BEFORE PLACE BRANDING
The application of marketing techniques and the adoption of a market¬ing philosophy in order to meet operational and strategic goals of places have been well established both in practice and in theory. The rapid rise in popularity of place marketing over the past decade, to the extent that it has become an acceptable and commonplace activity of place manage¬ment, may give the impression that this is a recent phenomenon. It is not. Places have long felt a need to differentiate themselves from each other in order to assert their individuality and distinctive characteristics in pursuit of various economic, political or socio-psychological objectives. The conscious attempt of governments to shape a specifically designed place identity and promote it to identified markets, whether external or internal, is almost as old as government itself. The phenomenon of places transferring marketing knowledge to their own operational needs is not as novel as one might think. As Ashworth and Voogd (1994:39) describe: 'since Leif Ericson sought new settlers in the 8th century for his newly