Back in September, co-founder Wayne Hemingway spoke at City Nation Place UK, a gathering of leadership teams for place, tourism, and economic development exploring how places can tell stronger stories and build better futures.
This is what he said…
Let’s start with a provocation: Most place brand budgets are wasted. Not because people don’t care, and not because places don’t matter. They’re wasted because the approach is too often flawed, shallow, or short-term – and too often handed to agencies that don’t truly understand what branding means or see it simply as another way to pay the bills.
After nearly three decades of working with places across the UK, we’ve seen the same mistakes made time and time again. When we condensed them down, we highlighted the top five reasons and how they can be avoided.
1 – Misunderstanding What a Place Brand Is
Too often, people think a place brand is a strapline, a glossy logo, or a few catchy words: “Northern grit,” “fresh air,” “warm welcome.” That’s not branding. That’s Place Blanding – generic wallpaper that disappears the moment a campaign ends. Branding is deeper. It’s values, behaviours, and actions that make a place truly different.
Stop 100 people on Buchanan Street and ask them what a brand is; 90 will describe a logo. No wonder councils get taken for a ride. Nike doesn’t talk about a swoosh or “Just Do It.” They talk about 5k runs, pushing sporting limits, and creating experiences. A place brand should do the same: it’s lived, not printed.
A brand is the mental image people hold of a place. That image already exists. Place branding, done well, shapes it intentionally. It’s not about inventing a new identity. It’s about clarity, focus, and showing who you are through consistent action. You can’t be everything to everyone – the strongest place brands are rooted in purpose, not slogans.
Let’s look at examples…
· Blackburn launched a visual-led brand that fizzled quickly. Today, its reputation grows through action: cultural activation and meaningful regeneration projects.
· York took a different route. Its brand work wasn’t about look and feel; it was values-led, shaping decisions, investment, and behaviour. By engaging over 6,000 voices, three core values emerged: innovation, human rights and public good. These values have since underpinned bold, tangible actions — from car-free pledges and a reimagined York Central to becoming HQ for Active Travel England. York proves that when a brand guides actions, it shapes perception, strategy, and investment far beyond marketing.
The lesson is simple: if your brand isn’t influencing what you do, guiding actions, it isn’t working.
2 – Lack of Skills, Capacity and Budget to Manage a Brand
Place branding is not a one-off project. It requires ongoing investment, skill, and careful coordination.
Too often, councils and commissioning bodies simply don’t have the resources or expertise to manage a brand over the long term. Staff move on, budgets dry up, political priorities shift and what’s left is usually just a PDF of brand guidelines sitting on a server.
Instead of chasing short-lived marketing campaigns, the brand should be used to shape strategies that are already being funded – in housing, culture, investment, and the public realm. When a brand lives through action, it doesn’t disappear when the comms budget does.
3 – Failure to Build Genuine Partnerships
Place branding only works when it’s collective.
Too often, a council commissions a brand and expects everyone else to fall in line. It never works. A place brand can’t be owned by one organisation – it needs shared ownership across business, education, culture, and community.
Humber is a clear example of what happens when that collaboration comes to life. The region had ambition; to become the UK’s first Net Zero industrial cluster, but it lacked a unifying identity to match. Through deep engagement with over a thousand participants, HemingwayDesign, CTConsultants and Pace Communications brought together civic, industrial and cultural voices to create a shared narrative that everyone could stand behind.
Since its launch, more than 200 organisations have used the Humber brand framework to guide their communications and align their actions. Once overlooked, the Humber is now recognised nationally as a place of scale, ambition and leadership in the UK’s energy transition.
Without genuine buy-in, a brand won’t stick. With it, it becomes unstoppable.
Read more on The Humber Place Brand here
4 – Short-Termism and Political Cycles
Place brands fail when they are treated as campaigns rather than long-term commitments.
Councils change, priorities shift, and new administrations can sweep away years of work. Manchester’s “Original Modern” is a case in point: it was embedded across planning, design, culture, and investment, but without proper succession planning, its momentum was lost.
A strong place brand asks: where will we be in 5, 10, 15 years? Success comes from embedding brand values into the very fabric of decision-making and not just on posters or social media feeds.
5 – Consultants Who Sell Shallow Branding
Too often, consultants roll out the same process from place to place: a few workshops, some research, then a shiny logo and tagline (and £40k gone!). The outputs may look nice, but they deliver little long-term value. Places deserve better. They deserve brands that guide decisions, drive investment, and inspire action – not glossy campaigns that vanish after a launch.
Andover is one example where brand-led strategy directly secured Levelling Up funding — because it was about long-term change, not short-term promotion.
Our vision and place brand repositioned the town around people, place, and the environment, rather than retail decline. The brand filter has influenced major decisions. From dismantling over-engineered highways, and opening up the River Anton – a nationally significant chalk stream – to create a new park. Meanwhile, activations like Second Sundays have built community pride and identity, and the masterplan has secured funding for long-term transformation.
Andover shows how brand-led values can give coherence to both bold infrastructure shifts and everyday community initiatives. The right approach is simple: rooted in people, shaped by values, and delivered through action.
To summarise: Place branding, done well, helps people make better decisions, encourages pride and advocacy, and shapes how places grow.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in place branding. The question is whether you can afford to waste it.
Because the cost of Place Blanding is far greater than the cost of getting it right. Read our piece for City Nation Place here.