Place Branding Report 2023

Place
Branding:
Solving the
measurement
challenge
Research Report
2023
Place Branding: Solving the measurement challenge 2
Introduction
Every organisation that engages with City Nation Place is City Nation Place Champions
uniquely different – either in the scope of their brief, or their This work would not be possible
funding and resources, or in the particular challenges and without the financial support of our
City Nation Place Champions: Brand
opportunities that their place offers. What unites them, is
Tasmania; Destination Cleveland, NZ
the belief that proactively understanding and managing Story, VisitPITTSBURGH and Wesgro
the reputation, perceptions, or assets of your city, nation,
or destination can deliver economic advantages that will
benefit your citizens.
The challenge is how to measure the impact of this

proactive management – how to prove the efficacy of
your place brand and marketing strategy. Often it’s the
absence of a place brand or marketing organisation that
is most noticed: a lack of investment that leads to a slump
in tourism or investment, or a siphoning away of talent
and skills. The purpose of this study is to help place brand
and marketing teams benchmark the work they are doing
to measure and demonstrate positive impact. Despite the
different organisational structures, focus, and budgets,
there are observations that can be made to provide
direction.
This Report summarises work carried out over a three-

month period, supported by our City Nation Place
Champions, and with direction from the City Nation Place
Advisory Group. We’d like to thank them for their support,
as well as thank all those places who contributed through
interviews or survey completions. We’d also like to thank our
expert partners who have contributed perspectives to add
to the value of the Report.
Contents
4 Executive summary
5 Setting objectives for effective measurement
6 Measuring quality of life
7 Measuring brand perception
9 Budgeting & resourcing research & data gathering
11 Measuring organisational reputation
Focus
12 Brand Tasmania
15 Cape Town Tourism
17 Destination Canada
19 Economic Development Regina
21 Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo Economic Development & Tourism
23 Imagen de Chile
25 LA Tourism & Convention Bureau
27 London & Partners
29 Municipality of The Hague
31 New Zealand Story
33 Stockholm Business Region
Expert Partner Perspectives

35 Why community wellbeing is your next critical metric
Chris Fair, Resonance Consultancy
37 The key to place brand management
David Haigh, Brand Finance
39 It’s time to equip the heroes of our stories – with data
Ted Sullivan, Zartico
Resources
41 Expert Listing
45 Survey Methodology & Respondents

Executive summary
There are four ways that place brand and marketing Our quantitative survey respondents expressed a
organisations can leverage research and data to confidence rating of just 6 out of 10 in the value of
demonstrate the value of what they do to their brand perception studies for directing and informing
community and their stakeholders: strategy. Again, brand perception studies are used
more to direct strategy than to measure impact –
• By becoming the provider and interpreter of trend only 25% of our respondents carry out such studies
and economic data to support the policy and on a regular annual basis.
strategies of all organisations working to build
economic growth and reputation A lack of resource or funding could be at the heart
of why more regular brand perception studies are
• By measuring the impact of specific campaigns or not carried out: 48% of our respondents would like
initiatives implemented to promote attractiveness, to invest more in bespoke studies measuring place
reputation, quality of life, and to attract visitors, brand perception against a competitor set if funding
talent, or investment were available. On average, just 6% of overall
organisation budget is spent on data and research.
• By providing an improved understanding of how From our qualitative interviews, we can see where
the city, nation, or place is perceived by its own teams have stretched available funds where they
citizens and in the outside world, of how these believe that understanding the value of the brand,
perceptions can be improved, and of how the and the key drivers for that value, will enable them to
brand and marketing strategy is impacting on do their jobs better. There’s an evident desire to do
these perceptions such evaluation work on a regular basis to actually
track the impact of their work.
• Building in assessments and feedback to
understand how stakeholders, government, and All of our quantitative survey respondents see the
citizens view the work and effectiveness of their value of citizen perception studies – either investing
own organisation and reacting accordingly directly, or through collaboration, or wishing to
invest if budget were available. And yet, only
Our research suggests that most organisations have 36% gather feedback from their citizens on how
a strong focus on the first two opportunities. Many the work of their own organisation is perceived.
are investing in the third but not always with the Generally, place brand and marketing teams do
confidence that they are using this data effectively. not place a strong focus on measuring how their
Few focus on the fourth. organisations are perceived despite the fact that
great collaboration with all other stakeholders is
To state what is probably obvious, those essential for better investment in research and data
organisations with a narrower focus [for example and to achieve better outcomes.
- to attract more visitors], are able to demonstrate
value to their investors more easily than those with a There’s a potential Catch-22 here. Better
broader brief. It’s more challenging to prove impact measurement of the impact of place brand and
if you are a nation, region or city brand team whose marketing strategy - and a better understanding
task is to develop a narrative that will then be used of how place brand and marketing organisations
by other organisations to execute visitor, talent, or are perceived - could enable more funding. More
investment attraction. funding would enable that better measurement.
Where organisations are able to articulate their
Both the qualitative interviews and the quantitative objectives and their value more clearly, they can
survey carried out to inform this report demonstrate close this circle. Learning from other places,
that place brand and marketing organisations are improving your own team’s understanding of the
confident about measuring specifics [marketing potential of place branding and where you can best
campaign performance, economic data etc], and add value, are all key to articulating that purpose in a
using these to direct strategy, but are evolving more engaging way.
approaches to gathering data and research on
the wider impact of place brand and marketing
strategies on their citizens. With 44% of our
respondents setting KPIs around improving the
quality of life for citizens, our qualitative interviews
provide some insights into how measurement
strategies are evolving to track this KPI.
Setting objectives for

effective measurement
From our qualitative interviews, it became clear From the quantitative survey, we can see that there
that only those organisations with clearly defined is a strong focus on measuring specifics – with 87%
objectives reflecting stakeholder expectations are measuring website engagement and 83% measuring
able to measure their impact and effectiveness. marketing campaign effectiveness for research
It’s stating the obvious but if your organisation and engagement. Gathering hard data, such as
is specifically focused on building the tourism visitor numbers and spend, or jobs created, all
economy, or specifically focused on attracting feature in the top half of the table. It’s possible that
inward investment, then you can be held social listening and press coverage monitoring are
accountable for what we would call “hard data” contributing to an understanding of how the place
measurement. brand is perceived, but actual brand perception
studies are invested in by just 44% of respondents.
If your organisation’s remit is to develop a unifying
brand identity and narrative to work across all We do however believe that we are seeing an
objectives – to promote civic pride, attract talent, evolution in approach, with examples of place brand
attract visitors, and drive economic growth – then teams setting clearer objectives and destination
measurement of your impact becomes at the same marketing and investment promotion agencies
time very simple [is the narrative being used] and looking for methodologies to measure the impact of
very complex [what difference is this unifying their work beyond that hard data.
narrative having on outcomes], as these brand teams
are often removed from the actual implementation of
specific campaigns and initiatives. This challenge was
articulated well in our interview with Brand Tasmania
– where they can measure the outcomes of specific
projects but not of their overall mission to “inspire
and encourage Tasmanians and those who want to
be Tasmanian to quietly pursue the extraordinary.”
After all, how do you measure a feeling?
Which of the following research and/or data does

your organisation invest in to measure the impact
of your place brand and marketing strategy?
Tick as many as apply.
Website engagement 87%

Analysis of marketing campaign effectiveness – reach and engagement 83%
Social listening 69%
Press coverage monitoring 68%
Data on visitor numbers 62%
Data on visitor spend 54%
Brand perception studies 44%
Data on jobs created 42%
Analysis of marketing campaign effectiveness – lead generation 41%
Data on incoming investment 38%
Brand awareness studies 37%
Data on event visitor spend 37%
Visitor attitude surveys 35%
Data on number of events attracted to your place 35%
Data on incoming students 15%
Investor attitude surveys 13%
Measuring quality
of life
44% of our quantitative survey respondents are We asked our quantitative survey respondents how
focused on improving quality of life as a KPI for their they set about measuring quality of life.
place brand and marketing strategy.
One particular comment in response to this question
Our qualitative interviews provided some practical is indicative of the seriousness with which we
examples of this. believe place brand and marketing organisations are
beginning to focus on measuring the longer-term
The city brand team for The Hague have specific impact of their work on the places they represent,
KPIs allocated to the six pillars that reflect the
brand’s positioning strategy: Quality of Life, City “We use the Social Progress index for the city
Pride, Social Cohesion, Happiness of The Hague, alongside more traditional economic indicators
Reputation, and Economics. The city team carries such as jobs and skill levels and GVA. Social
out significant research every two years to provide Progress index takes indicators that are social
measurement of the progress and have created a and environmental, including health, housing,
dashboard to share this progress and encourage crime etc info in order to have a deep look into
all stakeholders – individual citizens, government, the city and see how we are progressing. All of
and private sector – to feel engaged and equally the indicators can link back to UN sustainable
responsible for achieving the desired outcomes. development goals.”
Destination Canada are launching a Wealth &

Wellbeing Index to measure the impact of tourism In terms of quantitative research, the majority
development, comprising six clearly defined pillars of respondents who are focused on improving
and measured nationally, regionally, and locally. Quality of Life as a KPI reference citizen or resident
perception studies; there were also references to
London & Partners, who work to promote the city’s tourism and business perception studies, and to
attractiveness to business and leisure visitors, to investment in consultants’ studies and rankings. In
attract investment, and to grow London-based terms of qualitative research, they reference focus
businesses, are currently focused on economic groups with residents.
impact, but are exploring methodologies to measure
visitor satisfaction, resident satisfaction, and the
carbon impact of visitors.
Measuring brand
In terms of understanding how your nation,
region, city, or place is perceived, which of the
perception
following does your organisation invest in, or have
access to through your partnership with other
place stakeholders?
The strong focus on understanding citizen Invest in directly

or resident perceptions of where they live is Access through collaboration with partner organisations
also evidenced in responses to our questions Do not have access – would invest if budget were available
about measuring brand perception. 68% of our Don’t have access – don’t see the value to us
respondents either invest directly in citizen
perception studies or access this data through
collaboration with their partner organisations,
and the remaining 32% would invest in this data if
budget were available. Citizen perception
studies
The same number or respondents - 62% - have
access to bespoke studies measuring perception
of place in specific markets, and to subscriptions to
international ranking studies and indexes created
by consultancies. Accessing bespoke research into
perception of place against a specific competitor set
was something that 48% of our respondents would
invest in if budget were available, and 43% would
invest in investor perception studies. Investment in Bespoke studies
measuring perceptions
measuring place brand perception is done ad hoc to of your place in specific
support specific initiatives by 38% of respondents. markets
52% of respondents track brand perception
throughout the year, annually, or at regular intervals.
From our qualitative interviews, Imagen Chile –

funded by the Chile Foreign Ministry to meet the
broad brief, “to tell the world about Chile” – provides
an example of an organisation that stretches its Subscriptions to
research budget to cover annual perceptions international ranking
studies and indexes
studies in key target cities, as well as annual study created by place
designed to measure Chilean pride in their country branding consultancies
and research
brand. They also work with two agencies to track organisations
international media coverage and social media
coverage of the country.
How frequently do you measure place Bespoke studies

measuring perceptions
brand perception? of your place against
specific competitive
Ad hoc to align with new initiatives places
Annually
At regular intervals but less often than annually
Trace through the year
Other
Investor perception
studies
Measuring brand perception
Given this indication of a strong focus on measuring Cape Town Tourism, another interviewee, has
perception of the place brand, it is perhaps stretched a very tight research budget to invest in
surprising that our respondents do not express a brand valuation to meet two key objectives – to
strong confidence that this investment provides better identify strengths and weaknesses and direct
valuable direction to the place brand and marketing strategy and, in future years, to track the impact
strategy. Asked to indicate confidence on a 1-10 of their strategy on the value of the brand. This
scale, where 10 is very confident, the average core brand valuation is also seen as a tool to improve the
was just 6 out of 10. perception of their organisation and the work that it
does.
One nation brand organisation included in the
qualitative phase of this research, New Zealand
Story, is moving beyond brand perception studies
to measure brand equity with a focus on soft power:
they are keen to understand the attributes that drive
the nation’s reputation and influence and then track
how these change over time.
How confident are you that this research

investment in perceptions of your place brand
provides valuable direction to your place brand
and marketing strategy?
Not at all confident Very confident

Budgeting & resourcing

research & data gathering
One conclusion we could draw from the qualitative
interviews is that funding for place brand and
marketing organisations appears to be somewhat
of a “black art” – with a strong dependency on
relationship management to secure continued
funding from government, from private sector
partners, and from grants. Some organisations have
also developed incremental revenue streams such
as licensing the place brand, or achieving affiliate
revenues through their tourism websites.
Our quantitative survey respondents represented

$12.8M
a diversity of organisational size and budget.
$10.4M
$9.1M
Average total organisational budget
in USD Million
$ 6.6M
$2.7M $2.6M
$2.1M
$0.3M
Fewer than 100K to fewer 250K to fewer 500K to 1M to fewer 2.5M to fewer 5m to fewer 10M to 6.2M
100k than 250K than 500K fewer than 1M than 2.5M than 5M than 10M
Size of population
Budgets by organisational type

Average budget in USD Million
Destination Marketing Organisations

$10.2M
Investment Promotion Agency / EcDev

$5.8M
Organisations working across all aspects of

promoting place attraction
$5M
Budgeting & resourcing research & data gathering
Asked about budget spent on research and data, the

average percentage of overall organisational budget “In past years, our economic
spent on research and data is 6%. This tallies with performance dashboard has been
the feedback in our qualitative interviews, where a highly popular tool with our
most were spending between 5% and 10% of overall
constituencies (philanthropies, state,
budget on research and data. 12% of our survey
respondents employed more than 10 people in their county & city governments).”
research teams; 22% of the respondents had no one
specifically employed to work on research and data.
The average number of people in research specific
teams was 2.3.
Gathering data and research in place branding and “Our dashboard includes KPI’s such
marketing is a very collaborative process. Only 4% as awareness, favourability, brand
of our respondents said that 100% of the research associations, sentiments, tone critical,
they accessed was invested in directly. When asked
about the balance of data invested in directly vs
engagement levels; at home we measure
via partners, there was a broad array of responses brand love and nation brand pride.”
but the most common balance was 80% invested in
directly, and 20% via partnerships and stakeholders.
We asked respondents where the research and data

is shared – what was kept for internal use, what
is shared with government, or citizens, or other “We are currently working on developing
stakeholders. Responses again demonstrate the dashboards that provide summary
essential collaborative nature of place branding view on how our works meets our
and marketing. Data is shared widely within
organisational objectives.”
the organisation, with partner organisations,
stakeholders, government, and citizens. The
additional comments shared by our respondents
add better context to this question….
Measuring organisational
reputation
It’s worth quoting one comment provided on our We asked how place brand and marketing teams
quantitative survey in response to the question on gather feedback on how their organisation is
who sees the data and research invested in by place perceived by key stakeholders. 53% of our survey
brand and marketing organisations. respondents do not gather feedback from potential
investors or investors they are working with –
“I would say the main elephant in the room with although this statistic may be skewed by the profile
data in this context is that it’s only relevant if it of our respondents which skews towards destination
has a purpose. That purpose either needs to be marketing over economic development. However,
for a specific campaign or objective, or it needs 51% of respondents do not gather feedback from
to be because the value of what you do as an their citizens; and 36% do not gather feedback
organisation is understood and you have a way of from their government. 58% of respondents do
reporting back on it in a meaningful way. In the gather feedback from private sector members or
absence of either of those, data becomes a total stakeholders [presumably as part of their terms of
luxury, which as much as it might anecdotally membership] and the same number, 58%, gather
inform activity, ultimately doesn’t contribute to feedback from partner organisations working to
strategic direction.” promote place attractiveness. The highest number
of respondents [62%] gather feedback from
partners they work with on specific projects – and
This really speaks to the crux of this report: you this project-based feedback approach was most
need clear objectives in order to provide meaningful frequently cited in our qualitative interviews.
measurement of impact, and crucially you need
the value of what you do as an organisation to be
understood in order for the measurement you do to
be understood. This is particularly important given
that most place brand and marketing organisations
are dependent on funding from government and tax
payers, and from the private sector.
Do you gather feedback on how your organisation Yes

is perceived from key stakeholders? Please Intend to
indicate if you gather regular feedback from the No
following:
Partner Parter organisations Private sector Government Citizens Potential investors

organisations in our place members or / investors we are
we work with on [eg: other stakeholders working with
specific initiatives or organisations
projects working across
destination
marketing, business
events, investment
attraction, economic
development,
place governance
organisations]
Report
Place Title
Branding: Solving the measurement challenge 12
Section
Focus
Brand Tasmania
Todd Babiak
CEO
Jess Radford
Director of Place Branding &
Operations
The organisation
Brand Tasmania is an agency of the Tasmanian government, established
in 2019 to build a brand for Tasmania and promote the island state as a
place to live, work, visit, invest in, and trade with. The Brand Tasmania
team is small, currently with 5.8 full-time staff. Brand Tasmania are the
storytellers – developing the brand as a unifying narrative to be used by
government departments, the private sector, and citizens. Jess Radford,
the director of place branding and operations for Brand Tasmania,
describes the challenge – “we then kind of become the conductor. And
the orchestra is the Tasmanian government, the Tasmanian community,
and Tasmanian business and getting them to play along in harmony”.
Their purpose is to bring more value to everything Tasmaniana, and to
inspire and encourage Tasmanians and those who want to be Tasmanian
to quietly pursue the extraordinary.
The business model is to be a client service agency within government

and the community, rather than trying to create a new division or silo. As
Jess says, “As an organisation, we want to help everyone else succeed”
whether this is across tourism, trade, investment or other government
objectives. Currently, as with many other places, Tasmania is focused on
talent attraction and health recruitment in particular – so the question
Brand Tasmania asks is, “how can that be as Tasmanian as possible?”. To
stand out from other places, they are going back to the core strategy
and brand narrative. This is an example of a project where the Brand
Tasmania team have more control in that they have been provided with
budget by the Health department to create the recruitment campaign,
but this is not always the case.
The challenge then is how to measure the impact of this brand narrative
when the specific strategies or projects are being implemented by
separate departments or organisations.
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus: Brand Tasmania
Brand Tasmania CEO Todd Babiak goes back to their role as a client
service agency – “Any client service agency would measure its success
by the success of its clients and have we made an impact on what they
are doing? So it’s often shared success – for example when tourism
is able to do what they’ve been saying they’ve wanted to do for a
generation, which is a lot more yield and potentially less volume, fewer
people spending more money, and a smarter idea of who these people
are. They’ve actually achieved that in the last three of four years to the
point where it’s actually quite a stark difference from when we started.
And we can’t take full credit for that, but we can certainly say we helped
them clarify this story. We helped them build a strategy and we helped
them work with their agencies to bring consistency and power and
some discipline to what they’re doing”.
Measuring the success of Brand Tasmania as an organisation or the

Tasmanian brand?
The Brand Tasmania team measures its success by how the brand is
used. As Tasmanian whiskey is increasingly recognised as among the
best whiskeys in the world, the team do not put out a press release
saying what a good job they’ve done developing and shepherding this
amazing Tasmanian brand asset. They recognise the hard work that’s
gone in from the whiskey makers to develop this amazing product – and
all of that is on brand, the “pursuit of the extraordinary”.
The team have built self-evaluation into their work. They run a lot of
workshops designed to teach partners about the brand story and how
to develop your own brand and gather great feedback – but this is of
course anecdotal rather than scientific. They are currently running a
survey with everyone who has attended workshops, or partnered on
projects, to gather feedback for their Annual Report. The team also
measures website traffic, news coverage, and downloads of the brand
book.
Jess recognises the challenge on organisational performance

measurement, “You’re talking about efficiency and effectiveness
of each dollar of public money spent. That’s when it starts to get a
little bit trickier because the benefits of our work are not necessarily
immediately apparent.”
As a case in point, the Brand Tasmania team work on projects with

longer-term objectives. “Little Tasmanian” is a project designed to
address the illiteracy challenge in Tasmania – as part of the overall
objective to build pride and confidence in Tasmania. As a finalist in
the 2023 City Nation Place Awards, you can read more details on this
project in the Place Branding Portfolio. In short, it involves providing
every new-born Tasmanian with the gift of a picture book designed
to encourage reading, that also conveys the values of the Tasmanian
brand. Evaluation for this project can currently only be based on
qualitative interviews with nurses who distribute the books to the new
babies’ parents, and of course the families themselves – it’s not possible
to tell if they’ve moved the dial on illiteracy for perhaps 20 years.
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus: Brand Tasmania
What connects the organisational purpose and the brand purpose is the
objective to grow pride and confidence – and feelings are very hard to
measure. They are currently investing in quantitative research focusing
on sentiment towards Tasmania with a focus on liveability – would
you move to Tasmania? What would be the barriers for you bringing
your family to a place like Tasmania? The government remit for Brand
Tasmania is to ensure that the Tasmanian brand story is continually
evolved and updated and so the team are about to do 100 interviews
with a broad cross-section of Tasmanians, they did the same last year,
but for a small organisation, this is expensive and time-consuming.
Jess feels that the global understanding of place branding is not

yet sufficiently mature for there to be a widely accepted model for
measurement but welcomes the growing collaboration between the
academics and practitioners working together to try to achieve this.
For now, one story that Jess shared about Todd’s experience on holiday
is obviously something the team are very proud of – all to do with the
very distinctive brand mark that represents the strong place narrative.
“So Todd’s walking through the market in Hanoi and a woman’s walking
towards him wearing her Tasmanian t shirt and he says, ‘Oh, cool t shirt’.
She goes, ‘Oh yeah, it’s from Tasmania. Have you heard of it? I always
wear my Tasmanian t shirt when I’m overseas because I’m just so proud
to be Tasmanian’. And she’s an oyster grower and, and so, you know, we
see that people are, it’s an invitation I guess is, is how we’re trying to
make our work feel.”
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus
Cape Town
Leigh Dawber
CMO
Tourism
Roxanne Lombard
Research Consultant
The organisation
Cape Town Tourism (CTT) describes itself as a Destination X
Organisation (DXO), a term coined by the Digital Tourism Think Tank.
CTT was established 20 years ago, as an independent voluntary tourism
association, however it has evolved beyond the traditional Destination
Marketing and Destination Management models, thus necessitating the
redefinition as a DXO. CTT is also the official DXO for the City of Cape
Town, delivering visitor services, community-tourism development,
travel research and intelligence, and destination brand and marketing
solutions. In essence, CTT is the proverbial ‘tourism kid’ created when
the local government and tourism sector get together to foster a
sustainable growth path for a destination.
They act as a connector between the industry, the visitor, the

community, and the government – with all stakeholder groups
benefiting through destination marketing, management, and
development synergies. As a not-for-profit organisation, revenue is
generated through funding from government, advertising, member
subscription fees, booking commission and retail sales. Whilst the
organisation employs around 78 people across all its activities, its
budget is relatively small when compared to other metropolitan cities
across South Africa. CTT’s marketing strategy for example, does not
allow for a media spend, with the team relying on partnerships and
earned media. Leigh Dawber, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for Cape
Town Tourism is proud that the organisation is known as being the team
that delivers a lot for a small budget.
Cape Town Tourism has a clear mantra of ‘Pioneering Tourism and

Enriching Lives’. And the established KPIs are GDP contribution and job
creation, with data drawing on methodology established since 2008.
The DXO’s three yearly contract with the Government is consistently
renewed due to exceptional performance and unqualified audit
outcomes for more than 19 consecutive years.
Delivering the data on a limited budget

Budget limitations and just the way that organisations work in Cape
Town and South Africa mean that gathering the data to support
and measure the tourism economy is very much a manual process.
Roxanne Lombard, their Destination Intelligence and Research
Manager delivering the data whose background in research has been
in different sectors did comment that, “the kind of projects you’re able
to do because of budget and accessibility is much more developed
in every other sector than it is in tourism”. The team focus on arrivals
statistics, attraction performance, and accommodation performance.
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus: Cape Town Tourism
This is collected manually and, along with data gathered from member
partners, securing the data involves relationship building. The team
implement a biennial visitor satisfaction survey. Roxanne feels that
survey completion rates have dropped since the pandemic but focusing
on airport departure lounges and providing incentive gifts ensures that
this survey is still delivering – “it is admittedly primarily a requirement
for the city government contract, but also does reveal useful insights.”
In terms of understanding how Cape Town Tourism is valued by its

stakeholders, Roxanne feels that the team is valued for its ability to pull
data together and share it in useful formats. Roxanne also commented
that it’s not just data that demonstrates value – inviting politicians, for
example, to be a part of tourism in the community projects provides an
active demonstration of value.
Investing in a brand valuation

With such budget limitations, it is impressive that Cape Town Tourism
are finalists in this year’s City Nation Place Awards in the Best Use of
Data category, and interesting to understand why and where they have
invested in a major data-based brand valuation project. The aim is to
provide a longer-term understanding of the impact of Cape Town’s
place brand by measuring the value of the Cape Town Tourism brand.
As Roxanne wrote in the Award entry, “Our intention with this brand
valuation was not only to gather insights into the financial value of Cape
Town Tourism as a brand, but also to add value to the industry as a
whole through the identification of our brand strengths and weaknesses
that would be highlighted with the collection of data across the key
source markets.”
The brand valuation project had the following key objectives:
1. Calculate the Rand value of the “Love Cape Town” brand.
2. Communicate the value of the Love Cape Town brand externally for
maximum competitiveness.
3. Use it to pursue revenue opportunities, potentially as a stand-alone

company and to monetise assets or sub-licence.
The project has gathered data from key source markets to understand
perceptions of Cape Town and the key drivers for tourism. The team
are delighted with the immediate return on their investment – the report
has highlighted strengths and weaknesses and so is providing a guide
for their future strategy. The key to the success of the project has been
how the team have presented the research: recognising the complexity
of the data, a handbook has been created for stakeholders, distilling the
insights and actions into focus areas that require the most attention.
For Cape Town Tourism, the recommended actions will enable better
strategic decisions and a more effective allocation of resources.
The next challenge is to find the budget to repeat the brand valuation on
a regular basis: “it would be the benchmark to track change over time
and form the key metric in measuring the effectiveness and impact of
Cape Town Tourism’s future programs”.
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus
Destination
Meaghan Ferrigno
SVP, Chief Data & Analytics
Officer
Canada
Organisation
Destination Canada was created in 2001 to promote Canadian
tourism. Destination Canada is a Crown corporation wholly owned
by the Government of Canada formed under the Canadian Tourism
Commission Act. Destination Canada reports to the Minister of Tourism
and is one of five portfolios under the department of Innovation,
Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED).
With 135 employees and federal funding, Destination Canada is relatively

well-resourced when compared to other place brand and marketing
organisations participating in both the qualitative and quantitative phase
of this research study. As Destination Canada’s Chief Data & Analytics
Officer, Meaghan Ferrigno leads a team of strategists, economists,
researchers, digital marketers, data scientists, and product managers to
drive the collective intelligence of the organization and its partners.
A new way to measure success: wealth and wellbeing

Destination Canada’s mission is to influence intentional and sustainable
supply and build demand for the benefit of locals, communities and
visitors through leading research, alignment with public and private
sectors, and marketing Canada nationally and abroad. This is rooted in
the belief that tourism generates wealth and wellbeing for all of Canada
and enriches the lives of our guests. To measure success against this
aspiration, a strong history of research within the organisation has seen
it evolve from measuring numbers of visitors to launching a new holistic
yardstick for success – the Wealth & Wellbeing Index.
The Index measures performance across six pillars: the economy,

employment, enablement, environment, engagement, and experience
[i.e.: enrichment of visitors’ lives]. It’s grounded on a statistical
framework, gathering data from a range of important data sources
across the industry and leaning into relationships with some of the
biggest tech giants to power it. The Index will be one of the featured
data products in the soon-to-be-released Canadian Tourism Data
Collective, which will bring together key demand and supply-side
data into one centralized, national platform– eliminating data silos and
providing a continuous pulse of tourism data to empower decision-
makers across public and private sectors.
Report
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Focus: Destination Canada
Driving / Promoting innovation in tourism measurement

Meaghan also shared that beyond the Wealth and Wellbeing Index,
Destination Canada is committed to developing new and innovative
ways of measuring tourism. Her team is currently supporting
the development of the statistical framework for Measuring the
Sustainability of Tourism with the UNWTO. And on the brand front,
together with Destination Marketing Organization partners across
the country, Destination Canada is trying to close the knowledge
gap regarding the impact of brand love on travel. The concept was
incepted through the team’s work with a neuroscientist from Google
and is designed to measure destination brand love – an emotional bond
and connection with place. Meaghan is excited about the potential for
these new measurement approaches, and says, “Better data fuels better
decisions for all – it makes us more skilled as marketers, more successful
and sustainable in developing destinations, and more accountable to
Canadians.”
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Focus
Economic
Chris Bonk
Director Brand &
Communications
Development
Regina
The organisation
Economic Development Regina is the lead agency for economic
development for the Greater Regina Area. The team are specifically
responsible for building a vibrant and diversified economy - retaining,
developing and attracting business; finding innovative ways to promote
sustainable growth whilst effectively addressing the challenges
associated with it; marketing and promoting the Greater Regina Area for
business, business events, and visitors. Delivering a high quality of life
for residents is a core objective but also delivering a higher tax base for
the region.
The organisation receives core funding from the city government and
supplements it with partner investments from a range of private and
public sector third parties.
Around 18 months ago, the organisation embarked on a journey to

becoming more data-led and to think more strategically about the use
of research and data. The team also developed a place brand strategy
and narrative in 2022, to position the Greater Regina Area as a great
place to live, work, play and invest – and to galvanize civic pride and
engagement.
Working with an OKR framework

Economic Development Regina uses an OKR [Objectives and Key
Results] framework to set targets and measure effectiveness. This is
designed to get the team to focus on where their work has had a direct
impact. So, for example, when looking at talent attraction, they are
focused not just on who moved to the region but whether they had an
impact on that move. The OKR framework also ensures that they are
very surgical with how and where they target all their activities.
Report
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Focus: Economic Development Regina
Understanding brand and organisational impact

Chris Bonk, director of brand and communications, believes he has
two jobs, “one is building our organisation’s brand inside of the city
with our partners and with our shareholders and the other one is
growing Regina’s brand outside of the city in the world”. With a new
place brand platform, the key is securing partner engagement and
partner amplification of the brand narrative. So whilst the organisation
continues to measure sentiment towards Regina through national data,
they are also building in more specific measurement of adoption of the
brand. In a semi-annual survey with businesses, they have built in deep
dive questions on how their private sector partners’ customers perceive
Regina. Before the brand launch, respondents indicated that Regina
had significant room for improvement when it came to having a brand
that helped their businesses grow. A year later, with the brand narrative
starting to build traction, they are seeing responses to the same
question move in the right direction.
Chris also sees the organisation’s investment in data expertise as a

crucial part of building perceptions of Economic Development Regina
as an important partner in the region. As a small team, they have now
appointed a full time Economist to use data to forecast emerging issues
and opportunities. They’ve also invested in social media and marketing
expertise on the team to provide more valuable media monitoring, to
understand what’s being said about Regina, to understand the impact
of marketing activity, and to identify new opportunities. They’re also
starting to track stakeholder partner investment in the brand – where
key partners are leveraging and promoting the brand in their own
marketing, for example.
Whilst we’re not sharing actual budgets in these interview-based case

studies, we are building an idea of share of budget spent on research
and data. For Economic Development Regina, this currently stands at
around 10% of budget. This is because of the current investment in
building the foundational tools and approaches and is likely to settle
off at 8-10%, in line with what we saw on average across the interviews.
They have also just hired an agency to help with the development of
data visualisation tools to draw in live data and share their own research
findings – all part of being a more data-led organisation and engaging
more effectively with stakeholders.
Report
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Focus
Fort McMurray
Wood Buffalo
Economic
Kevin Weidlich
President & CEO
Development &
Andrea Haley
Director, Brand, Marketing &
Communications
Tourism
The organisation
Governed by an independent board of directors and managed by an
entrepreneurial, customer-centric team, Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo
Economic Development & Tourism’s (FMWBEDT) focus is on creating
new wealth for the region, measured as economic impact. The team of
20 is divided across five separate business units – Business Investment
& Attraction [relocation and capital], Entrepreneurship & Innovation
[including a business incubator, support for innovations and labour
and workforce supports], Tourism, Brand & Marketing (Place Brand
stewardship and marketing and communications support across
all business units), and then a Corporate Services team providing
administration support across all activities.
Place Brand as the Foundation

The FMWBEDT team recognised that, as a region and indeed across the
state of Alberta, there was a preoccupation with image and reputation,
which seemed tied to the fate of the strong oil and gas sector. As Kevin
Weidlich, President & CEO, says, “the mind’s eye creates all the ugly
things of industry… but the reality is it’s a pinprick on our geography.”
The team recognised the importance of owning the narrative in order
to change perceptions and have undergone an extensive exercise
researching and understanding perceptions from within the region to
develop an authentic place brand. And for Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo
[FMWB], the place brand is [as we’d always argue it should be] much
more than a logo or design identity. As Andrea Haley describes it, “it’s a
broader sense of the brand in terms of the language, the style, the tone,
the communications, the imagery, the sense of pride, the feeling—it’s
really our collective identity.”
Measuring the success of the place brand

Kevin told a great story to illustrate his point that what you should be
measuring is not always obvious. He uses the example of a comedian
who’s act involved spinning plates – with the audience watching as
he struggles to keep various plates going. At the end of the act, the
audience is asked whether the comedian was successful – and those
answering tried to remember how many plates had been successfully
kept spinning. But the comedian measures his success how the fact
that for five minutes he kept an audience laughing and entertained – his
“soft” measurement. His “hard” measure of success might follow later in
terms of the sale of DVDs etc. And therein lies the challenge of how you
measure the success of the place brand – what question are you trying
to answer?
Report
Place Title
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Focus: Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo Economic Development & Tourism
Common to many organisations, one obvious measurement of the

success of the FMWB place brand is the local adoption of the brand by
the community and all stakeholders. But as the foundation supporting
all of the organisation’s activities, the performance of the place brand
is also assumed to be measured when the organisation is looking at the
success of these stakeholders when using the brand, and also when
measuring the success of all areas of the economic development and
tourism organisation’s business activity.
The team gathers observational measurements: for example – are

tourism operators successfully adopting and using the place brand
narrative? And then statistical measurements: ie: what growth are those
tourism operators using the brand achieving? Clearly there will be other
issues impacting on growth, but a level of correlation is assumed.
Given the organisation’s core KPI of delivering wealth and improving the
quality of life for the citizens of FMWB, they also undertake commercial
and retail analysis research to understand local spend, community
leakage and perception of amenities. The baseline was established in
2021 and the team repeats the research every 2 years or so to track
these quality of life improvements.
The team have also invested in a brand equity study in 2020, again to
establish a baseline measurement, which was repeated in 2021 and 2022
to track changes in perception. Andrea added, “This will be the first
year we are not doing it, as after having three solid data points, we have
learned some strategic insights from this research that is fundamentally
shifting our strategy going forward. We will most likely do it again next
year.” The research looks at perceptions and value of the brand against
different competitor places and Andrea was happy to admit that it’s
been challenging and interesting choosing that comparator set as the
region is so unique and complex – with differing competitors when
considering attractiveness for living, visiting, or investing.
FMWB are clearly a very data-led team and Kevin and Andrea were keen
to clarify that not only do they invest in their own research and data, but
they also source and leverage data from partners [including Destination
Canada, Can Export, Travel Alberta, Invest Alberta] both to direct
strategy and track progress. They also partner with the municipality on
larger surveys.
However, given that strong belief that the place brand is not just a
platform for communication, but also a foundation for everything that
they do, it’s clear that stories, as much as data, reflect the effectiveness
and impact of the brand and the FMWB Economic Development &
Tourism Organisation. Their province’s tourism body, Travel Alberta, has
a complex task with 10 different tourism development zones to deal
with, each with their own political structures and challenges. Travel
Alberta is clear that, given the strength of purpose and clarity of
objective that the brand has provided, paired with the strengths and
assets of the region, FMWB is seen as the number one opportunity for
tourism development, because they are “ready to go”.
Report
Place Title
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Focus
Imagen de Chile
Rossana Dresdner
Executive Director
Daniela Montiel
Director of Strategic
Partnerships
The organisation
Imagen de Chile is a private foundation with 24 employees that is
publicly funded by the Foreign Ministry of Chile. The organisation has
an all-encompassing objective to “tell the world about Chile” and give
depth and diversity to that story through sharing examples of what Chile
has to offer both culturally and commercially, across Chile’s 12 major
cities. Rossana Dresdner, Chief Executive, is keen to bring greater clarity
to this broad objective.
A mixed approach to nation branding

The foundation is currently transitioning into both a place branding
and public diplomacy organization, focusing on trade, tourism, and
investment attraction, but also on increasing influence in international
political affairs. This strategy seeks to highlight the country’s strengths
and advantages, as well as its values and principles, based around three
main narratives: sustainability, democracy and diversity.
Reorientation of the foundation’s role as an articulator

By identifying their main stakeholders based on whether their
institutional mandate includes promoting Chile internationally, they
have been able to narrow down a list of international endeavors
they can all collaborate on, recognizing that the country’s effective
positioning depends on maintaining a coherent and consistent narrative
internationally. In this sense, Imagen de Chile has assumed a role of
coordinating and articulating stakeholders in both the public and
private sectors. This approach has also allowed them to identify a list of
target markets and gaps in data and information that could significantly
improve results in those markets.
Four key areas of research and measurement

Imagen Chile spends 2% of its annual budget on four key approaches to
research and measurement. Since 2018, they have invested in an annual
brand perception study in 12 key international markets to identify trends,
areas of strength and underperforming drivers.
Building civic pride is a key focus and so another annual study is carried
out in partnership with a local university to identify Chilean pride. This
is a media-focused study and the plan is to shift the focus to learn more
about how Chileans value their origin story and the country brand.
Report
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Focus: Imagen de Chile
In line with the newly assumed role of articulating, Imagen de Chile

is taking on the challenge of bringing together stakeholders’ various
research and data needs by collecting the research they conduct
individually, organising and systematising it. Parallel to that, in an effort
to bridge gaps in data, they are collaborating with certain stakeholder
on various studies (example, Cultural Perception Study in collaboration
with the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Patrimony). Through these efforts,
Imagen de Chile seeks to encourage a data-driven approach when it
comes to shaping global marketing strategies among their external
stakeholders.
Imagen Chile also works with an external agency to trade international

media coverage of Chile – monthly, bi-annually, and annually. These
snapshots of international opinions are shared with stakeholders,
particularly those promoting trade and tourism. The team also works
with a specialist social media agency to track social media coverage
and is currently focused on combining the results of these studies into a
single dashboard.
Report
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Section
Focus
Los Angeles
Adam Burke
President & CEO
Tourism &
Convention Board
The organisation
LA Tourism & Convention Board is a non profit, mutual benefit organisation
supporting not only the city of LA but also the broader LA region.
There are around 100 employees in the LA Tourism team, including
representatives across the US and internationally. It has four core funding
sources: they have a contract of services for City Government, receive
funds from the LA Tourism Improvement District [TID – a specialist
Business Improvement District], LA Airport [LAX], and then of course the
members. Each of these funders have their own stakeholders, their own
governance, and their own expectations which demand management,
and a great deal of reporting against objectives. The team have an
annual governance document detailing expected deliverables and the
core strategies. There are restrictions, such as the TID’s governance
which ensures that 71% of that funding is spent on marketing, or that
LAX funding can only be spent on promoting the aiport.
Using data for better advocacy

LA Tourism has a relatively new mission statement which has directed
changes in the types of data that the organisation focuses on and how it
uses it. The organisation’s mission statement is “To improve the quality
of life for all Angelinos through the economic and community benefits
of tourism”.
Adam Burke, President & CEO, provided a picture of the political

background where across the USA, legislators are questioning funding
for tourism and in some places redirecting funds to other community
priorities. There’s also a high changeover of political leadership
within LA City Council, and so advocacy for the work of LA Tourism
& Convention Board and for the role of tourism in the community has
become a clear priority – as Adam puts it, I feel like we have to be far
more attentive about what I’ll refer to as in-reach vs out-reach”.
The LA team collect the“hard data” that you would expect a large
destination marketing organisation to focus on - flight data, credit
card data, sentiment data, visitor numbers, tourism trends etc. Adam
stressed the importance of correlating this data [“don’t ever trust one
data source] and is restructuring the team to create a new business
intelligence unit to be the central experts for the organisation – this
initiative has included the hire of a data scientist.
Report
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Focus: Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board
Adam’s focus on “in-reach” and the organisation’s core mission

statement has led to investment in resident sentiment surveys. Whilst
this revealed no negatives, this also did not suggest that residents were
positive advocates for tourism. In response to this, Adam and his team
focus on different kinds of metrics to demonstrate the value of tourism
and of the work that they do.
“We’re no longer leading with numbers of visitors. I think that’s a very

dangerous metric to use because, first of all, it makes it seem like
we’re more concerned about the visitors than our own community and
secondly it feeds into the risky perception of over-tourism.”
The LA Tourism team now focus primarily on the number of people

employed by tourism, the jobs created. They lead reporting by focusing
on revenues to local businesses, not just the benefits provided to the
larger corporations behind the larger hotels and convention centres.
And they focus on tax dollars delivered for community benefit – and
what this saves the average family in LA per year.
This strong focus on the community benefits of their work is also

something which provides stronger motivation to the LA Tourism &
Convention Board team to do their job well.
Report
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Focus
London &
Simon McCaugherty
Director of Consumer Marketing
& Growth
Partners
The organisation
London & Partners describes itself as London’s business growth agency,
with the responsibility for growing visitors, events, and FDI in the UK’s
capital city. The organisation has recently doubled in size and budget
to take on an additional objective – to help small businesses grow. It is
funded by the Mayor’s office, by membership schemes, and by income
from the Visit London website, tourism information site, and running
the .London web domain. The aim is to achieve 50/50 public/private
funding.
London & Partners has 3 core business teams – Tourism & Commercial
[business and leisure travel, and events and partnerships], Business
Growth [FDI and trade], and the newer Small Business group. They are
all served by the same strategy and insights team although, given that
they have their own clear and different objectives, there is little data
sharing between teams.
The entire team, which is building up to 300 employees, shares one

common objective or ultimate measure: economic growth. And so
the economic impact of every activity is measured with a focus on
additional growth, eg: additional consumer spend driven by London &
Partners’ campaigns is measured as GVA [Gross Value Add], or what it
delivers for London’s economy.
Measuring economic impact

As an example of how the complex methodologies of measuring
economic impact come together, let’s focus on leisure tourism. Aiming
for additional spend, the team have a data-led strategy focusing
on markets where there is a lower intent to visit London, using data
provided by Visit Britain or other external sources. They then follow a
survey-led approach, interviewing a representative sample of visitors to
see if they did see or can recall the London & Partners’ advertising, did
it influence their decision to visit, did it influence the length of their stay.
The results are fed through an algorithm to arrive at that GVA number.
Shifting to destination management and targeting net Zero

As director for consumer marketing and growth, Simon McCaugherty
shared with us how the Tourism and Commercial group are preparing to
shift from a destination marketing to a destination management focus –
and the impact this will have on what they measure.
Report
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Focus: London & Partners
The team will be adding measurement of how they are improving the
visitor experience, carrying out visitor satisfaction surveys and gathering
customer review data from Google reviews and Tripadvisor. They will be
benchmarking London’s performance against 10 competitor cities.
Given London’s stated target of achieving net zero emissions by 2030,

London & Partners has a part to play and so the other new metric about
to be introduced is the carbon impact of visitors. Simon is honest, “the
fact that we want to is the first step” – actually working how to measure
this is the current focus. And he is aware that this will lead to changes in
strategy, “Should we be targeting the US? And if we’re targeting the US,
are we only targeting East vs West Coast because they don’t fly as far?”.
Working out how to measure this is one challenge, the other challenge –
or opportunity – is to work with all tourism stakeholders [airports, hotels,
experience providers, everyone involved in the customer journey]
who are all beginning to measure carbon impact and work towards
sustainable development goals. As Simon said, “We’re all paying for the
same data many times over. One of our aims is to say can we have a
central data store and view of things?”.
As a destination management organisation, they will also be looking

at measuring residents’ views of tourism and so for the Tourism
& Commercial team, there will be four key measures: customer
satisfaction, brand perception, carbon intensity, and economic impact.
Measurement & Stakeholder Engagement

As a publicly funded body and a membership organisation, London &
Partners is fully accountable for how the budget is spent. Every initiative
is measured for economic impact performance against targets. The
overall performance dashboard is shared on both the London & Partner’s
website and on the website of the Greater London Authority [GLA].
This data then needs to be explained and so London & Partners has a
Stakeholder Team whose job, as Simon describes it, is to “understand
which way the wind is blowing and also to be talking about, okay, this is
what we’re doing and why it’s important.”
Report
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Focus
The Municipality
Laurens Roes
Programme Manager,
City Branding
of The Hague
The organisation
The Hague’s Department for City Branding is a team of four sitting within
the 130 strong communications department for the Municipality’s city
government. The Department for City Branding’s role is to promote
the vision for the city brand across all stakeholders, as Laurens Roes,
programme manager for city branding puts it, “We have 550,000 people
living in 95 square kilometres, a dense and busy city, so there’s a lot
happening here and it’s important that we don’t lose sight of what we
want to be as The Hague”.
The city branding team spend their time consulting with residents, the
private sector, and politicians to define the city’s values and positioning,
and their role is to then encourage all stakeholders to consider and
reflect The Hague’s DNA – the HDNA – through policy, initiatives, events,
and communications. Amongst other tools designed to achieve this,
the city branding team has developed an online representation of the
brand narrative at brandthehague.com, a passport-sized brand book, a
podcast and a brandkit. The team also run workshops and inspiration
sessions with stakeholders designed to show how the HDNA can help
organisations achieve their goals – whether they be policy makers,
developers, entrepreneurs, businesses, educational institutions etc –
and also to suggest what these partners can do to help strengthen the
HDNA and make The Hague a better place.
The City Branding team work closely with The Hague & Partners,
an agency supported primarily by government funding, to deliver
strategies to attract visitors, talent, and investment.
Measuring success against the team’s specific activities

The Hague’s city branding team comes across as a very data-led
organisation, building feedback into every stakeholder activity and KPIs
into every initiative. The Hague & Partners uses phone and credit card
data to measure tourism, the city branding team track international
media coverage, talent attraction statistics, and along with all other
project performance data this is shared on a dashboard with the internal
stakeholders who approve funding for the team. One key measurement
of course is how many times the brand toolkit has been downloaded,
which amounts to 60 to 70,000 times a year and so seen as a strong
indicator of buy-in for the brand.
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus: The Municipality of The Hague
Setting and sharing KPIs for the city brand

To help all stakeholders understand the purpose of the city brand,
the HDNA or positioning strategy has 6 clear KPIs: quality of life,
economic performance, reputation, city pride, social cohesion, and
the happiness of the people living in The Hague. Quality of life and
economic performance are measured through hard data gathered
from the city’s departments, national sources such as The Netherland’s
Bureau of Statistics. The other four KPIs are measured every two years
through research with specialist Netherlands agency Motivection, “like
a thermometer that we put into the city” as Laurens puts it. Research is
also conducted with external audiences, particularly on reputation.
Results against these core KPIs are shared openly through a dashboard
on the brand platform – the goal is to make this user-friendly and to give
all stakeholders the understanding that they also have an impact on
performance against these KPIs. They don’t have to read huge research
reports to have a sense of the “health” of the city and it’s positioning and
so are able to focus their own policies or strategies to help achieve the
city’s ambitions.
In terms of the “reputation” KPI, the team are currently looking at

external rankings. They are delighted to have achieved the highest
ranking for quality of life on Numbeo, the world’s largest cost of living
database but rather than cherry pick the results that make them look
good, they have initiated a study to build their understanding of the
different international research rankings in order to determine which
they pay attention to. For the city branding team, it all comes back to
those core values and KPIs.
Report
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Section
Focus
New Zealand
Lucy Alborn
Market Research Lead
Story
The organisation
New Zealand Story is a government agency whose purpose is to protect,
enhance and promote Brand New Zealand – in doing so the team
supports diplomatic engagement and trade growth. They give exporters
and government agencies the tools and knowledge to communicate
more consistently about Aotearoa New Zealand to shift perceptions,
open doors and grow opportunities.
Established 10 years ago to broaden perceptions of New Zealand, its

Advisory Board is made up of both public and private sector leaders –
representing agencies in foreign policy, education, trade, investment,
and tourism. Lucy Alborn says: “We aim to coordinate our efforts cross-
agency so that when New Zealand is showcased on the world stage,
we’re consistent and on-brand. Essentially, that we’re all telling the same
story to an international audience.”
New Zealand Story is also responsible for the protection of the national
symbol, the FernMark.
Influence vs control
Measuring the impact of a nation brand team like New Zealand Story
presents a challenge. Alborn comments: “We operate in an environment
that’s often influencing and collaborating, without direct control. It isn’t
always a direct line to achieve what we want to, so our relationships with
our stakeholders are crucial.”
New Zealand Story’s core task is defining New Zealand’s identity, values,
and market positioning. They strive to make the world see what New
Zealand represents and its unique value. Essential to this is engaging
stakeholders, making them view New Zealand Story as a partner,
and motivating them to amplify the nation’s narrative. While tools are
available for New Zealand exporters to tell the nation’s story, New
Zealand Story focuses on a consistent brand identity and addresses
specific issues that drive the country’s reputation in key markets.
Report
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Focus: New Zealand Story
Focusing on soft power and influence

In a strategic shift, the New Zealand Story team is now focusing on
measuring the nation’s brand equity, moving beyond traditional metrics.
This transition aims to understand the impact of their work more
comprehensively. Initially, the team assessed the usage of brand toolkit
assets, webinar engagement, and workshop participation, alongside
qualitative research to gauge perceptions.Their new approach delves
into influence measures, an indicator of New Zealand’s soft power.
The team collaborates with the Brand Finance Soft Power Index to
understand the drivers and attributes that enhance New Zealand’s
influence on the global stage. Alborn adds: “High influence translates to
high value, attracting investment and trade interest.”
To gather a holistic view, they integrate quantitative and qualitative

research, focusing on specific markets of interest annually. These
insights will guide New Zealand Story in shaping the nation’s brand
identity and driving economic growth by transforming perceptions
across the public and private sectors.
Next steps
The New Zealand Story team is looking to develop a comprehensive
dashboard for metrics. This will encompass both marketing and
communications activity, showcasing the effectiveness of initiatives
aimed at boosting New Zealand’s soft power influence. However, they
are aware of the challenges in creating a universal tool that caters to the
specific needs and geographical interests of all stakeholders.
Report
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Focus
Stockholm
Staffan Ingvarsson
Chief Executive
Business Region
The organisation
Stockholm Business Region is the official business agency for the City
of Stockholm, responsible for the international promotion and strategic
development of the city. The organisation incorporates two teams,
Invest Stockholm and Visit Stockholm, and together they are dedicated
to promoting and developing Stockholm as an attractive and sustainable
destination for business, international investors, talent, and visitors. The
organisation is publicly funded and its Board of Directors is lead by the
Mayor of Stockholm and 7 other political leaders.
Building a data-driven reputation

Across the organisation there is a strong focus on statistical
measurement, including: jobs created, investment dollars, visitor
numbers, hotel revenues, visa applications, unemployment rates etc.
The Stockholm team collects data from government departments,
the chamber of commerce, EU statistics and put that together from a
Stockholm perspective to serve their Board and other stakeholders.
In common with other places we have interviewed, gathering and

providing this data strengthens the reputation of the organisation.
On the visitor economy side, the team have developed a network of

individual attractions who provide their visitor data, which is then
anonymized and presented back to them - the collated information
provides genuine insight into why a visitor selects a particular attraction,
and this shared insight helps create a series of rationale which each can
use to adapt their offering according to what consumers want. Crucially,
all parties know that their ‘individual’ statistics are protected, but are
adding to a much richer, larger and more robust database managed by a
highly trusted central source.
Decision makers in the region have used the data that the Stockholm
team has provided to inform policy. During the pandemic, for example,
costs for obtaining permits required by businesses in the sector were
withdrawn in response to data provided by the Stockholm team. Longer
term, the data informs stakeholders about the level and type of foreign
investment and how many degree-educated people are being hired by
international businesses headquartered in Stockholm. Whilst this is a
good indicator of the state of the economy, the fact that a successful
hospitality sector, for example, tends to recruit from a pool of non-
university educated talent means that the labour market can still be
relatively healthy irrespective of whether international business is
recruiting heavily in the region.
Report
Place Title
Section
Focus: Stockholm Business Region
Measuring the impact of specific initiatives

The Stockholm Business Region’s teams have a strong focus on
measuring the progress and impact of specific initiatives and
campaigns. All investment projects are tracked, and the team have
been able to show significant improvements in attitudes to Stockholm
through a pre and post study amongst specific groups in Finland. Post
pandemic, a specific project was developed to provide an in-depth
analysis into the perception of the Stockholm brand and how it had
changed, in order to talk to their stakeholders about where Stockholm
sits today.
There is a key focus on making sure that measurement parameters are

long term, something which is not always easy when key personnel
may change frequently due to political/civic factors such as the length
of mayoral term. In terms of how the Stockholm team are judged, the
team are fortunate in that haven’t had to reach specific targets to justify
their worth to the city. Stakeholders are generally happy to recognise
that they are operating in a bustling city when it comes to investors,
talent and visitors, but there is real acknowledgement that establishing
a reputation is something that takes a lot of time to do. A few of the
larger investments that the team have been working on will generate
thousands of jobs, but will involve 5 or 6 years of work.
As is the case everywhere, Stockholm’s budgets are always threatened

– and indeed have been reduced by 15% in the last year. However,
Staffan is clear that there will always be scope to invest in relevant and
important data generation projects on a case by case basis and central
to this – as always – is collaboration with stakeholders to ensure that the
shape of the project delivers across multiple needs and requirements.
Why community Forward-looking destination

marketing and economic
wellbeing is your
development organisations are
not just measuring the wealth
created by their activities,
next critical metric

but how their efforts affect
the wellbeing of their local
communities as well. Are you?
Historically, the performance of place management and marketing

organisations has been tied to measuring the estimated economic value
of outcomes associated with their marketing or business attraction
efforts. Visitor arrivals. Bed nights. Investment. Taxes collected. Jobs
created. Contribution to GDP.
And while the economic value of tourism or investment attraction

and the prosperity it creates is critically important, there is growing
awareness and concern about the impact of economic growth on
the environment, local culture and quality of life in many cities and
destinations. Increasingly, forward-looking destination marketing and
economic development organisations are not just measuring the wealth
created by their activities, but how their efforts affect the wellbeing of
their local communities as well.
Moving beyond overtourism

Prior to the pandemic, several destinations were experiencing so
called “overtourism”—a situation where the volume of visitors began to Chris Fair
detract from the perceived quality of life for local residents, creating President and CEO,
a backlash and opposition towards tourism. The changing nature of Resonance Consultancy
tourism in terms of visitors’ desire to “live like a local” and stay in short-
term vacation rentals in residential neighbourhoods exacerbated the
situation, as the effects of tourism were no longer confined to central
urban districts or resorts.
As a result, many organisations have begun to monitor resident

sentiment towards tourism. But that’s just the first step.
A growing number of city leaders are moving past measuring just

the number of visitors they attract and the sentiment of visitors and
residents. People’s perception of a destination doesn’t tell the whole
story.
Focus on your experiences

The next step is to measure the growth and quality of experiences
offered in a destination. It is equally important to collect data and
monitor the experiential quality of a destination from a supply-side
perspective in order to identify potential gaps, positive or negative,
between perception and reality.
For nearly a decade, Resonance has been collecting user-generated

data in online channels to conduct Destination Assessments that,
utilised in conjunction with perception research, help organisations
understand the performance of their destinations, and the effectiveness
of their work, from a supply-side perspective.
Measuring the impact and efficacy of their work from an experiential About Resonance
point of view is a critical step towards shifting from a pure destination Resonance creates transformative
marketing mindset to one of destination stewardship for place-focused strategies, plans, brands and
organisations. campaigns that empower
destinations, cities and communities
When it comes to economic development, measuring the impact to realise their full potential.
and efficacy of the organisation has always been done primarily with
quantitative economic measures. But with growing awareness of the We specialise in:
value of diversity, equity and inclusion, forward-looking economic • Competitive Performance
development organisations are beginning to analyse this data differently. Assessments, using our
Rather than analysing a city’s clusters of talent in mere absolute terms, • proprietary Place Power Score
Resonance has worked with cities to help them understand their • Tourism Development and
economy through a diversity lens in order to determine not just the Engineering
effectiveness, but the equality of their workforce development and • DMO Organisational Strategy
talent attraction efforts. • City Marketing & Place Brand
Strategy
Economic development meets tourism • Place Brand Governance
At the same time, economic development organisations are recognising • Marketing and Creative Services
the importance that experiential quality of place plays in not only • Media Relations
attracting talent, but retaining it as well. So while destination marketing
and economic development organisations utilise very different The Place Power Score is
quantitative metrics to measure the impact and effectiveness of their our proprietary approach to
work, there is growing alignment between them when it comes to benchmarking places based on their
measuring and monitoring qualitative experiential factors that are livability, lovability and prosperity.
driving both talent attraction, visitor attraction and resident satisfaction. The data we collect on 400 global
This calls for greater cooperation and collaboration between place cities reveals unique insights on
marketing and management organisations to work together to monitor their performance, challenges and
and develop the liability, lovability and prosperity of their place in a opportunities. We use these findings
mutually beneficial and sustainable manner that will not only generate to help places attract residents,
wealth, but wellbeing for their local community as well. visitors, talent and investment. The
methodology also powers our annual
Holistic measurement in action Best Cities rankings.
A leading example of this approach is the new Wealth & Wellbeing Index
Resonance has developed with Destination Canada. The Index provides Contact
a strategic benchmarking tool to track progress in economic, social, and Chris Fair, President & CEO
environmental sustainability and resilience at all levels—from national to cfair@resonanceco.com
provincial, to municipalities across the country.
The Wealth & Wellbeing Index collects information on 82 indicators

grouped into 22 areas, distributed among 6 categories: Economy,
Employment, Enablement, Environment, Engagement, and Experiences.
This innovative approach blends traditional quantitative measures with
new qualitative ones to provide a holistic picture of the overall effects,
positive and negative, of the visitor economy across Canada that can be
tracked over time to create a new measure of organisational impact and
efficacy.
The key to place

brand management
Next to exchange of best practice among peers, in this complex and
ever-evolving world of place branding there is one thing we can rely
on with full certainty – that measurement is the key to management.
This fundamental principle has underpinned our work of measuring
stakeholder perceptions and brand value for nearly 30 years.
Our journey began with a singular focus: the importance of intellectually

rigorous brand measurement – hence our key role in developing the
industry standards on brand evaluation ISO 20671 and brand valuation
ISO 10668. Applying the same logic as to corporate or product brands,
we recognized that to effectively manage and enhance a place brand,
one must first understand it. Over the years, Brand Finance has amassed
expertise which has empowered many strategically aware place
brand leaders to rise above the challenges they face. Just like learning
from best practice, discovering the insights that measurement offers
facilitates a more impactful strategic management of place brands.
Put simply, understanding your place brand is the key to maximising David Haigh
performance. Robust and regular measurement of stakeholder Chairman & CEO, Brand Finance
perceptions and financial value unlocks a whole new level of place
brand management. For instance:
• analysing perceptions data allows you to quantify return on

investment from marketing communications campaigns;
• conducting drivers analysis can be instrumental in identifying

strategic priorities for future activities and building consensus within
your organisation;
• tracking place brand value is useful when setting royalty rates and
developing a commercially viable licensing program;
• performing a brand valuation can also help communicate the added

value of your work as place brand leaders to key stakeholders, such as
politicians and investors who hold the purse strings.
As testament to our commitment to methodological transparency and

technical professionalisation of the field, we have also been sharing our
research through public studies measuring place brand success. We
started off 20 years ago with the Brand Finance Nation Brands study
into the strength and value of the world’s top nation brands. Then 5
years ago – out of a rigorous consultation with over 50 academics and
practitioners of place branding – came the Global Soft Power Index,
delving deeper into perceptions of nation brands and their Soft Power.
Since its inception, it has become the industry’s most comprehensive About Brand Finance
research study, which in 2024 will rank all 193 member states of the Brand Finance is the world’s leading
United Nations for the first time, thanks to an unprecedented survey of brand evaluation and strategy
150,000+ respondents across 100+ markets. consultancy. We help place
brands measure their marketing
Soft Power, the intangible force that shapes a place’s impact on the activities and develop successful
international stage, relies on brand perceptions which build reputation strategies. Headquartered in the
and influence. It is the lever that places pull to attract investments, City of London, we are present in 25
foster trade, entice talent, and allure tourists. Yet, until recently, it has countries worldwide.
remained a nebulous concept, difficult to grasp and quantify.
We have published the Brand
The Global Soft Power Index is the first study to not only measure Soft Finance Nation Brands study into
Power based on a perceptions survey but also to cover practically the the strength and value of the world’s
whole world in terms of both brands ranked and markets surveyed. It top nation brands for 20 years. In
leverages the diversity of perspectives and experiences that our global 2020, we launched the Global Soft
reach affords, ensuring that the data we collect and analyse is not just Power Index – the world’s most
credible but also comprehensive. comprehensive research study
on perceptions of nation brands,
We are excited to be replicating this model to rank the world’s best city surveying opinions of 150,000+
brands in our Brand Finance City Index – published for the first time in respondents in 100+ markets and
2023 – and to extend this study in the years to come to cover more city ranking all 193 member states of the
brands in regional rankings across all continents. United Nations. Our Brand Finance
City Index – published for the first
As we embark on this new phase of our journey, we invite you to join us time in 2023 will be extended in the
and our keynote speaker – Sir John Major, Former Prime Minister of the coming years to cover more city
United Kingdom – at the upcoming Global Soft Power Summit on 28th brands in regional rankings across
and 29th February 2024 in London or online. In its 5th year, it is a pivotal all continents.
event in the place branding calendar where we reveal the findings of
the next iteration of the Global Soft Power Index. This time, we will Contact:
focus specifically on the role of Soft Power in attracting investment, enquiries@brandfinance.com
trade, talent, and tourism, identifying the best nations across these four
fields, thanks to new additional research conducted especially for this
occasion.
Through client and partner-led workshops on day one, and panel

discussions with place brand leaders from around the world on day two,
the Summit will be the perfect platform not only to reveal place brand
measurement insights from our research, but also to share best practice
among place brand leaders, whether from nations, regions, or cities.
I hope the Global Soft Power Summit 2024 will bring us all together, just
like the City Nation Place conferences!
It’s time to equip

the heroes of our
stories – with data
“Hero” is the word we use for ordinary people who have an outsized
impact on the world around them. They are the stars of our stories,
films, and comic books not because they are the mightiest or most
important, but because they see the journey all the way through to a
victorious end.
Likewise, destination heroes make extraordinary contributions to their

communities — not by chairing boards or receiving awards — but by
using data to move their places into the next era of strategic action.
Transforming data into meaningful next steps requires team members

who apply data literacy and strategic planning skills to the unique needs
of a place. Places that want to tell better stories — and thrive on the
other side of our industry’s digital transformation — must equip this next
generation of data-powered heroes.
Close the loop from measurement to action

What would you say is the culmination of your place measurement Ted Sullivan
efforts? Is it a glossy annual report, or a formal presentation given to a Chief Marketing Officer, Zartico
room of stakeholders or elected officials?
It’s an all-too-common tale for place organisations to invest time and

money into studies analysing visitor volume, ad effectiveness, or
economic impact — only to have the results publicised widely, checked
off the list, and then shelved alongside decades of similar reports.
Measurement is a vital step — and a challenging one in an industry that

lacks a unified cash register to display the total number of dollars spent
or customers served. But as imperfect indicators and vanity metrics
make way for new insights based on big data, place organisations have a
new opportunity to close the loop
Real-time, always-accessible data transforms end-of-the-road reporting

into the first step on the next strategic journey. In other words, connecting
measurement back to the planning phase creates a continuous cycle of
data and action that addresses community needs like never before.
• Employing this cycle allows place organisations to use data to:

• Align tourism marketing and community development efforts with
local values
• Dial demand generation up or down to attract the right kind of visit at
the right time
• Focus efforts on the content and channels that actually affect a
traveller’s decision to visit
• Communicate opportunities to stakeholders to offer a complete
visitor experience
Empower new data heroes About Zartico

Of course, there’s no fairy godmother to magically transform data into a Zartico has developed the first
sparkling new reality. Here is where you must call on your emerging data Destination Operating System for
heroes, equip them for the journey, and support them along the way. places. We provide actionable data
intelligence to discover high-value
Today’s destination data heroes hail from every corner of the place visitors and visitation patterns
organization, not just the C-suite or research department. Becoming by season, geography, and type.
a data hero requires three basic skills that form the foundation of data ZDOS™ Destination enables direct
literacy. alignment between exceptional
visitor experiences, resident
1. Understanding the data sentiment, and quality of life.
Understanding data goes far beyond knowing the difference between
ADR and RevPar. As big data streams become more common and Our proprietary Integrated
complex, it’s critical to have a strong grasp on what they are, how Data Model™ connects three
they operate, and what they can and cannot do. essential data streams to provide
the clearest view of the visitor
A data hero always approaches the data with their strategy in mind. economy. Only Zartico combines
They know what they want to find out and where to look to find the the highest frequency geolocation,
answer. spending, and event data in a
single solution.
2. Confidently communicating the data
A strong data communicator can choose the chart or graph that most Schedule a live demo to see how
clearly conveys the specific information they wish to highlight. They our strategic planning tool can
avoid jumping to conclusions and know how to identify contextual unlock the possibilities of your
relationships between data points to uncover meaningful trends and place through integrated data
patterns. insights.
Furthermore, they can employ both visuals and narrative to tell a Contact:
compelling data story. Ted Sullivan
Chief Marketing Officer
3. Making data a routine part of strategic planning ted.sullivan@zartico.com
Like annual reporting, strategic planning often gets relegated to once-
yearly discussions. In reality, strategic planning should happen almost
daily as an integrated part of marketing and management activities.
A data hero uses insights in small decisions — such as adjusting a

digital marketing strategy — and large ones — like funding a major
capital improvement. Data always has a seat at the table.
Ask new questions

Understanding the vitality of the place economy through a strategic lens
requires approaching measurement and metrics differently. Where in the
past a place may have pointed to increased visitor volume and website
visits as indicators of success, a data hero looks at the big picture.
As they feed day-to-day wins and learnings back into the strategic
planning process, data heroes consider everything from the thriving
restaurant scene to tax-funded community development as a part of the
organisation’s overall impact.
In today’s data-driven world, it’s time to call in the data heroes — better
stories await.
Zartico gives data heroes the tools they need to create extraordinary
impacts on the places they serve.
Place Branding:
Report Title Solving the measurement challenge 41
Section
Expert Listing
ALPHABET AMADEUS
alphabetcreative.com amadeus-hospitality.com/destination-management
Alphabet® is a 30-person tourism branding and marketing At Amadeus, we make the experience of travel better
agency based in Ottawa, Canada operating since 2000. for everyone, everywhere by inspiring innovation,
Alphabet® has a history of partnering with clients and partnerships and responsibility to people, places and
other consultancy teams, pushing the boundaries of how planet. We build solutions that improve the travel
brand positioning and marketing strategy contribute to experience for airlines and airports, hotels and railways,
a destination’s economic vitality. We have established search engines, travel agencies and tour operators,
our reputation by being focused on results through billions of times a year, all over the world. Amadeus for
creative thinking combined with research, analytics and Destinations combines the insights from in-depth data
consumer insight. Our brand development approach is analytics from the millions of journeys we process each
built for today’s digital and social media environments year with a broad range of marketing channels to help you
– understanding how brands today are consumed and reach highly-targeted audiences, maximize your marketing
shared, creating concepts that include design and spend, and drive visitors to your region.
messaging platforms to create a timeless brand strategy.
Contact
Contact Daniel Moravanszky, Senior Sales Manager Destinations
Cathy Kirkpatrick, Senior Tourism Advisor daniel.moravanszky@amadeus.com
ckirkpatrick@alphabetcreative.com
BLOOM CONSULTING BRAND FINANCE

bloom-consulting.com brandfinance.com
Bloom Consulting is a global consulting firm specialising Brand Finance is the world’s leading brand evaluation and
in Nation and Place Branding and Placemaking, working strategy consultancy. We help place brands measure their
for countries, regions and cities across six continents marketing activities and develop successful strategies.
since 2003. Headquartered in the City of London, we are present in 25
countries worldwide.
From our headquarters in Madrid, offices in Lisbon,
London, Sao Paulo and Paris, we provide countries, We have published the Brand Finance Nation Brands
regions and cities with a wide range of innovative and study into the strength and value of the world’s top nation
unique services, such as: brands for 20 years. In 2020, we launched the Global Soft
• Nation and Place Branding Power Index – the world’s most comprehensive research
• Place Analytics study on perceptions of nation brands, surveying opinions
• Placemaking of 150,000+ respondents in 100+ markets and ranking
• Tourism development all 193 member states of the United Nations. Our Brand
• Bloom Place Academy Finance City Index – published for the first time in 2023
will be extended in the coming years to cover more city
Madrid, London, Lisbon, Paris, Sao Paulo brands in regional rankings across all continents.
Contact Contact
contact@bloom-consulting.com Konrad Jagodzinski, Place Branding Director
HQ: +34 91 308 02 86 K.Jagodzinski@brandfinance.com
Report
Place Title
Section
Expert Listing
EPSILON GO TO PLACES
epsilon.com gotoplaces.co.uk
Epsilon understands that every destination faces unique How do you measure the social impact of the visitor
challenges. economy on your communities? How do you know what
That’s why we’ll work with you to customise a marketing your desired audiences are looking for? How can you
programme to reach all your goals—including making the show the value of your work in funding applications and
most out of your limited budget. Through our proprietary resourcing reports? How can you monitor the ups and
data set, Epsilon can help you find the right people and downs of sector performance in your area?
serve them marketing messages when they’re most likely Our dedicated research team can help you answer these
to act. We can help destinations with the themes explored questions as we know just how important having robust
in the report around increasing visitor numbers, attracting research and up to date figures on industry performance
talent, working with citizens and attracting investment. is to both public and private sector tourism partners.
To help you benchmark your efforts we’ll measure exactly We can help with in depth studies into visitor trends,
how your marketing strategy impacted results, but also perception and motivation to visit, setting up your own
your community across all stakeholders. business barometer to measure industry performance
and resident studies that measure wellbeing and pride in
Contact place. We are passionate about making destinations tick.
EMEA: Toby Morris, Senior Business Development Director
toby.morris@epsilon.com Contact
North America: Jonathan Keslow, Director of Travel & Hollie Du Preez, Destination Development Director
Tourism Hollie.DuPreez@gotoplaces.co.uk
Jonathan.keslow@epsilon.com
HUNDEN HUNTER
hunden.com hunter-design.co.uk
As the leading advisor in destination real estate Some people call it fireworks, or butterflies, or gravity. It’s
development, Hunden Partners works with clients to that intangible force that keeps your audiences coming
ensure placemaking success through tourism asset master back. We call it chemistry.
plans, market assessment, and financial feasibility analysis,
as well as project execution services. With experience on At Hunter, we believe in the art as well as the science of
more than 1,000 projects from sports facilities and mixed- great branding. Ever since we started over 30 years ago,
use districts to convention centers and entertainment we’ve been perfecting our formulas to create brands and
venues, resulting in development of over $20 billion in places that powerfully connect with their audiences.
built projects, President and CEO Rob Hunden and his We are a branding agency, and the ultimate alchemists in
team are trusted advisors that move projects and tourism great place-branding and placemaking.
planning from concept to funding to execution. Hunden
Partners represents your best interests when leading your Contact
organization through the development process. Crispin Reed, Chief Growth Officer
Crispin.reed@hunter-design.co.uk
Contact
Rob Hunden, President & CEO
rob@hunden.com
213 W. Institute Place, Suite 707, Chicago, IL 60610
312.643.2500
Follow us on LinkedIn
Report
Place Title
Section
Expert Listing
IPSOS JOY RIOT

ipsos.com joyriotagency.com
Ipsos is a leading global market research company. Joy Riot is an advertising agency that specializes in
Operating in 90+ countries, Ipsos provides a wide range of creating emotional connections between places and
research consulting tools and advisory services designed their audiences. We develop in-depth research, strategic
to deliver total understanding of people, society, and communications plans, branding, marketing campaigns
markets. Ipsos also manages the proprietary Anholt- in all media, and websites. Our placemaking expertise
Ipsos Nation Brand Index (NBI) - a public opinion study goes beyond the logo to creating an effective placebrand
that measures the image of 60 nations annually. Ipsos reputation that convinces your target communities to
leverages the NBI alongside a set of traditional and digital- engage with you.
first methodologies to help nation brand leaders diagnose
key stakeholder perceptions, understand the broader Contact
operating and issues environment, and design strategies Jessica McCarthy, Co-Founder
that defend and grow their nation brand. jmccarthy@joyriotagency.com
Contact
Jason McGrath, EVP
Jason.McGrath@Ipsos.com
RESONANCE TRAJECTORY
resonanceco.com trajectoryco.com
Resonance creates transformative strategies, plans, Trajectory’s team has worked with ambitious destinations,
brands and campaigns that empower destinations, cities large and small, across North America – from Washington,
and communities to realise their full potential. DC and Raleigh, NC to major urban centres and rural
locales across Canada. Our clients range from economic
We specialise in: development and destination marketing organizations to
• Competitive Performance Assessments, using our regional governments, municipalities, BIAs, Chambers of
proprietary Place Power Score Commerce, and community groups.
• Tourism Development and Engineering Services: stakeholder engagement, brand strategy,
• DMO Organisational Strategy identity design systems, implementation planning,
• City Marketing & Place Brand Strategy marketing, brand management training, and ongoing
• Place Brand Governance impact measurements. Increase the effectiveness
• Marketing and Creative Services of tracking the effectiveness of brand initiatives by
• Media Relations integrating innovative metrics that assess key attributes of
a brand system including adaptability, resilience, synergies
The Place Power Score is our proprietary approach to and other success factors.
benchmarking places based on their livability, lovability
and prosperity. The data we collect on 400 global cities Contact
reveals unique insights on their performance, challenges Jeannette Hanna, Chief Strategist
and opportunities. We use these findings to help places jeannette@trajectoryco.com
attract residents, visitors, talent and investment. The info@trajectoryco.com
methodology also powers our annual Best Cities rankings.
Contact
Chris Fair, President & CEO
cfair@resonanceco.com
Report
Place Title
Section
Expert Listing
TROVE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ADVISORS ZARTICO

trovetourism.com zartico.com
Places are looking for real-time insights. That is what Zartico has developed the first Destination Operating
we do at Trove - we have a proprietary all-in-one System for places. We provide actionable data intelligence
dashboard that provides real-time monitoring of return to discover high-value visitors and visitation patterns by
on investment. For example, in our most recent campaign season, geography, and type. ZDOS™ Destination enables
which went live in 8 global markets, we helped a tourism direct alignment between exceptional visitor experiences,
board measure bookings directly attributed to our resident sentiment, and quality of life.
campaign all in one place. Our dashboard also allows
destinations to view traveler sentiment in real time, as well Our proprietary Integrated Data Model™ connects three
as a few other key metrics important to tracking a place’s essential data streams to provide the clearest view of
performance. the visitor economy. Only Zartico combines the highest
frequency geolocation, spending, and event data in a
Contact single solution.
Danny Cohanpour, CEO/Founder
danny@trovetourism.com Schedule a live demo to see how our strategic planning
+1 (516) 233-8931 tool can unlock the possibilities of your place through
integrated data insights.
Contact
Ted Sullivan, Chief Marketing Officer
ted.sullivan@zartico.com
Methodology
The research to support this Report was carried out in

two stages. For the first qualitative stage, carried out over
September and October 2023, 15 place brand and marketing
leaders were interviewed in depth by an independent
researcher about their organisation’s approach to measuring
and benchmarking their work. Interview candidates were
chosen on varying criteria – including where City Nation
Place was aware of a strong or innovative approach to
measurement, or to ensure a good coverage of geography
and organisation type.
The findings from the first interviews, together with

consultation with the City Nation Place Advisory Group,
defined the design of the questionnaire for the second phase
of research: a quantitative survey carried out between 2nd
and 25th October 2023. Responses were invited through
email marketing to the City Nation Place database, and
through the CNP website and LinkedIn channel. A total of 85
responses were received.
Qualitative Survey
Respondents
We’d like to thank the following for their participation in the

qualitative interviews, a selection of which have also been
summarised as articles in this Report to give a sample of
the work happening around the world and in different types
of organisations. Their time and support was invaluable in
shaping the development of this Report.
• Brodie Fleming, Brand Canberra

• Jess Radford & Todd Babiak, Brand Tasmania
• Leigh Dawber & Roxanne Lombard, Cape Town Tourism
• Meaghan Ferrigno, Destination Canada
• Chris Bonk, Economic Development Regina
• Meira Pappi, Finland Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Kevin Weidlich & Andrea Haley, Fort McMurray Wood
Buffalo Economic Development & Tourism
• Marius Gurskas, Government of Lithuania
• Rosanna Dresdner & Daniela Montiel, Imagen de Chile
• Adam Burke, LA Tourism & Convention Bureau
• Simon McCaugherty, London & Partners
• Laurens Roes, Municipality of The Hague
• Lucy Alborn, New Zealand Story
• Staffan Ingvarsson, Stockholm Business Region
• Larissa Perdomo, Uruguay XXI
Quantitative Survey
Respondents
By organisation type Size of place by population
The smallest place represented in this survey has a
estination marketing and/
D population of approximately 25,000, and the largest
or management organisation place has a population of approximately 6.2 million.
42%
Investment promotion or
7%
economic development
team 16% Fewer than 100K
Place brand and marketing 11%
team working across all 100K to fewer than 250K
aspects of promoting place
11%
attraction – to visitors, talent,
investors, citizens 42% 250K to fewer than 500K
12%
500K to fewer than 1M

17%
By scope
1M to fewer than 2.5M
Nation 21% 17%
Region 26% 2.5M to fewer than 5M

City 51%
16%
Working for a town brand 1%
5m to fewer than 10M
Working for a
neighbourhood/district 1% 9%
10M to 6.2M
Over the past 9 years of City Nation Place surveys

and events, we are seeing a shift towards a greater
understanding of the potential power of a unifying
brand identity and narrative for places. 59% of those
responding to our quantitative survey this year
either have a single brand narrative or are working
in partnership with stakeholders and partner
organisations to create one – this compares to 46%
in our 2022 survey.
Which of the following statements best reflects

the situation in your city, nation, or place?
All respondents
We have a single place brand narrative We are working in partnership Stakeholders working across tourism, economic
and identity which all stakeholders, with other stakeholders to development, talent & investment attraction each
across tourism, economic develop a single brand narrative have a separate identity and place marketing
development, talent & investment and identity for our place which narrative
attraction have adopted we will all work with 41%
31% 28%

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Place

The challenge is how to measure the impact of this

This Report summarises work carried out over a three-

Expert Partner Perspectives

45 Survey Methodology & Respondents

Setting objectives for

Which of the following research and/or data does

Website engagement  87%

Destination Canada are launching a Wealth &

The strong focus on understanding citizen Invest in directly

From our qualitative interviews, Imagen Chile –

How frequently do you measure place Bespoke studies

How confident are you that this research

Not at all confident Very confident

Budgeting & resourcing

Our quantitative survey respondents represented

Budgets by organisational type

Destination Marketing Organisations

Investment Promotion Agency / EcDev

Organisations working across all aspects of

Asked about budget spent on research and data, the

We asked respondents where the research and data

Do you gather feedback on how your organisation Yes

Partner Parter organisations Private sector Government Citizens Potential investors

The business model is to be a client service agency within government

Measuring the success of Brand Tasmania as an organisation or the

Jess recognises the challenge on organisational performance

As a case in point, the Brand Tasmania team work on projects with

Jess feels that the global understanding of place branding is not

They act as a connector between the industry, the visitor, the

Cape Town Tourism has a clear mantra of ‘Pioneering Tourism and

Delivering the data on a limited budget

In terms of understanding how Cape Town Tourism is valued by its

Investing in a brand valuation

The brand valuation project had the following key objectives:

1. Calculate the Rand value of the “Love Cape Town” brand.

3. Use it to pursue revenue opportunities, potentially as a stand-alone

With 135 employees and federal funding, Destination Canada is relatively

A new way to measure success: wealth and wellbeing

The Index measures performance across six pillars: the economy,

Driving / Promoting innovation in tourism measurement

Around 18 months ago, the organisation embarked on a journey to

Working with an OKR framework

Understanding brand and organisational impact

Chris also sees the organisation’s investment in data expertise as a

Whilst we’re not sharing actual budgets in these interview-based case

Place Brand as the Foundation

Measuring the success of the place brand

Common to many organisations, one obvious measurement of the

The team gathers observational measurements: for example – are

A mixed approach to nation branding

Reorientation of the foundation’s role as an articulator

Four key areas of research and measurement

In line with the newly assumed role of articulating, Imagen de Chile

Imagen Chile also works with an external agency to trade international

Using data for better advocacy

Adam Burke, President & CEO, provided a picture of the political

Adam’s focus on “in-reach” and the organisation’s core mission

“We’re no longer leading with numbers of visitors. I think that’s a very

The LA Tourism team now focus primarily on the number of people

Website engagement 87%

Not at all confident Very confident

Nation 21% 17%