By Marcus Mitchell
Many techniques have been developed over the last fifty years to use the idea of branding as a commercial and strategic tool. This started in commercial organisations, and has been translated into areas including the public sector and tourism. Destination branding (branding a location for leisure and business tourism) principles and methods have been developed over the last thirty years. The idea of a holistic or umbrella location brand embraces destination branding, but is different because it sets out to build a brand strategy and execution for a wider set of audiences (e.g. education, inward investment, as well as local (internal) audiences).
The idea is based on a premise which is so basic that it doesn’t merit the title ‘insight’. It is simply this – you can’t compartmentalise a location’s reputation – this year’s tourist, could be next year’s inward investor or parent putting a child through college.
An effective holistic location brand should make the location’s reputation a powerful shorthand for critical perceptions and facts, which build on and make best use of truths about the city, region or country (its people, environment, experiences, culture and what it produces and offers). This shorthand can be developed (and captured in a brand strategy) to help support the location’s goals and vision for success, e.g. focusing on overcoming perceptions which may be barriers to considering or choosing the location to visit, work in, do business in.
All destination brands need to think about their wider location brand(s) and take them into account in their planning and development, whether it is acknowledging the relationship with the wider location brand or re-engineering their brand to work on a holistic basis.
What a strong holistic brand is (and does):
- A shared and managed vision
- Identifies and encourages synergy in communications and other activities across many different audiences
- Involves and enables a wide variety of public and private sector organisations to use the brand and benefit from it
- A set of shared tools
What it isn’t:
- A rigid system of communications and templates
- Owned, managed and deployed by the public sector
- A single campaign or slogan