ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some thoughts on what might be productive directions for future critical research on place branding. It highlights the social, political, and cultural contexts within which place branding is inevitably embedded. The chapter discusses that global media outlets constantly churn out commodity-signs of and about places with the primary purpose of generating profit for the media corporations that own them. A critique of branding and promotional cultures, which originates outside of the marketing field, problematizes the ways in which consumer participation is converted into added value for brands and, ultimately, into profit for private companies. Highlighting participation as an integral part of place branding extends a broader conversation within the marketing and branding literature on the productive powers of consumers as active agents who are involved in the co-creation, co-development, and co-ownership of brands. Ultimately, critical approaches to place branding must interrogate the consequences of the multi-dimensional interactions between brand utopias and lived experience.
