initiative is to involve too many opinions and not enough data. Thought leaders can be key in helping you enroll local private and public sector managers to the design and output of your place branding initiative. Defining the right brand promise without having broad based buy-in will cause you to fail. Thought leaders can often help ensure your vocal influencers are part of the solution and not part of the problem.

TIP #3 – Focus on a few industries and do the job well.
No industry or company wants to be left out of a place branding effort. However, in the short term it is often better to limit the playing field to gain a competitive share of promotional voice. Spreading limited resources across multiple fronts increases the risk of failure. Begin with your driving industries first. These are the industries representing the majority of your location’s gross domestic product. A good resource to help define driving industries is Moody’s economy.com database. These industries have experienced success in your area and their vitality is critical to economic growth. Build from strength. To ensure a balanced approach, select one or two emerging industries to add to your focused portfolio. This conscious and controlled speculation is often prudent to managing your economic portfolio. Your budget and internal resources will guide your decision on how many industries is too many to focus on.

TIP #4 – Get to know industry experts in your business community.
Once you’ve selected industries to focus your place branding efforts against, you need to generate insights into which assets in your area are key points of competitive difference. Industry experts can keep you current on emerging trends that will affect profitability and global competitiveness. They are outstanding sounding boards to evaluate campaign concepts proposed by your agencies. They help keep your communication focused and relevant.

TIP #5 – Translate your location assets into business benefits.
There is an old saying in business circles … features tell, but benefits sell. An excellent university is a wonderful feature. The benefit is a sustainable pipeline of qualified labor. You need to connect the dots for the capital investor and explain the business value of your location assets. Great branding copy states the benefit and uses features as reasons to believe the benefit can be realized. Your industry experts are an effective resource to help you understand why an asset is important to their business performance. It is often easiest to brainstorm the most important assets in your area and then use your industry experts to ladder the assets up into benefits.

TIP #6 – Partner with other communities in your region to be more competitive.
Economic clusters are not limited by geographic boundaries. Often a manufacturers supply chain will include multiple communities and regions. When communities have an interdependent economy, then the assets of the broader geography are important to consider. These assets can be leveraged to make a more compelling case than could be made by focusing on your community alone. And, if there is true interdependence, a capital investment made anywhere within the economic cluster benefits everybody connected to it.

TIP #7 – Provide adequate support for your project.
Two truths about place branding is that it takes time and costs money. If you want to change people’s opinion about your location quickly, you need to be prepared to invest to buy a leadership share of voice. If you have a limited budget, you need to be patient to see measurable results. This is a hard, but important, discussion to have with your community leaders. You need a sustainable effort at competitive levels to make a difference in the minds of capital investment decision makers.