Decentralised place branding through multiple authors and narratives: the collective branding of a small town in Sweden

Abstract

Increasingly, place branding is regarded as stakeholder-centric, participatory and inclusive. However, a central assumption permeates the place-branding literature that there is a dominant organisation of some sort working strategically to organise the place-branding process. In this article we question this assumption and explore how multiple ‘authors’ create narratives and contribute to the branding of places. Using interviews, observations and printed and online material, we study a small town in southwest Sweden. Our illustrative case study reveals a decentralised collective production of narratives by multiple authors that together constitute the branding of a place.