Short bio
Dr hab. Magdalena Florek is an expert in the area of place marketing and destination branding. Associate Professor at The Poznań University of Economics and Business in Poland. A scholarship participant of Fulbright Foundation at Northwestern University and Kellogg School of Management, USA (2002/2003). In 2006/2007 senior lecturer at Marketing Department, University of Otago. Senior Fellow at The Institute of Place Management, co-founder and vice-president of International Place Branding Association, co-founder and Member of the Board of Best Place – The European Place Marketing Institute. Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, International Journal of Tourism Cities, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Journal of Urban Regeneration & Renewal. Speaker at numerous international conferences. A consultant in terms of brand strategy, city and region promotion. Author and co-author of books and articles on place marketing and branding.

Presentation title: “The why and how of destination brand experience”
The growth of global interconnectedness by easy travel and information access have widened the mind and holistic view of people’s experience of the world, pushing marketing activities into new creative areas to meet the demands of today’s society (Tinagli et al., 2007). It includes also tourists’ expectations, values, as well as attitudes and behaviours towards destinations. According to Mathwick et al. (2001) consumers today are looking for value, choice, and a great customer experience. Destination marketing practitioners have come to realize that understanding how consumers experience destinations brands is crucial for developing innovative branding strategies. Pine and Gilmore (1998, p. 98) claim that experiences themselves are “real offerings as any service, good, or commodity”. This is valid for destinations as the opinions are that destinations are more and more often chosen according to the formula: “Not where to but why” (Marketing strategy for Poland in tourism sector for years 2012-2020). As a result, experience marketing and consequently brand experience nowadays plays an essential role within consumer behaviour area with clear evidence, which Brakus et al. (2009) have shown, that brand experience positively aspects consumer satisfaction and loyalty. It could be also expected that in case of destination brands the satisfaction of their target groups achieved thanks to unforgettable experiences might lead to destination’s success. Meanwhile if providing memorable experiences is to serve as a competitive advantage, a more comprehensive understanding of experiences is necessary and a systematic approach to designing and delivering them is needed (Carbone & Heackel 1994).

Keywords: brand experience, destination brand, experience design, holistic brand

References:

Brakus, J.J., Schmitt, B.H. and Zarantonello, L. (2009) Brand Experience: What Is It? How Is It Measured? Does It Affect Loyalty? Journal of Marketing, Vol. 73 (May) pp. 52-68.

Carbone, L. P., & Haeckel, S. H. (1994) Engineering Customer Experiences, Journal of Marketing Management , 3 (3) pp. 8-19.

Marketing strategy for Poland in tourism sector for years 2012-2020, (National Tourism Organization (POT), Warsaw 2011.

Mathwick, C., Malhotra, N., Ridgon, E. (2001) Experiential value: conceptualization, measurement and application in the catalog and Internet shopping environment, Journal of Retailing, No. 77 (1) pp. 39-56.

Pine II, B. J., Gilmore J. H. (1998) Welcome to the Experience Economy, Harvard Business Review, No. 7-8 pp. 97-105.

Tinagli I, Florida R, Ström P, et al. (2007) Sweden in the creative age. Occasional Papers. Göteborg: Kulturgeografiska Institutionen, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborgs Universitet, CreativityGroupEurope.

Short bio

Dr Mihalis Kavaratzis is Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of Business, University of Leicester. He holds a PhD on city marketing from the University of Groningen, Netherlands and has taught marketing and tourism related courses in Budapest, Hungary and Leicester, UK. His research focuses on the theory and application of place marketing and place branding. His interests include tourism destination marketing and the study of destination images. Mihalis is Founding Board member of the International Place Branding Association and a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Place Management. He has published extensively in various academic journals and he is co-editor of ‘Towards Effective Place Brand Management’ (with G.J. Ashworth, 2010) and ‘Rethinking Place Branding’ (with G. Warnaby and G.J. Ashworth, 2015). Mihalis also acts as an adviser and delivers training workshops for local authorities on Place Marketing and Place Branding. He can be contacted at: m.kavaratzis@le.ac.uk.

Presentation title: ''Participatory Place Branding''

Place branding is very often – and entirely misleadingly – treated as a promotional mechanism based on the development of logos, slogans and other visual devices that are able – almost magically – to re-image places. The main aim of this presentation is to challenge these misconceptions and propose a responsible alternative view of what place branding is and what it can do for places. This presentation will attempt to offer a holistic understanding of place brand formation centring on the goal of harmonising residents’ views and internal perspectives of the city with tourism goals and externally oriented branding efforts. The main premise of my presentation is that in order to capture the ways in which place brands actually operate and form, it is necessary to capture and enable negotiations of meaning and change as these are negotiated by relevant stakeholders. Place branding will be approached as a process of collective strategy making that demands the participation of multiple stakeholder groups. A place brand that has been ‘constructed’ without their participation is very unlikely to be effective and even more unlikely to be sustainable as it is precisely these various groups of stakeholders that give meaning to the place brand. This makes place branding a complicated process that only vaguely resembles the branding process as this is applied in the commercial world. This presentation suggests a process of inclusive place branding implementation, presented in the interrelated steps of the A.T.L.A.S process: Ask (Research), Think (Deliberation), Listen (Consultation), Act (Action), Speak (Communication).

Keywords: participatory place branding, inclusion, place identity, place branding process

Short bio
Previously Director of Marketing for Wales Tourist Board, Visit Wales, Welsh Government and CEO of Cardiff & Co, the place marketing agency for Wales’ Capital City. Roger developed and delivered brands focusing on the tourism, economic and regeneration aspects of place.
He is one of the few people to have led and implemented brand strategy at national, regional and city levels. He led Wales international marketing developing a campaigns in the US and Europe and building a supplier support network in key markets. Also a board member of Ryder Cup Wales Ltd the agency charged with the delivery of the most prestigious golf event in the world.
He won numerous national and international awards for his brand campaigns, including Travel and Tourism Campaign of the Year at the Chartered Institute of Marketing CIMTIG Awards on three separate occasions.
Since joining Heavenly Roger has been the lead consultant on several major projects either directly or indirectly involved with place.
These include Northern Ireland, Calderdale, Wiltshire, Cardiff, Belfast, Swindon, Kurdistan, Greater Birmingham and Atlantic Arc.
He is asked to speak at many conferences most recently in USA, Ukraine, Lithuania, Macau, Argentina, Netherlands, Cape Verde, Slovenia, Serbia and Belgium. He is editor of ‘Destination Brands’- the original and best-selling book on place branding which is sold around the world and has just been produced in Chinese.
Roger was Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in Wales from 2013 to 2015. Roger is also a Visiting Professor at the School of Hospitality and Tourism at Surrey University.

Presentation title: ''Destinations of Distinction''
Roger will examine the factors which are impacting on effective destination marketing and branding in the digital age. He will look at the demand and supply side factors which is leading to an age of individual choice. Roger calls this the age of Yourism. He will demonstrate which destinations must aim for distinction in these changing times and will outline what distinction means in this context. He will offer checklist for effective destination branding and for distinction. He will draw on examples from various place branding projects he has worked on in recent years including Wiltshire, Northern Ireland, Cardiff and a planned new trans- England Tourism Route – the Great West Way.

Keywords: Destination Branding, Destination Marketing, Yourism, Distinction, Digital Age