Welcome to this special series of Bloom Consulting Conversations. Hosted by Clare Dewhirst, Director of City Nation Place, this series explores the world of Nation and City Branding, focusing on Bloom Consulting’s 14 key steps for building an effective Nation Brand and City Brand strategy. Each episode highlights one crucial step.
In this episode, we’re discussing the final step, of Bloom Consulting’s 14 Steps – Nation Branding: Reflect, Assess, Repeat. Joined by David Gilbert, CEO of Destination Cleveland, and Jose Filipe Torres, CEO of Bloom Consulting, we discuss why step fourteen isn’t the end of the branding process, but the beginning of a continuous journey of improvement and adaptation. We explore how Cleveland transformed its identity through community-driven branding, what it takes to measure a Place Brand’s success over time, and why quiet stakeholder alignment often beats flashy brand launches.
Clare: We have reached the final step of Bloom Consulting’s 14 steps to Nation Branding, which also applies to City Branding and other Place Branding. And so, on this week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about reviewing and assessing and even refreshing your brand.
I’m delighted to have with us Jose Filipe Torres, Chief Executive of Bloom. Hello again, Jose. And, we have with us David Gilbert, who is the chief executive of Destination Cleveland in the USA. Hi David, lovely to see you. I’m looking forward to this chat because we all know each other quite well so I know that we can really dig into the weeds. I think as well one of the conversations that might come out of this reviewing and refreshing, perhaps we could also cover the fact that sometimes a change of politicians creates the wrong kind of reviewing and refreshing. But we’ll come back to that later. Let me come to you, Jose. I don’t want to steal your thunder. Why is this last step of Place Branding, A, so important, and B, not at all depressing as it may sound, because in your notes on the website, it says your work is never done.
Jose: So, Claire, this isn’t really the last step—it’s the last step before we begin. We’ve been talking about how to develop a Nation Brand, or in this case, also a City Brand strategy. And while we’ve covered all the steps, the real work starts now. That’s why we always say it’s about reflecting, assessing, repeating, and if you want, refreshing.
It’s really about understanding the process and going back through the steps to ensure they’re working well, making sure they’re sound, and that every single step is functioning correctly. It also means questioning the process and identifying if some parts may not be working as well as they should.
I keep on saying that at this 14th step, you have to look into step seven, which is to “be on brand and stay on brand”, which is another way of saying you need to make sure the brand is being correctly implemented. So, it’s not the end. It’s actually the beginning. That’s how we see it.
Clare: Very good. Now, David, Destination Cleveland, as you know, because we’ve been talking for a number of years now, and I very much admire the work you’ve been doing at Destination Cleveland. It feels like you’ve shifted very much from a destination tourism brand to a Place Brand over the last few years. Do you recognize this need when you’ve got your plan in place that you need to keep going back and assessing it? How does that play out in Destination Cleveland? What works for you at that and what’s perhaps a bit more challenging?
David: You’re right that when we started developing our first Place Brand—about 11 years ago—we initially saw it through a tourism lens. But what we quickly learned is that a great brand captures the essence of a place. I’ve heard Jose say, “brand equals heart.” It’s not a slogan. It’s not a campaign.
And if you get it right, and it still has to evolve, but if you get it right, it should work not just for attracting visitors, but also for attracting talent, capital, and more.
The evolution came as we started receiving interest from other types of public, private, and civic organizations. They were coming to us and asking for help with their own attraction efforts. Even though our original focus was tourism, these groups would say, “You’re doing a great job. We love the brand—can you help us?”
So, we had to do a lot of research to understand how the decision-making process differs. Someone looking at a city as a place to relocate has different criteria than someone visiting as a tourist. But at the end of the day, the brand is the brand. A great brand should be able to permeate throughout many parts of the community and be incredibly cohesive internally for the local population, but also be usable externally for many different audiences,
We continue to evolve. We’ve done new research to find how our community has changed. So how we utilise the brand slightly changes. The brand voice slightly changes. But the essence of it simply does not change. It’s who our community is.
A long time ago, we had a phenomenal Chief Marketing Officer who came from a consumer products background. Her belief—which I’ve always agreed with—was that we need to look at our city, our community, as a branded product. No different than a toothpaste, or a laundry detergent. Meaning: you have a certain brand promise, and you have to deliver on that promise.
You have to look at your community and ask, If the brand is accurate, what is it promising to someone? And when they “try” your community—just like when they try a product—they should feel that you’re right on target with that brand.
You might claim to have the best teeth-whitening toothpaste. But if someone tries it and it doesn’t work—not only, will they stop using it, they’ll also tell their friends and family that what you’re saying isn’t right. You have to get the brand right. And the brand promise shouldn’t be aspirational—it should reflect who you truly are. That’s always stuck with me. I think too often, people within a community—especially when leadership changes—try to change the brand. But I don’t think they really understand what a brand actually is.
Clare: Yes, the brand is you. Another reason that you may need to evolve the brand is that Cleveland itself is evolving, because of all the great work that you’ve been doing in Destination Cleveland. In terms of community pride—one of the statistics I remember from a case study in the citizen engagement toolkit we published before this process began—very few people in Cleveland used to recommend the city, and that has changed a lot. I believe you mentioned that number is now around 70%, which suggests that the mood in Cleveland has changed. The city is evolving. Do you need to evolve the brand to reflect that renewed pride?
David: I think it’s a combination. And you’re right, Claire —when we first studied this 11 years ago, we realised we had a business problem. People were critical to getting other, especially with the advent of social media, advice from locals always ranks now as the top one, two, or three ways in which someone gets information about a community. f locals don’t feel good about their community—and we were an older industrial city that had gone through a lot of hard times in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s— it created a little bit of a “woe is us attitude”. When we measured locals, only 32 % of locals would recommend their city to friends and family as a place to visit. So we realised that our work needed to start with locals, not just people outside. Our pier set was all around the ’60s. We are now close to 90%, 11 years later, of locals in the exact same research, that say they would recommend.
Part of what we’ve had to do with the brand is help locals understand what they love most about their community. When you frame it that way, they start to think about the things they genuinely like—not about what they don’t like, not about something negative, like a river catching on fire back in the late 1960s that they may have heard about. That was generations ago, but it still lingered in people’s minds. Now, they’re thinking about the things they truly love.
And look, our community has come a long way. There’s so much more now than there was 10, 15, certainly 20, 30 years ago—wonderful things blossoming in the community. I do think it is important—and we’ve done it about every four to five years, to do a lot of research to see how the community has evolved and how people think about the community. And what it allows us to do is make continued evolutions of the brand. We don’t change it. We don’t scrap it and start over. We felt like we’ve had it right. But the brand we created 11 years ago was focused on a community that was different 11 years ago than it is today.
So, you need to research and understand what locals think of their own community, what outsiders who’ve visited think, and even what people who’ve never been here imagine it to be. And now, we’re about to begin some exciting work with José, focused on elevating perception and the quantitative value.
It’s also important to recognize that while our organization leads the effort, we’re not solely responsible for the brand. The right brand must be accepted and proliferated by many public, private, and civic partners who understand it, get it, and utilize it. Our job is to provide the toolkits that help them use the brand effectively. It’s always an evolutionary process.
Clare: Jose, do you have any comments or questions for David?
Jose: I think you have to look at when you do this “reflect, assess, and repeat”—it’s with three types of stakeholders. First, there are the brand architects, like David and his team. Then you have the brand builders, which is really about the stakeholders who contribute to the process. They’re not on the core team, but because City Branding and Nation Branding is a systemic approach, it can’t be the work of just one entity. It has to be a collaborative effort between different types of stakeholders.
And then you have the brand developers—this is where the community falls in. They play a fundamental role in delivering this experience and in building the perception, right? So, regardless of what happens over time, you’re always going to have these three types of stakeholders.
Clearly, the developers are usually where, for instance, politicians and government leaders fall. This is the tricky part, because you depend on them a lot. They’re also the ones who make you change and think a lot about your brand.
When we say change or think, we don’t necessarily mean, oh, I have to completely change the brand strategy. But at the very least, you have to find a way to see if they understand, as David said. Because the architects face this challenge and have the objective of keeping them consistently on board. For that, you always need to assess. Because you’re always reflecting and see what’s working and what’s not, to really bring them on board. And explain to them why this is important for them and why it’s important for the city or the nation. In the end, it’s not just about creating a nice image. This isn’t just about securing a good position in the rankings. It has real economic and tangible value for the country or the city, right? And most of the time—regardless of whether it’s public capital being invested in a City Brand or a Nation Brand—you need to justify how that investment is giving back to the community.
This is a very important component. We’re doing this because we want to create a better lifestyle for everyone, better job opportunities, a more fair and balanced society, and so on. So, it’s crucial to double-check all the steps in the process to ensure everything is resonating. And if there’s a specific stakeholder who isn’t engaging or understanding the brand, it’s either because that step isn’t working as well as it should, or because the stakeholder is new and unfamiliar with the Nation or City Brand.
Clare: Now, let’s take a closer look at what we really mean by assess and reflect. It seems to me that you’re both talking about some key areas. One is stakeholder engagement—which has to be an ongoing process. Two is understanding perceptions of the place, both internally and externally.
I always get worried when people say, “We’re launching our brand.” That sounds too much like a consumer brand approach. As if we’ve done the research, identified a market gap, developed a product, we’ve given it a brand, and now we’re ready to launch it.
But with places, it feels very different. A Place Brand is really about how you’re already perceived—you’ve always been there. But it’s about the narrative that you want people to start using. To me, it feels more like an evolution process right from the beginning.
So, stakeholders, the perception map, and how those perceptions are evolving over time. And I think what you’re also hinting at there, José, is the KPIs—the evaluation of what the brand is actually achieving. Would you say that’s an important part of this last step too? You set your KPIs at the beginning, but it’s a continuous measurement against what you were trying to achieve in the first place.
Jose: Absolutely. One of the things you mentioned was that—when we talk about launching a brand—step 11 actually says “don’t launch a brand.” But at the same time, it’s important to understand that if you’re initiating a Nation Brand project, this is the way to materialize and elevate the profile of the initiative. From a domestic perspective, from a local perspective—even from a community perspective—this is very, very important for people to understand. You’re more exposed to criticism, and sometimes that can lead to backlash or strong criticism. But at the same time, you’re opening up to the discussion.
I was particularly interested in looking at the journey of Destination Cleveland and the time we’ve spent working on building such an ambitious strategy. The organization brings a very fresh perspective when we talk about places. And I was just wondering throughout that journey, when we
talk about these stakeholders, what was the biggest challenge you faced throughout this journey? And what were the things that you had to reassess aside from the community that you mentioned was a reassessment? Any other specific area that you believe was particularly challenging? And what would you recommend our listeners on how to tackle them?
David: Well, it’s a great question, Jose, and it fits so well into what the two of you were just talking about—about launches and KPIs.
I think the biggest challenge is that everyone considers themselves a marketer. People who don’t truly understand branding often think in terms of slogans, campaigns, or taglines—because it can be subjective. That’s why it’s critical to be incredibly strategic in how you roll it out.
Our community had gone through lots of different civic campaigns, and people made fun of some of the old ones—of 25, 30, or even 40 years ago. So, when you’re preparing to roll out a brand, I believe there are two important things to keep in mind before making any kind of grand announcement.
First, if possible, you want to have some proven results already in hand. Results speak for themselves, and it’s hard to argue with them.
Second, you need to be very intentional about identifying key stakeholders—those whose support is crucial. Get them involved early, get them involved quietly, and bring them in in a way that, when you do launch, you’ve already built a strong group of people standing behind the brand, all saying, “We’re part of this.”
Here’s what we did when we created our first true community brand:
We had a lot of research done ahead of time, including focus groups—which yielded fascinating insights about how others perceived Cleveland. One of the key things we recognized early on was that our customers were not local residents. Our customers were people from the outside. We wanted to make sure they thought differently of Cleveland.
So, we organized a series of small sessions. We had a significant CEO in our town that was on our board, who really liked what we did and agreed to host them. Over several weeks, we held six or seven of these sessions, each with about 12 to 15 CEO-level leaders from public, private, and civic sectors.
We invited the agency professional who developed our brand. So, one, it was not us, but a third-party expert, who gave a whole presentation. It was an amazing presentation on how we got where we are, showing a lot of amazing things from not only research, but also focus groups where locals would say, “Oh, everyone must know we have a great orchestra.”
Locals know that it’s the most endowed orchestra in the United States, but people outside don’t. When we ran a focus group in Pittsburgh—just two hours away—and asked 20 people if Cleveland had an orchestra, only one person said yes. That was a lightbulb moment for many of the people in the room. It helped them realize we weren’t branding Cleveland for the people who already lived here—we were shaping perceptions for those who didn’t.
So, by the time we did a big public launch at our annual meeting, about six or eight months later, we had 50 to 75 influential leaders who were already bought in.
Some of them, initially, didn’t feel the brand resonated with them personally. And we told them two things:
First, “You’re not our demographic.” If you’re a 65-year-old white male, you likely already have a deeply held perspective about Cleveland. But our target was people in their 20s and 30s—those most open to visiting, relocating, or investing.
Second, “Even a great brand won’t resonate with everyone.” There are infinite points of view.
In the end, with our brand essence video and the way we did it, people loved it. People had tears in their eyes seeing this video, saying things like “I’ve never seen anything that captures Cleveland so well.” Even if it didn’t personally resonate with everyone, people understood it intellectually, because the research clearly showed how well it resonated with our target audience.
Looking back, I’m not sure if I’d say we just got lucky with our strategy—but it worked. And in hindsight, it would have been a big problem if we had simply done some launch without that strategic approach. Because a brand is part art and part science. And the art part is that a place means different things to different people. You’re never going to satisfy everyone. But what you can do is make sure that the people with the loudest voices—at the very least—understand and appreciate the thinking behind it and don’t dismiss it outright. That part really helped us.
Then, over the course of several years, we were able to show results related to our KPI’s, that demonstrated how dramatically perceptions of Cleveland changed by the use of the brand. How dramatically the number of people visiting outpaced our country and our state—for many, many years, every year—just through the use of the brand. That made it harder to argue, from a business standpoint, that it shouldn’t be utilized. It took a lot of time. But in hindsight, the way we handled the launch really worked. It could have failed right at the beginning, but instead, it gave us the time we needed to show that it worked.
Clare: I think you’re right. In our accelerated training course, one of the things we talk about is mapping your stakeholders and identifying whether, because of that individual’s character or because of their role, they might be a breaker or a maker. And you and I have talked before about government engagement, and I know you’re really focused on making sure you’ve met all the key members—both from the ruling party and the opposition.
This has been a fantastic conversation. You’ve done such great work. We’re nearly at the end of our time, so I’m going to come back to José.
If you had one piece of advice for someone who’s surprised that they’ve gotten to the last step—and it still just says, “do it all over again”—what would that advice be?
Jose: Well, I would say: read the 14 steps!
Published on 22.07.2025
