Are we entering a new phase in how places promote themselves?

For decades, places have promoted themselves through separate lenses. Tourism organizations focused on attracting visitors. Investment agencies promoted business advantages. Talent teams highlighted lifestyle and career opportunities.

Each effort served its purpose, but it also meant the story of a place was told in pieces. In more recent years, many destinations introduced shared place brands (or brought these functions under a single roof) to create some consistency across these efforts. The slogan was unified, yet campaigns and messages still largely targeted individual audiences.

Now a different pattern is starting to appear. Some cities are beginning to promote the full value of the place in a single message, blending tourism appeal, quality of life and business opportunity within the same campaign. It is a subtle move, but an important one to watch.

Stockholm’s recent "30,014 Islands of Possibilities" activation is the most recent example, combining nature, innovation and quality of life into a single narrative. It joins several other locations that have gone big with joint-message ads on CNN International and BBC News.

Is this a new level of maturity in how places present themselves to the world? We explore the different levels of place promotion maturity and what they mean.

Level one: Each audience has its caretaker

The first stage of modern place promotion was built around specialization. Different audiences required different expertise, so cities and regions created separate organizations to speak to each one.

Tourism boards focused on attracting visitors. Convention bureaus pursued meetings and events. Investment promotion agencies targeted companies looking to expand internationally. More recently, talent attraction teams emerged as places began competing for skilled workers.

Each function developed its own messaging, campaigns and channels. The structure made sense. Visitors, event planners, executives and workers all make decisions for different reasons.

In many places, this created a familiar model: organizations responsible for visit, meet, invest and work, each with its own mandate and way of promoting the place.

Level two: One voice, adapted to different audiences

As place promotion matured, some destinations introduced an overarching brand that could represent the place across audiences.

Examples include "I Amsterdam", "Unbelievably Real" in Orlando and "Pure Michigan,” each creating a recognizable identity that could anchor multiple marketing efforts.

The executions, however, remained tailored. Tourism campaigns largely focused on experiences. Investment promotions highlighted business advantages. Talent messaging emphasized lifestyle and career opportunities.

The brand was shared, but the campaigns were still designed for specific audiences.

Level three: One organization, one brand, separate activations

If we all have one message, why not join forces under a single roof as well? That became the next evolution: the consolidation of these mandates under a single organization.

Cities, regions and countries realized that many of the same strengths appeal across audiences. Innovation ecosystems, quality of life, industry clusters and connectivity influence visitors, investors and talent alike.

Examples include London & Partners, I amsterdam, Rotterdam Partners, Winnipeg Economic Development and Tourism, and the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, to name a few.

Even within these unified structures, campaigns typically remained targeted. Teams shared resources, data and a brand platform, but messages were still tailored to the priorities of each audience.

It is also worth noting that levels two and three do not always occur in this order. Some destinations unified their brand before consolidating organizations, while others merged mandates first and aligned messaging later.

And still others have separate brand teams, like Brand Scotland or Hamburg Marketing, that link into each of the thematic agencies and oversee a central narrative while audiences still receive tailored messaging from each.

Level four: One narrative for all audiences

This is the new phase we now see emerging.

Rather than running separate campaigns under the same brand, some places are beginning to promote the full value of a location in a single message. Tourism appeal, innovation ecosystems, business opportunities and quality of life are presented together as reinforcing parts of the same story.

This doesn’t mean it is always happening in every audience touchpoint, but for high-impact placements, there are signs that a merging of interests is certainly part of the content mix. In this model, the boundaries between visit, meet, invest and work soften. A single campaign may resonate with a visitor, a skilled worker or a company exploring expansion. Marketing budgets and campaign planning begin to blend in similar ways.

Three forces may be pushing places in this direction

The first is talent. Talent attraction sits between tourism and investment. People often discover a place as visitors, then consider living there, and companies frequently follow the workforce. As talent becomes a more central driver of growth, the separation between audiences becomes harder to maintain and can even create advantages when messages reinforce one another.

The second catalyst is the growing importance of storytelling. In a world filled with commoditized content and similar-sounding place claims, genuine stories break through. They are more memorable, more authentic and more likely to connect emotionally.

Strong stories also travel across audiences. A compelling narrative about a place can inspire a traveler to visit, a professional to consider relocating, or an executive to imagine building a business there. Instead of presenting a checklist of tourism attractions, business advantages and lifestyle benefits, places have an opportunity to tell a broader story about what it feels like to experience, build and live there.

The third catalyst is the rise of AI as a source of information about places, which we talk about in our eBook on AI’s impact on place marketing. As people increasingly ask complex questions about destinations, business environments and quality of life, AI tools assemble answers from a wide range of sources. For places to appear consistently across those responses, alignment in how they describe themselves becomes more important.

If tourism organizations, investment agencies and talent teams all describe the place differently, the location may simply fail to appear consistently in AI-generated answers. A more coordinated narrative helps ensure the same core story appears no matter how someone begins their search.

What if your organization only has one mandate?

Not every organization covers visit, meet, invest and work. Many are responsible for just one of these functions.

A single organization managing all mandates can help, but it is not required. Orlando offers one example. Visit Orlando and the Orlando Economic Partnership remain separate organizations, yet their messaging increasingly reinforces a shared story about the region.

Cincinnati provides another. Cincinnati Experience brings together several major place organizations across tourism and economic development. Each group continues to operate independently, but they collaborate around a common narrative about the region. The result is a clearer and more consistent way of presenting Cincinnati to outside audiences.

Place branding has always depended on collaboration and coordination across stakeholders. Whether that happens within one organization or across several is less important than the willingness to align around a common story.

Does this mean every place needs a single campaign for all audiences? Probably not. Targeted campaigns will always have a role when speaking to investors, visitors or talent.

At the same time, unified storytelling can be particularly powerful for larger geographies such as nations, states or provinces that must present a wide range of attributes under one umbrella. It can also help lesser-known destinations introduce themselves by showing the full range of what makes them interesting.

Regardless of structure, the most important factor remains the message itself. It must be distinctive, connect emotionally, and reflect how audiences actually experience a place, rather than simply listing tourism attractions, business strengths and lifestyle features side by side.