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Newsletter No. 2/2008

Editorial
Save the Date: Conference: Supernatural Supranational
Calls for Papers
New Members
Congress-Roundup: Europe and Latin America
In the Media: Germany abroad Website and EUROSTAT-survey
New Publications

Editorial

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

Welcome to our second newsletter! Please let me draw your attention to two things: Our conference is settled now and will take place in Berlin on 4 June 2008 under the title: "Supernatural Supernational: A European Perspective on Place Branding and Public Diplomacy". Just like our first conference, it is organized in co-operation with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. We are looking forward to a thoughtful discussion and interesting networking. Also, the German Foreign Office has made parts of its website â€žDeutschlandbild im Auslandâ€œ available to the general public. There, you will find an overview of German public diplomacy-activities which should be of general interest. 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,
Anna Schwan
on behalf of the Association for Place Branding & Public Diplomacy Board of Directors

Safe the Date: Conference Supernatural Supranational

"Supernatural Supranational" is the title of our next conference that will take place in Berlin on 4 June 2008 at 6.00 pm at the ReinhardtstraÃŸenhöfe, Reinhardtstraß 14-16, 10117 Berlin. With a preliminary programme as follows, the conference will focus on the impact of communication on the identity-forming process of the European Union:

6.00 pm: Welcome and Introduction to the topic
6.15 pm: The Role of Deutsche Welle in Overcoming National Boundaries and Moderating between Cultures (Christoph Lanz, Deutsche Welle TV)
6.45 pm: Itâ€™s the communication, stupid! Place Branding and Public Diplomacy as means of a European communication strategy (Peter van Ham, Global Governance Research, Clingendael Institute)
7.15 pm: Spaceshuttle Brussels: Origins, Consequences and Ways to Tackle EU-Communication (Leonard Novy, Bertelsmann Foundation)
7.45 pm: Open Panel Discussion
8.15 pm: Get together

The conference is organized in cooperation with Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.

Calls for Papers

Two interesting calls for papers for conferences in Germany, connected to topics of place branding and public diplomacy were recently launched:

The TU Ilmenau is hosting the first conference by the network for intercultural and international communication from 30 October 2008 to 1 November 2008, titled "Between Babel and 'Earth City'". It focuses on political, economic and cultural barriers and opportunities for a global (media-) communication and the establishment of a global public sphere. Possible contributions can include, but are not limited to: imbalances in lines of international communication, inter- and transnational crisis communication, the influence of international public relations on countries and cultures as well as origins of transnational and transcultural communication. The call for papers is asking for a 8.000 sign abstract, deadline is 11 August 2008. For more information, please go to the university's website or send an e-mail to: Dr Liane Rothenberger.

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 on 4-6 December 2008. The first Call for Papers has 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. For the full call for papers, please visit our website.

New Members

The Association is welcoming three new members this month:

Gilberto Gribaudo from Italy worked for the OSCE and UNESCO before starting his professional career in the field of international advertising at AFA Press and Impact Media. Since 2005, he is working as business development manager at World Report Media where he produces advertising country programmes focused on attracting investments and develop tourism.

Dirk Krischenowski from Berlin is founder of dotBERLIN GmbH, an agency that promotes top-level-internet-domains that end on city-names and consults cities on their internet-projects. He has published widely on the topic of identity-building through city domains as a part of place branding.

Jacob Saxild from Denmark is marketing manager at Copenhagen Capacity, the cityâ€™s investment promotion agency and is directing ist investment communication, marketing and branding activities.

Congress-Roundup: Europe and Latin America

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag and the German Chamber of Commerce invited interested entrepreneurs and diplomats to a discussion about the image of Latin America in Berlin on 8 May 2008. Among the most important topics were possibilities of mastering the global challenges in joint initiatives. Some parallels were drawn: While Europe is in a process of continuous integration, many Latin American nations are today in a comprehensive process of change, beginning with the basic understanding of democracy up to the perception of their own role in the world – which may lead them to foster a similar process of integration. There were never as many democratically governed countries in the history of the continent as today, and the economic perspectives of Latin America are impressing – even more so if the countries embark on a process of integration. Public diplomacy is an important instrument here, to make the ongoing changes in Latin America even more visible to the world. Germany's foreign policy in Latin America is therefore lending a helping hand where-ever possible and necessary.

For further information about the conference, please contact Reinhard Willig of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

In the Media: Germany abroad Website and EUROSTAT-survey

We would like to draw your attention to two media-relatied novities in the field of place branding and public diplomacy which you may find of interest.

The German Foreign Office launched a new website on Germany's image abroad and public diplomacy-measures with widespread information on the topic as well as downloadable background papers. The website is free to the public. To find out more, please go to: http://www.deutschlandbild-im-ausland.de/

The European Commission launched the latest EUROSTAT, this time with key figures on European business and with a spezial feature on the factors of business succes. It consists of 13 short chapters, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of the European business economy: from the size and structure of business sectors to the importance of foreign-controlled enterprises. The survey can be downloaded from the Royal Instituto Elcano website.

Publications

Two scinentific magazines recently published special issues on public diplomacy. The current issue of The Annals by the American Academy of Political and Social Science is dealing with "Public Diplomacy in a Changing World" with contributions by Nicholas Cull, Eytan Gilboa and Joseph S. Nye, among others.

The Hague Journal of Diplomacy focuses in his third issue 2007 on ways of "Rethinking the New Public Diplomacy" by integrating it into wider concepts of comunication. Contributers include R.S. Zaharna, Kathy Fitzpatrick and Pierre Pahlavi.

For buying these 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.