Editorial

Abstract

The ‘ great debate ’ in place branding revolves around the question of whether national reputation is better infl uenced by operating on causes, or effects. The ‘ logos and slogans ’ school of thought, deriving from the commercial selling arts, is premised on the belief that perceptions of places can be directly infl uenced by communications: in other words, that people can be persuaded through one form of rhetoric or another to alter their opinions about countries, cities or regions. The ‘ policy-based ’ approach (as espoused by this author, and gently encouraged in the pages of this journal) holds that a purely communications-based approach is little more than futile propaganda, as countries and cities are profoundly different from products and corporations, and that the reputations of places can only be meaningfully infl uenced by addressing their root causes.