Place Branding - “The New Dimension of Place” for the Cork City Region

Insights from Malcolm Allan, Roger Hobkinson and Greg Canty on the early application of this new dimension of place in the development of the Cork City Region Brand in Ireland 2013 - 2015 and its impact in Ireland.

Photograph of Cork city centre riverside by Eduard Delputte on Unsplash

Cork's Place Branding Challenge

The Cork region, like many places around the world, faced significant challenges in 2013 on how it presented itself to its residents, businesses, organisations, potential investors and visitors. 

Prior to the development of its comprehensive brand strategy (2013-2015), Cork suffered from fragmented messaging which was "largely unconnected" and "failed to exploit the local, regional, national and global connectivity of the region". 

The region (Cork City and Cork County) had "a great story to tell but it was being lost in too much noise and babble". The consensus was that there were "too many 'voices of Cork' competing for the limited attention of the rest of the world." 

The catalyst for the Cork Region place branding project was a high profile and ground breaking study led by Colliers on reimagining Cork Docklands (147 ha) as a global investment location. In addition to the market and real estate development opportunity, the consultant team were asked to consider the branding and marketing of Cork Docklands.

This uncovered the “many voices of Cork” and despite having great assets - natural environment, coastline, history, higher education, inward investment, innovative businesses, active community and voluntary sector - the Cork Region didn’t have a clear narrative.

This led the key stakeholders to recognize that Cork needed to "elevate awareness of its offer domestically and internationally", "think and act more strategically in terms of its branding and marketing" and "not rely on others to promote it".

For such a large transformational urban project as Cork Docklands, it was agreed that first Cork needed to be clearer on its own story, then Cork Docklands could, through its own brand and marketing work, support the Cork Region as a globally credible and compelling investment destination. This would present Cork as Ireland’s second city able to compete with other European and global second cities helping to increase the attractiveness of Ireland as an investment location, to increase the attractiveness of the region as a place to live and work and to retain the people who lived and worked there.

The Cork City Region branding project, spanning twenty months of hard work, demonstrated how a structured approach to place branding can transform a city's identity and economic prospects through collaborative stakeholder engagement and authentic storytelling.

The Evolution of the Cork Brand

Understanding the Position of Cork 

First the team undertook desktop research on Cork’s performance in terms of Foreign Direct Investment, tourism, social media, business base (domestic & overseas) and social-demographics:

• A crucial part was an understanding of Cork’s heritage, including its mercantile history, that saw it as a key port in the provisioning of the British Empire.  

• Cork’s more recent performance in international investment attraction rankings.

• Cork’s connections around the world, via, sea, air, broadband and the Cork diaspora.

• Benchmarking of what other peer cities across Europe and globally were doing.

• Review of existing marketing materials and thoughts on the long standing “Cork Rebel County” nickname

Engaging the Community of Cork

The Cork city region branding project exemplified how community involvement is essential for authentic place branding. By community we mean a wide “family” of residents, businesses, investors, the education sector, the tourism sector and community organisations - all of whom are stakeholders in a brand strategy.

The 20-month brand development process put local engagement at its core, recognizing that community input and involvement creates legitimacy and sustainability for the brand.

The team began by using social media (LinkedIn and Twitter) to ask residents simple but powerful questions, e.g. "What do you love about Cork?" and "What do you like about working in Cork?" This generated overwhelmingly positive responses that revealed key regional attributes around the scale, accessibility and environment quality of the city, and the welcoming nature of Cork people.

Social media responses

Beyond digital engagement, the team conducted extensive in-person consultations with business and communities across north, east, south, and west Cork, along with the South and east Cork Tourism Sector. They facilitated conversations with stakeholders across various growth sectors from technology, and culture to hospitality.

When testing the draft brand proposition, they created an innovative online "Brand Descriptor" allowing anyone to access information on the emerging brand strategy and provide feedback, ensuring inclusive participation. Round-table in-person workshops engaged diverse groups including community leaders, millennials, creative sectors, and business leaders. Approximately 350 people contributed views, with 104 attending workshops.

The community feedback directly shaped the final brand proposition "The Right Mix for Your Success" and, as explained below, led to reprioritising the Quality of Life value core brand proposition to second place based on community input (70% ranked it first or second). Community insights also emphasized the need for more emotionally powerful language and a greater emphasis on Cork's distinctive character and scale.

Creating a Vision for Cork

In discussion with the client group the early vision for Cork was to position it as "the best small region in the world to do business" supporting Ireland's national ambition to be "the best small country in the world to do business." 

The objective was to create a galvanizing vision agreed upon by stakeholders and the wider community that would inform a brand strategy encapsulating Cork's key value propositions for businesses, investors, learners, residents and workers. There was broad agreement that the initial vision or driving idea should not over promise and be politically sensitive to existing and potential important issues.

The Existing Place Offer

The Cork Region's brand offer was identified through extensive social media engagement and community and stakeholder consultations, revealing four key brand pillars:

• Economic Proposition: An energetic place with entrepreneurial global and local business networks, featuring clusters of global companies in growth sectors (bio-pharma, technology, agribusiness, energy), strong business support networks, and low-risk environment for businesses.

• Quality of Life Proposition: A liveable, cosmopolitan place with friendly, welcoming people, dramatic natural landscapes, easy navigation ("not too big, not too small"), and a healthy lifestyle experience.

• Education Proposition: A tradition of independent learning with high-quality institutions (Cork Institute of Technology, University College Cork, National Tyndall Institute) and various commercially orientated research and development organizations that partner with businesses.

• Visitor Proposition: Rich cultural, social, and commercial heritage, authentic places of interest, maritime heritage, and reputation as Ireland's food capital.

The Cork Brand Promise

Image from the Cork Brand Book created by Fuzion Design

The driving idea that emerged from consultations and stakeholder workshops was "The Right Mix for Your Success" - the concept that Cork offers a comprehensive set of resources that could be assembled in different combinations according to individual and business needs .

This proposition was “grounded” in the realities and authenticity of Cork and rigorously “proofed”.

Extract from the Cork Brand Book created by Fuzion Design

It was:

• A brand offer that was clearly distinguished from competitor and comparator regions and identifiable as being really different.

• Consistent with the desired and planned positioning of the brand as a driver of the regional economy.

• Easy for people to “get” and understand.

The diagram below captures the key elements of the brand proposition that was widely consulted on.

Diagram designed by Fuzion Design

Testing the Proposition

The brand proposition was tested through:

• A "Brand Descriptor" - an online visual summary of the proposition with a feedback questionnaire.

• Round-table workshops with various stakeholder groups (youth, community, creative sector, business leaders, etc.).

• Testing at local, national, and international levels through Colliers International Corporate Network and its Research Group, e.g. the Invest Shanghai Agency.

• Results showed 79% of respondents found the brand essence compelling, 73% supported the economic proposition, and 93% agreed Cork has the resources for people and businesses to prosper

• Feedback highlighted areas for improvement including more focus on Cork's people, their quality of life, city character and scale, emotionally powerful language, and proof points.

Recommendations for Brand Implementation

The Cork Brand Book created by Fuzion Design

Recommendations for Implementation included:

• Creating a Place Brand Book explaining the agreed proposition.

• Briefing stakeholders' staff on how to effectively use the Brand Book.

• Ensuring consistent messaging across all stakeholders - "singing from the same hymn sheet".

Recommendations for Brand Management

Recommendations for ongoing management of the brand:

• Creation of a new organisation - CORK INC - responsible for managing the promotion of the brand and its future development.

• Ensuring coordinated marketing efforts across all stakeholders.

• Ongoing refinement based on stakeholder and community feedback (as demonstrated by elevating Quality of Life to second priority based on testing results).

The Medium Term Impact of the Brand

As Ireland emerged from its deep and painful financial and property market crisis, this work to create the Cork City Region brand strategy helped to set the pace in Ireland’s new urban agenda:  

• As Ireland’s first piece of integrated city region place branding, envious enquiries came from elsewhere in Ireland, including Dublin!

• An understanding of “place”, “market positioning” and “place brand” has since formed a fundamental part in Ireland’s “Town Centre First” and “Urban Regeneration and Development” strategies and action plans across the State.

• The work helped to bring stakeholders in the community, public and private sectors together, leveraging community support, investment by the public sector and encouraging increased property development activity and business space occupation (including Cork Docklands) generating more jobs and wealth for the people and buCork region

• IDA Ireland, one of the world’s leading inward investment agencies, saw the value of the work in that it helped to sharpen Cork’s messaging. That, in turn, helped the IDA show to the international business community that Ireland had, in Cork, a credible and compelling second tier city region to rival European peers such as Manchester, Gothenburg, Barcelona and Porto.

• It gave more comfort for the Government, resulting in their planned investment in the City Region of €2.5bn.  The centre piece of which was the accelerated delivery of the rest of Cork Docklands to house 20,000 people and 25,000 jobs. This built on the delivery of major Cork Docklands office buildings such as Albert Quay, Navigation Square and Penrose Dock that saw the development of 100,000 sqm of office space. 

• To the Cork business community, its amazing mix of domestic and international companies, it gave them more “On-Brand” messages about Cork to cascade across Ireland and internationally. 

• For Ireland’s property advisors, our work helped to give greater understanding of the business base in the Cork region, the business advantages of locating there, plus messages and propositions to help “sell Cork” - with global advisors CBRE and Colliers opening offices in the city alongside their peers including Savills and Cushman & Wakefield.

• In the visitor economy sector “tourism”, the work provided more content to help “sell the Cork region, plus an improved understanding of Cork for Failte Ireland, the national tourism agency and its pivotal role as the south western gateway to “The Wild Atlantic Way” along the Atlantic coast.

• Cork started featuring in international rankings and benchmarks, for example FDI Magazine, by the Financial Times.

• This work laid the foundations for the establishment of “We are Cork” a structure to lead on the strategic promotion of Cork, that includes a visitor focused promotional group - “Pure Cork”.

• Entrusted to present on the fresh Cork region brand strategy at conferences including: CityNationPlace London, Atlantic Arc Conference, San Sebastian and MIPIM, Cannes, Euroconstruct, Dublin & London, a government one day event that included a session on brand Ireland, lessons from Cork  plus an event in London for members of the Cork business diaspora.

Our thanks to Florian Kaefer at “‘The Place Brand Observer” for hosting Malcolm’s initial posts on the development of the Cork City Region Brand in 2014.

Contact Information on our Authors:

Malcolm Allan is one of the three founders of the Place Brand Academy. He can be contacted at mallan@placebrandacademy.com.

Roger Hobkinson is the founder of “The Destination Developers” established in 2019. He has nearly 25 years’ experience and expertise from the strategic consulting teams of global property advisors, Cushman & Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle and Colliers.  He is a strategic advisor on the conception, market, business planning, development  and place branding of destination development projects, often with a real estate, tourism and inward investment context.  He has worked on destination development across Britain, Ireland and around the world for local authorities, cities, public sector agencies, entrepreneurs, corporates, investors and developers. Roger can be contacted at roger@thedestination-developers.com and on +44 (0) 7305 661 107. He posts at Roger Hobkinson | LinkedIn.