Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an initial, exploratory and tentative theoretical construct related to the current consumption of landscape as a key symbolic and physical element in territorial representation and evocation, and for the deployment of place branding strategy. It constructs a line of argument to support what shall be referred to as “landscape branding”, that is, the paradigmatic role of landscape in place branding. It is, therefore, of interest to define the value of landscape as a social and cultural construction, which is why the paper awards importance to the specific analysis of their capacity for visual and/or aesthetic evocation within the context of a general branding strategy for geographical spaces.Design/methodology/approach: To develop a sufficient proposal for sustaining “a theory of landscape branding”, the paper deploys a meta-analysis, that is, an extensive review and interpretation of the literature related to visual landscape and place branding, to propose a tentative initial approach to landscape-infused place branding theory.Findings: The relationship existing between landscape images and texts and their possible situating and subsequent interpreting within the context of the political, cultural and economic logics of contemporary society give rise to a renewed analytical framework for cultural geographies (Wylie, 2007). At this point, place branding becomes a recurring argument for the consumption of carefully staged places, representing, to use Scott’s terms (2014), the arrival of a cognitive-cultural capitalism characteristic of post-Fordism.Practical implications: From a practical perspective, the landscape branding approach provides several benefits. First of all, regardless of the fact that many commentators have argued that logos, slogans and advertising campaigns are relatively ineffective in place branding, practitioners still seem to be focussed on these visual design and advertising tools. The landscape branding approach facilitates an identity-focussed perspective that reconfirms the importance of linking reality with perception and hence reinforces the need to link place branding to policy-making, infrastructure and events.Social implications: Landscapes’ imageability facilitates visual storytelling and the creation of attractive symbolic actions (e.g. outdoor events/arts in attractive landscape and augmented reality or landscaping itself). This is the type of imaginative content that people easily share in social media. And, of course, landscape branding reiterated the importance of experience. If policymakers and publics alike understand this considerable symbolic value of landscape, it might convince them to preserve it and, hence, contribute to sustainability and quality of life.Originality/value: The novelty lies not in the familiar use of visual landscape resources to promote places, but in the carefully orchestrated construction of gazes, angles, representations, narratives and interpretations characteristic of geographic space, which somehow hijack the spontaneous gaze to take it to a certain place. Everything is perfectly premeditated. According to this, the visual landscape represents a critical point as a way of seeing the essence of places through a place branding strategy. In this sense, that place branding which finds in visual landscape a definitive argument for the projection of aspirational places imposes a new “way of seeing” places and landscape based on a highly visual story with which to make a particular place desirable, not only for tourism promotion purposes but also with the intention of capturing talent, infrastructures and investment, among other objectives.

This article investigates the role of local stakeholders in the development and implementation of the place branding strategy of the northern Catalan region Empordà. Stakeholder-oriented and participatory approaches towards both place branding and spatial planning provide the theoretical background. The research involved an initial SWOT Analysis, fifteen thematic focus groups and nineteen semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders, as well as a paper-based and on-line questionnaire that opened the process of the brand's conceptualization to all residents. The article discusses the development of the brand, the revision of the storytelling for the territory and the proposal for the logo and slogan ‘Empordà, tocat pels déus’ [Empordà, Touched by the Gods]. On the one hand, the case study demonstrates the value of participatory place branding processes showing that local communities become brand advocates when they are involved throughout the development of a place brand. On the other hand, it highlights the challenges to participatory planning and governance within place brand management, especially when strategic thinking turns into a short-term public-policy approach. The article argues for a more participatory governance of the place brand and reinforces that stakeholder engagement is essential in establishing stronger links between place branding and spatial planning.

Place branding is a relatively new transdisciplinary academic discipline. It is an evolution of what some researchers understood as “place or city marketing,” “place selling,” and “place promotion.” The three concepts analyze the need that territories have to position themselves in order to compete in the global markets through an eminently economic perspective. However, place branding rejects the corporate world to address, as positioning axes, the tangible and intangible values of a specific region and, therefore, its identity. Furthermore, public administrations have had to adopt strategies that link residents when designing place brands that can guarantee long-term narratives and become effective mechanisms for spatial planning, urban governance, local development, or economic promotion. Citizens’ engagement, at the grassroots level, has become a key element for the successful conceptualization and implementation of place brands. The current discipline of place branding is therefore totally linked to the political order. Public administrations become key actors in the development of place branding campaigns, not only in the local context but also at the national and international levels. The aim of this article is to present a theoretical evolution of place branding in order to find the most common links with the political order, as well as to design a conceptual framework to fit this discipline into the context of political science. This theoretical evolution will be conceived taking into account the results of previous empirical research that the authors conducted for different Catalan public administrations. The results of this article show clear synergies between four basic concepts: the place brand, its aim to contribute to sustainable planning, its influence on public governance decisions and, finally, its capacity to be central in the definition of public diplomacy programs outside the usual state-centric domain. Therefore, place branding led by public administrations—this is what we can understand as “public branding”—has a major and inevitable political focus.

This manuscript investigates the use of social media, specifically Twitter, during the forest fires in Artenara and Valleseco, Canary Islands, Spain, during summer 2019. The used methodology was big-data analysis through the Union Metrics and Twlets tools, as well as content analysis of posts related to the fires written by seven relevant accounts on the days when the fires were active, which was between 17 August and 26 September, when 9636.40 hectares were burned. The accounts selected for analysis were the following: Ángel Víctor Torres, autonomous president; Canary Islands Government; Civil Protection of Las Palmas; Military Emergency Unit of the Spanish Army; Delegation of the Spanish Government in the Canary Islands; Citizen’s Service of the Canary Islands Government; and the information account of the Security and Emergency area of the Canary Islands Government. The study concludes that the Canary Islands authorities did not use social media as a preventive element, but almost exclusively as a live-information channel. Future recommendations are presented for the management of social media during natural disasters.