After COVID scuttled plans for last year’s conference, Place Branding Australia is back with a new agenda and fresh insights gained over the last year.

But programmer Stu Speirs says while the stories and strategies explored at this year’s conference will reflect the new reality, the core theme remains the same.

“When it comes to really good place branding strategy it’s about getting down to basics and the fundamentals of a place,” he tells Government News.

“And that hasn’t really changed.”

For information and registration visit the Place Branding Australia website.

Speirs cites Brand Tasmania CEO and keynote speaker Todd Babiak’s definition when asked what ‘place branding’ means.

 “I really like Todd’s definition of place branding as a unifying cultural expression,” he says. “In other words, it’s the ability to distill down a place’s point(s) of difference and then tell the world about them.”

Speirs says Tasmania was chosen as the venue for this year’s conference because it’s home to what he describes as “one of the most ambitious place branding strategies the world has seen”.

The Brand Tasmania campaign interviewed hundreds of Tasmanians to unearth Babiak’s ‘unifying cultural expression’ and create a strategy which now has 540,000 partners.

Babaik’s keynote address will go over the three years of research, cooperation, and building that led to the Brand Tasmania phenomenon, looking at successes, missteps and the way forward.

Impact of COVID

COVID underscored the nexus between resilience a sense of belonging, Speirs says.

“When it’s done well, place branding is essentially the sum of identity and identification of what it means to be from a place,” he says.

“COVID recovery is a subject we’ll be touching on in terms of resilience in general, and how place branding and common identity can add to the ability of a community to bounce back, whether it’s from a pandemic or a bushfire or any other sort of disaster.”

Another impact of COVID came in the form of domestic migration, with residents moving from metropolitan areas to the regions, or planning a future move.

The biggest shift off the back of COVID is the move from metropolitan to regional areas. That brings into focus the importance of regional areas putting themselves forward in terms of capitalising on that shift.

Stu Speirs

“The biggest shift off the back of COVID is the move from metropolitan to regional areas,” Speirs says.

“That brings into focus the importance of regional areas putting themselves forward in terms of capitalising on that shift.”

Research commissioned by Government News shows up to 25 per cent of people in Melbourne and Sydney are still considering a move to a regional area at some point in the near future, and about five per cent say they’ll definitely move to a regional area in the near future.

Speirs says the research shows that people who moved to regional areas during COVID are happy they made the move.

“Fifty per cent of those in Melbourne and Sydney that are likely to move still haven’t decided where they’re moving, to so there’s a real opportunity for regional places to put forward their case,” he says.

Place branding on a budget

The conference will explore case studies of place branding campaigns both big and small, from  City of Wangratta’s ambitious Happy Little Locals campaign to “place branding on a budget” by the rural sheep town of Kaniva on Victoria’s far west border,  which has a population of just 800.

The conference will also hear an address from Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein, who’ll talk about how the state’s renewable energy industry is helping position the state for future prosperity.

Speirs says it’s appropriate the Place Branding Australian conference, taking place against the backdrop of Dark Mofo, is among this year’s first in-place conferences.

“It’s just so exciting to be back,” he says.

“The highlight for me is the work that Brand Tasmania is doing. Todd Babiak’s speech, coupled with the Premier will be worth a ticket.”

Place Branding Australian 2021 will take place at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Hobart from June 16-18.

For information and registration visit the Place Branding Australia website.

Place Branding Australia is a Government News event.