Branding & Marketing

Destination branding is a new way of thinking about the development of places – cities, regeneration areas, towns and major developments. It combines commercial brand strategy, marketing and communications and detailed destination planning - spatial and master-planning, the identification of attractors, infrastructure planning, service specification and development management. A destination brand is more than its identity, which is, in turn, more than a logo or a mark or a strap line. It is an expression of the planned offer of value and experience that a place provides to target consumers in priority markets – investors, businesses, institutions, residents and visitors. A destination brand provides a key to what the place is about, to what its offer is and to the experience it provides. A successful destination brand is a promise delivered and it is the uniting bond between the experience on offer in the destination and all of the people who live, work or visit there.

Locum has created three complementary destination branding services. Brand Compass© enables places and developers to create and implement a comprehensive brand strategy; Brand Refresher© enables places and attractions with an existing brand to refresh it and bring it up to date; and Brand Leader© enables companies and organisations involved in the development of destinations to create and implement brands for their organisations.

Click on the links below to view examples of Locum’s work and to view relevant articles about this service area:

Articles
Click on the links below to view relevant articles published in Locum Destination Review:

Beyond cool Britannia - Chris Smith on London's Olympic bid
Branding New Zealand
Brandwatch - The rigour of competition for the city brand
Brandwatch - Destination retailers
Brandwatch - Disney and Tussaud’s under the microscope
Brandwatch - Museum or mausoleum? Three UK national museums assessed
Brandwatch - A selection of the world’s leading hotel groups go under the microscope
Brandwatch - Specialist and long-haul tour operators
Brandwatch - Nation brand campaigns, past and present
Brandwatch - the D&AD awards
Brandwatch – The fast food industry
In brands we trust - Branding and positioning science centres
Marketing Britain - Chris Powell of BMP DDB on countries as brands
More than just fun - The marketing of Catalonia and the Basque Country
Nation Brands - Exploring the links between corporate identity and national identity
Rebranding as a Tool for Regeneration
Small world - Promoting Australia to European travellers
The art of Olympic identity - Branding lessons for London from previous Games
The city as trademark - How to avoid urban homogeneity in the globalised economy

All articles can be downloaded as PDF files and viewed through Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 or later versions, which can be downloaded free for Windows and Mac OS.