Rural place branding in South-West Jutland – Developing strategic implications for stakeholder collaboration

The aim of the project is to provide strategic implications for place branding efforts in rural regions – with a special focus on South-West Jutland and its specific challenges. Within a globalizing world, the identity of cities and regions becomes a important anchor of place brands that are aimed at creating a more distinctive image or reputation, differentiate the places from others and increase regional competitiveness, as well as attracting new community members and qualified labor. Place branding processes have mainly been discussed for large cities, yet rural regions have received nearly no scholarly attention. While place branding processes generally require the inclusion of the place’s
stakeholders (municipalities, citizens, businesses, etc.), city branding strategies are usually driven by the strong and visionary leadership of a central
organization (e.g., Destination Management Organization, city council) that develops and communicates the core of the brand. Such top-down approaches to branding clearly are advantageous in avoiding dilution of the brand’s image, but bear the potential risk of low identification of the stakeholders with the brand.The common absence of a central organization in rural regions that drives the strategic development of the brand’s core values, constitutes an important structural difference for rural regions compared to cities. Hence, a better understanding of place branding processes in rural regions, especially regarding the participation, collaboration and power of the local stakeholders in a bottomup brand development process is necessary.

Engelsk