A three-day training session on “Branding and Marketing of Territories” was held on May 16-18, 2016 in Kyiv. The training was organized by the PLEDDG Project for Project’s partner cities that have already started or plan to work on their marketing and branding strategies. The training objective was to provide partner cities with information on the tools for creating a unique city brand, development and implementation of an effective marketing strategy that will allow cities to increase their competitiveness and attract domestic and foreign investments to develop their potential.
About 30 representatives from PLEDDG partner cities (Vinnytsia, Zaporizhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Melitopol) participated in the training. The training was also attended by representatives of Odesa region due to PLEDDG’s cooperation with Odesa region in the tourism sector. PLEDDG assists Odesa local authorities in the elaboration of a tourism development strategy.
Valentyna Zatyshnyak, Head of International Projects and City Promotion Department of Dnipropetrovsk City Council, and Andrii Nagornyi, Head of a non-governmental organization “ZAHID” in Kryvyi Rih, shared stories of successful branding campaigns carried out in Dnipropetrovsk and Kryvyi Rih respectively. Through their cooperation with MLED Project which had been successfully implemented by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) in 2010-2014, Dnipropetrovsk and Kryvyi Rih created their unique brands and promoted their positive images with the participation of local authorities, businesses and the community.
Over 3 days of intensive training, the participants discussed the importance of marketing and branding as important elements of local economic development, learned about the distinctive features of marketing and branding of territories compared to marketing and branding of products, familiarized themselves with the methodology of city brand creation, as well as heard the story of a successful branding campaign in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada. Kadie Ward, PLEDDG Senior Governance Advisor, described the basic marketing and branding principles. In her presentation, Ms. Ward focused on the preparation and execution of internal and external marketing campaigns. PLEDDG consultants Volodymyr Proskurnin and Larysa Olenkovska described basic tools and technologies for monitoring the effectiveness of marketing strategy implementation and spoke about various methods of data collection as part of market research.
Mr. Dan Taylor, Tourism Development Expert from Canada, shared some Canadian best city branding practices. Mr. Taylor spoke about the experience of the municipality of Prince Edward County in promoting tourism. He also analyzed Ukraine’s experience in implementing branding and marketing strategies from Canada’s standpoint.
According to Mr.Taylor, a skillfully designed city brand may boost tourism as well as attract investments into a city. The Canadian expert went on to talk about tourism assets of Prince Edward County, namely its rich cultural heritage, the local tradition of wine-making, beautiful landscapes and the delicious local cuisine. By capitalizing on local peculiarities, the municipality of Prince Edward County has managed to create a unique brand and increase the county’s popularity with tourists, which proved to be propitious for stable local economic development.
