Can you answer three simple questions?
Most brand strategies for destinations are unable to answer these three basic questions.
After 28 years building place brands across the world, I still walk into briefings where huge sums of money are being committed to a project development and nobody in the room has answered these simple brand strategy questions.
1. What does this place genuinely stand for?
Not what you would like it to stand for. Not the aspirational version but the honest truth, based in evidence. If your answer could apply to fifty other destinations, you need to start again. I sometimes call this the Roots and Soul of a place combining history, location, industry and community.
2. Who are you actually trying to reach?
Not “everyone” Not “high-value visitors” but a real answer with some real insight. The kind of insight that makes some people uncomfortable because it could mean saying no to audiences that don’t fit.
3. Why should anyone believe you?
This is the one that kills most strategies. You can have a compelling positioning and a beautiful identity. But if there’s no proof, no lived experience, no community buy-in, no tangible reality behind the claim, it’s just noise.
Three questions that sound simple to answer, but they aren’t.
I’ve seen destinations spend years on brand programmes that couldn’t answer any of them. The work looked impressive, but it wasn’t rooted in reality. So, before you brief your creative team, or agree a budget, or design a logo try to answer these three questions. In writing. With evidence.
Everything else follows from that.
Great strategy doesn’t just protect a major investment. It gives a place its soul. At Air Design, that’s the work we do, turning serious place development into places people love and places that endure.
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