bsg presentation aled singleton

Is there a home within online place branding for dementia-friendly communities?Aled Singleton, Swansea University

This presentation1. Place branding: emergence from tourism and marketing

2. Blurring of ‘brand management’ roles and new opportunities

3. Considering place-based research: introducing three cases

1. Terminology and its development

• “Place brands are thought to shape the expectations people have of a place and thus their experience, which, in turn, is thought to lead to increased satisfaction that people derive out of such experience. • This makes place brands useful in

managerial effort to align the expectations people have of a place with the actual place reality.”

(Kavaratzis, Warnaby, & Ashworth, 2015, p. 4)

Place branding definition

A timeline of recent research

Opportunities for new research in 2016

Many rethinking place branding to consider the internet (Kavaratzis, Warnaby, & Ashworth,

2015)

Sense that ‘place branding’ separates itself from ‘tourism’ in practice (Ashworth &

Kavaratzis, 2010)

Research links words like ‘destination’ to ‘place’ and ‘image’ to ‘brand’ (Hanna & Rowley , 2008)

2. The opportunity for the internet

• “The state or region is generally responsible for the overall place image, leaving the marketing of specific services to the end-user to private operators. If the private operators are the dots, the job of government is to join them up in the end-user’s mind.”

- Anholt (2010, p. 3)

Brand managers

• Questions posed about the authority of brand managers, arguments made for people who live in places to have voice and consider that place branding [and place branders] can estrange people from their home towns.

- Sevin (2011, p. 156)

• Consider the ‘holistic’ social construction of places to include role of the internet also

- Hankinson (2015, p. 13)

Challenge status quo

• Specific focus on the impact of the internet on place brands• Proposals for methods include content analysis

followed by interviews- Hanna & Rowley (2015)

Questions for research

3. Some specific places

“We found that what is good for people with dementia is good for everybody. Places and neighbourhoods that provide good housing, transport and facilities will not only become more dementia-friendly, but will also make life easier for everyone.”- Crampton & Eley (2013)

Dementia-friendly York research

Debenham, SuffolkDebenham is a large village in Suffolk in the east of England. In the 2001 census the population recorded was 1,728. There is a strong dementia-friendly movement in this village.

Brecon,mid WalesBrecon is a historic rural market town in Powys, Mid Wales, with a population of 8,250 at the 2011 Census. This has one of the leading dementia-friendly communities in Wales.

Peckham,south LondonPeckham is a district 3.5 miles south-east of central London. The Census of the Peckham ward of the London Borough of Southwark shows a population of 11,381. It has a very diverse population and is one of the fastest-changing parts of the UK.

Changing perceptionsReviews such as this one about Peckham are found in magazines such as Time Out and blogs as well as sources for the established brand managers such as CouncilNew content feeds brand development

Place brand perceptions can change quickly

Final points1. The internet is important for the social construction of place image or brand

2. Size does matter: scale of places from Debenham to Peckham

3. How to understand role that individuals and groups have on place brands

References• Anholt, S. (2010). Definitions of place branding – working towards a resolution . Place Branding and

Public Diplomacy, 1-10.• Ashworth, G., & Kavaratzis, M. (2010). Towards effective place brand management: branding

european cities and regions. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.• Crampton, J., & Eley, R. (2013). Dementia-friendly communities: what the project “creating a

dementia-friendly york” can tell us. Working With Older People,17.2, 49-57.• Hanna, S., & Rowley, J. (2015). Towards a model of the place brand web. Tourism Management, 48,

100-112.• Hankinson, G. (2015). Rethinking the place branding construct. In M. Kavaratzis, G. Warnaby, & G.

Ashworth, Rethinking place branding: comprehensive brand development for cities and regions (pp. 13-32). Springer.

• Kavaratzis, M., Warnaby, G., & Ashworth, G. (2015). Rethinking place branding: comprehensive brand development for cities and regions. New York: Springer.

• Sevin, E. (2011). Thinking about place branding:ethics of concept. Place Branding & Public Diplomacy, 7, 1 55– 164.

@aledsingleton878524@swansea.ac.uk ESRC PhD, Swansea University