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Newsletter No. 1/2008

Editorial
New members-area online
Be part of it!
Save the Date: Jour Fixe and Conference on European Communication
New Project: China 2008
Call for Papers
General Meeting 2008
In the Media
Publications

1. Editorial

Dear members of the Association for Place Branding & Public Diplomacy,

welcome to our first newsletter! This new tool was created to keep you up to date with the ongoing developments in the association – on a monthly basis. It tells you all about recent happenings, upcoming events, and topics of special interest. You will also find here interesting news from the fields of place branding and public diplomacy.

We would also like to use the newsletter as a possibility to strengthen the bonds between the members of the association. Please let us know about anything of interest that you are working on in your respective fields, what you heard in the news or what the lastest news in your scientific community is all about. Please remember: The association only lives through the engagement of its members. And the more of us participate actively, the more interesting it will be for all of us.

There are two things that we would like to draw your special attention to in this newsletter: Our next conference will focus on communication-tactics of the European Union and will take place on June 4, 2008 in Berlin. For a third conference in December we are already asking you to participate in our Call for Papers. Please find more information on both of these topics as well as more interesting articles related to our fields of work and research below.

We hope that you enjoy the reading and are looking forward to your feedback and recommendations!

Best regards,
Association for Place Branding & Public Diplomacy
The Board of Directors

2. New members-area online

As announced during the annual meeting of the Association for Place Branding & Public Diplomacy, the new and secure members area of the Association is now online. You can access the members area by clicking on the link at the left side of the website and by entering the name and the password (if you are a member of the Association).

The members area is basically a Wiki system, which means that everybody who is logged in can edit any article. The idea behind this system is that by collaborating, we can build a complete database with hundreds of articles related to public diplomacy and public diplomacy. The fact that the members area is a Wiki, however, also means that you have to learn a specific syntax in order to be able to insert links, headlines, images etc. Don't worry, it's no rocket science and does not need much training. Some help that explains how to use the system can be found here - just try it:
Wiki help pages (Deutsch) and
Wiki help pages (English).

So how can the members area be used?

You can for example

write an article on a new place branding campaign to inform the members
use the system as a working space and collaborate with others when drafting a text for a working paper or another document
create a link list for public diplomacy in the UK (in fact, I have already started one that you can find here)

I would suggest that you to create your own account for editing articles in the members area (you can find a link in the top right corner). It's free and by doing so, visitors can see which changes you made. This way, it is easier to start a debate between our members. The system can be expanded and new technologies can be included. But most importantly, it is now your task to make this members area a place for lively debate between our members!

In case you have any questions regarding the members area, send me an e-mail to Daniel Florian.

3. Be part of it!

"A chain is only as strong as its weakest part" goes a saying. This is especially true when it comes to voluntary commitments – also here in our association. We are a wonderful group of people – thirty in total as of now – and can make a lot possible if we are all working together. Therefore, from the board of director's side we would like to encourage you to participate actively in the association. Just come up with your own ideas for an event, a publication, a press-article and we will be more than happy to support you to engage in our community and beyond.

Also, we have already set up a few interesting possibilities to engage in the association:

Working Groups: the working groups meet regularly and come up with all kinds of ideas and events in their respective areas. For more info on them, please go to the working group's website
Working Papers and Case Studies: Publish a paper of interest, dealing with different aspects of place branding and public diplomacy in our working-paper and case study series. TheseÂ academic papers should aim to present new ideas and issues. Comments and feedback by the members of the association are explicitly welcomed. Please note that papers of particular interest will go through a review process by our advisory board and may then be published in printed publication. For more information, please visit our publication website.

4. Save the Date: Jour Fixe and Conference on European Communication

With the beginning of 2008, the working group "Science and Research" has introduced a new regular series of events. In January, our new member Jochen Pläcking gave a talk about the new place branding campaign for Berlin, "BeBerlin". The next Jour Fixe is set for April 21, 2008 at 18.00 hours. Anna Schwan will then talk about "Die strategische Außenkommunikation von Staaten. Mehr als Place Branding und Public Diplomacy allein." (in German). The Jour Fixe will take place in the offices of the association, at Invalidenstraße 104, 10115 Berlin.

The association's next conference is titled "Supernatural supranational. A European perspective on Place Branding and Public Diplomacy" and will take place on June 4, 2008 at 17.00 hours in Berlin. The definite location will be published asap. Please check our website for regular updates.

To RSVP for any of the events, please send an email to Meike Eitel.

5. New Project: China 2008

As host of the Olympic Games, China will be the focus of the world's attention in August 2008. China expects the Games to be a huge boost to the country's image, but recent events in Tibet were a huge setback for China's reputation. In a new research project, the Association analyses the media coverage of China in the run-up to the Olympic Games in order to assess the image of the People's Republic, it's strenghts and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and risks that stem from this image. The final paper is due to be published in August 2008. The co-ordinator for this project is Daniel Florian.

6. Call for Papers

The Association for Place Branding & Public Diplomacy is organizing a two-day long conference on "Marketing Cities: Place Branding in Perspective" together with the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies at Humboldt University. The conference will take place in the Berlin City Hall, December 4-6, 2008. The first Call for Papers has just been launched and we encourage you to participate in it.

This international conference will set place branding theory and practice in perspective and address several issues surrounding place marketing and place branding implementation in an effort to contribute towards a more efficient practice and sounder theoretical base for this field of inquiry. The focus will be on the ways in which place marketing strategies and place branding campaigns are generated, planned and executed and how these initiatives influence the current conditions and future prospects of urban centres and regions, including economic, political, social and cultural impacts.

The conference intends to promote dialogue among professionals from the academic, political and consultancy sectors about the relations between place marketing, place branding and urban and regional development and their significance for contemporary places. The conference will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach and will specifically aim to foster greater understanding and collaboration between scientists, practitioners and policy makers, while at the same time encouraging critical approaches. It will take a broad view of this complex activity and will critically examine a wide range of issues from global trends through to small-scale local initiatives.

For the full call for papers, please go to our website.

7. General Meeting 2008

On February 8, 2008 this year's general meeting took place. On the agenda were – among other things – the election of a new board of directors as well as the roadmap for the association's activities.

We congratulate Henry Werner, who was re-elected as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Gero Grandisch replaces Marie Spiekermann as the new Deputy Chairman of the Board; Meike Eitel is again the association's trusted Treasurer, Anna Schwan is our new Secretary to the Board and Carsten Claus was elected as the Financial Auditor.

In 2007, the Association was able to build a good reputation within the place branding and public diplomacy communities and set up a prominent Advisory Board. We were able to attract new members from all over the world sooner than expected, organised our first conference in August 2007 on the occasion of the Association's foundation and attended several conferences, e. g. on branding the Baltic Sea Region. By structure, the Association is organised decentrally to give all members the widest autonomy possible – a momentum that has already been picked up by the newly established working groups. The Association will in essence work as a platform where members can initiate their own projects as well as a platform for centrally organised projects. The quality of the working group's papers as well as the association's work in general will be secured through two main institutions, namely the board of directors and the advisory board.

8. In the Media

We would like to draw your attention to a few recently published articles on the issues of Place Branding & Public Diplomacy in the media which you may find of interest.

BBC image-survey

The BBC recently published a world-wide survey on the images of nations, questioning 17,000 people in 34 countries. Among other results, Germany did surprisingly well here, with a first place as the nation with the best image in the survey, followed by Japan and the European Union as a whole.

For more insight into the study please go to the BBC's website.

Be Berlin

The new Be Berlin-campaign was launched in March. It is the first campaign of this kind for GermanyÂ’'s capital and was well received within the regional and national media, although, according to a recent survey, Berliners are still a little uncertain if they like it. In a round-up of articles, find out more about the campaign.

Please click here for more information (all articles in German):

Sei Berlin – official campaign site
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Interview with Bernd M. Michael on the importance of city branding
Berliner Zeitung: Results of the survey among Berliners
Berliner Zeitung: Comments regarding the survey by the campaign-initiators

9. Publications

One of the latest works on the topic of place branding is "Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice" (Keith Dinnie 2007, 288 pages). It is a comprehensive reader that is giving an overview on nation branding. It thus blends academic theory and real world practice in an accessible, readable fashion and provides: a clear and detailed adaptation of existing brand theory to the emerging domain of nation branding; an original conceptual framework and models for nation branding; a rich range of international examples and over 20 contributions by leading experts from around the world; country case insights on nation branding strategies currently being utilized by nations such as Japan, Egypt, Brazil, Switzerland, Iceland, and Russia. Clearly and coherently structured, the book is an essential introduction to nation branding for both students and policymakers and will be an essential text for those interested in this fast growing area. (Review by Butterworth Heinemann)

For buying this or other books (and supporting the Association) visit our bookstore!

Responsible for the content of this newsletter: Anna Schwan, Association for Place Branding & Public Diplomacy.