Place Brand Co-Creation through Storytelling: Benefits, Risks and Preconditions

Abstract

Co-creation in place branding is used as an umbrella term for the complex brand meaning emerging through stakeholders’ participation in place activities, their contribution, collaborations and interchange of ideas and resources. Co-creation is often an aspiration for places to create and promote their brands collectively. In this context, storytelling—an old technique used in corporate marketing to instigate brand stakeholders’ participation—serves as a method which facilitates place brand co-creation through shared place stories. With the rise of online interactions, the chances of place stakeholders’ participation in brand meaning creation increase, and place stories are effective in allowing diverse place meanings to emerge from various stakeholders. However, when storytelling emerges as a marketing tactic, mostly from a top-down campaign, the stories are not always accepted by all place stakeholders, and they create contrasting brand meanings. The paper aims to investigate the benefits and risks of participation in “Many Voices One Town” (2018), a top-down campaign from Luton, UK, which used storytelling to instigate place brand co-creation. The campaign was created by the Luton Council with an external advertising agency. The campaign attempted to tackle the town’s segregation issues and foster community cohesion through the promotion of seven selected Lutonians’ stories about their diverse and multicultural experiences of living in Luton. The study employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the MVOT case study. Interviews with the council and participants in the campaign and netnographic data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were used to gain an insight into residents’ participation in a top-down approach and examine the outcomes of co-creation. Residents’ participation in such a campaign shows numerous benefits but also risks for the place brand. The findings show that participation can sometimes intensify disputes about the town if people’s needs are not properly addressed. The study highlights the importance of open communication between all parties involved in the process, bringing into focus the need for careful coordination of top-down initiatives in line with stakeholders’ needs. It also demonstrates the ‘power of the people’ in the sense that stakeholder engagement with the shared stories led to negative outcomes that were not predicted by the Council.

Assessing place experiences in Luton and Darlington on Twitter with topic modelling and AI-generated lexicons

“…As evidenced in Darlington, popular topics were linked to wishes, leisure and routine, indicating the town's strong sense of community and active lifestyle. These posts about routine activities can further contribute to the co-creation of the place brand online, as observed in prior research (Lucarelli, 2019;Stoica et al, 2021). Although this study has not established a solid link between these topics and residents' pride and attachment to Darlington, these connections could be a compelling subject for future research.…”

“…This is consistent with existing literature, which suggests that political conflicts can further undermine the perception of a place during the pandemic (Mathayomchan et al , 2022). Additionally, the disproportionately high volume of tweets about politics and faith in Luton may be due to tensions between members of different faiths and vocal political ideologists; for example, Islamic extremists and white supremacist groups have received significant negative publicity in recent years, possibly contributing to the negative perception of the town (Johnston, 2021; Smith and Duncan, 2017; Stoica et al , 2021). This does not necessarily imply a link between the tensions among the Muslim and non-Muslim communities and negative experiences, but it is an issue worth further exploration.…”

The Role of Future Generations in Place Branding: The Case of Huelva City

“…Implementing place branding is a process that requires the development of events, infrastructures, symbolic actions, and supportive policies on a multi-level scale (Jernsand, 2016, p. 62). Place branding cannot be based solely on communication; it also requires product development (Stoica et al, 2021).…”

Co-Creating a Seniors’ Meeting Place: A Prototype Pop-Up Installation on a Popowice Housing Estate in Wrocław, Poland

“…In this process, the designer primarily functions as a facilitator [78,79]. Moreover, approaches like co-creation, co-production, or co-finances have gained acceptance as novel participatory methodologies within the realm of placemaking, which is a method largely based on collaborative prototyping [80][81][82].…”