Placebranding - tips for uncovering unique regional brand stories

The temptation when promoting a regional destination is to lean heavily on the concepts of escape, relaxation, easygoing communities and time in nature. After all, aren’t those the biggest differences between regional and urban areas? Isn’t that why people are visiting, or looking for a new lifestyle?

The problem with these characteristics is that they are fairly universal regional traits - which means you might end up being hard to distinguish across a very competitive landscape (especially if you happen to be in our abundant home state of Victoria).

While there’s a variety of ways you can approach the task of developing a regional placebrand, we have three guiding principles we use to make sure the brand we create is truly right, and distinctive, for the region.

1/ What is the role of your brand?

Before kicking off any branding exercise, decide which of the below categories best describes the role your organisation plays for the audiences you serve.?

Council or LGA Brands

A council or LGA brand should encapsulate the ‘live, work and invest’ messaging for a city or region. These brands are built to focus on ‘livability’ over ‘visitability’, and engage in activities to inform, educate, serve and activate residents and businesses. They need a strategy and identity that clearly demonstrates the organisation’s ability to keep the region running and growing, smoothly and sustainably.?

Placebrands

A placebrand can be council-funded, yet is often owned and activated by multiple stakeholders. Usually aspirational in tone, these brands show why a particular region is a great place to live, work, play and visit. Often the council brand is really focused on ‘delivering today’ for a local audience. A placebrand helps attract external audiences to become part of the future vision for the community.?

Destination Brands

Focused on representing the value of the region as a tourism destination, destination brands exist to grow the visitor economy. A destination brand will often be a ‘collective brand’, sitting above, or drawing in, a range of other tourism brands and experiences. They are generally separate to a ‘live and work’ proposition.?

2/ Always start with your community

The local community must be at the centre of all that you do. After all, your brand either exists to serve them, or relies on them to make your region great for potential new residents, investors and visitors.?

Especially in regional areas, where the community will play ‘host’ to visitors, and as well as a critical role in serving them, any place brand or destination brand must build out from what matters to the community and how they want to be represented.

Make your brand more meaningful for the community by:

• Investing in promoting local businesses content through social media grants
• Uncovering opportunities for locals to better experience ‘their own backyard’
• Creating itineraries that feature community-led experiences and local businesses
• Prioritising the rollout of brand assets that the community wants to see - e.g. town signage, window decals in empty shopfronts, local merchandise
• Sharing First Nations stories of the area, always with the permission and guidance of elders
• Challenging negative ideas others may have about the region by sharing the stories of proud and unique locals and community groups

See some examples of how we’ve done this with Discover Northern Grampians and Shepparton & Goulburn Valley.

3/ The intersection of authentic, distinctive and compelling?

By working closely with your stakeholders, identify the brand truths that lie at the heart of your region.?

Authentic

Talk truthfully about your region and celebrate what is great about it. What can it genuinely offer today, and what is it building for tomorrow? If there’s controversy or misrepresentation out there, address it, and show how that has contributed to resilience and strength of character.

Distinctive

Spend time really uncovering what is unique to your region - chances are it might not be the first thing you think of, because it’s so embedded in your culture and community. That was the case for Shepparton & Goulburn Valley.

As we’ve said - easygoing, relaxing, and welcoming communities or pretty natural environments are unlikely to be your most distinctive characteristics as a regional destination.

Compelling

You can be authentic and distinctive, but if you are pushing something that your audience doesn’t really want or need, it becomes irrelevant. Do the work to understand what will drive your audiences to act. Focus on delivering what these audiences truly want and need, not just the things you think they should care about.

Do you need support building an effective brand for your region? We’d love to help you, just like we've helped regions like the Northern Grampians, Shepparton and Goulburn Valley, South Gippsland and more.

Let’s chat about how your regional brand can reach its full potential - drop us a DM today, or visit our website at cuplastudio.co.