Brand Finance continues its long-standing partnership with City Nation Place for the seventh year running, programmed as an official sponsor of the City Nation Place Global Conference 2025.
City Nation Place brings together nation branding and foreign office teams, city and regional marketing boards, destination marketing organisations, investment promotion agencies and economic development teams.
Hosted at County Hall in London, the conference will bring together senior place leaders from across the world to discuss how to leverage a place brand strategy to maximise results.
Brand Finance will host a Breakout Session: 'Putting a value on a Place Brand' on Thursday, 6th November at 12.25.
Place brand marketers are often asked to justify their budgets by political decision-makers, business stakeholders, and the public. Perception and performance data is key to calculating ROI but might not be enough to convince those looking for clear financial impact. Quantifying what your place brand is worth and where the value is coming from is the definitive way to demonstrate the impact of your marketing and branding efforts and a useful guide for your spending strategy.
Brand Finance will be joined by David Downs, CEO at New Zealand Story, Todd Babiak, CEO, Brand Gold Coast, and Larissa Perdomo, Brand Manager, Uruguay XXI, who will participate in a panel discussion.
We will also host a Roundtable Discussion: 'Navigating and leveraging place-to-place partnerships to build your own place brands' on the same day at 14.15.
Click here to view the full conference programme and book your tickets here, entering the code Partner25 at checkout for an exclusive 25% network discount.
City Nation Place provides a forum for cities, nations and places to collaborate and share best practice on place branding and place marketing strategies in order to generate sustainable tourism and economic development, build cohesive communities, and encourage global cooperation.
The first City Nation Place Global conference was launched in London in 2015 and is now an established, must-attend, annual event for engaged decision-makers from around the world who are actively involved in developing and implementing place brand strategy for their city, region, nation, or place.
The Americas conference launched in 2017, in partnership with Resonance Consultancy. This annual event now brings together the leadership teams of municipality, city and state marketing boards, DMOs, CVBs, and EDOs across the USA and Canada, who are keen to increase economic opportunities by taking a forward-thinking, collaborative approach with all stakeholders engaged in placemaking and place story-telling to attract talent, tourism, and investment.
City Nation Place has also organised events in Asia [Singapore], Latin America [Costa Rica] and in the UK for a specifically UK audience, and is actively engaged in the process of developing more opportunities around the world.
David is the Chairman of Brand Finance Plc – the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy. He has worked in the area of branded business, brand, and intangible asset valuation since 1991. He specialised entirely in the field after becoming the Director of Brand Valuation for Interbrand in 1995. He subsequently left Interbrand in 1996 to launch Brand Finance which is celebrating 25 years in business this year.
David represented the British Standards Institution in the working parties responsible for crafting international industry standards: ISO 10668 on Brand Valuation in 2010 and ISO 20671 on Brand Evaluation in 2019.
David is a passionate writer and has authored many articles on brand valuation, published in numerous marketing and finance newspapers and magazines, such as: Financial Times, Accountancy Age, and Marketing Week. He has also lectured on the topic of brand valuation for Harvard, Chicago, and London Business Schools.
David graduated from Bristol University with an English degree, qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London, and obtained a postgraduate diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM). He is a Fellow of The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and has a practising certificate with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).
Konrad leads Brand Finance’s place branding and soft power practice. He liaises with clients, directs consulting projects, and is responsible for the creation and promotion of the annual Global Soft Power Index, Nation Brands, and City Index studies.
Konrad has extensive experience in advising clients in the fields of place branding and public diplomacy. Before joining Brand Finance, he worked at the Polish Embassy in London where he developed and delivered successful marketing communications campaigns as well as media relations programmes of official engagements by the president, prime minister, government ministers, and the ambassador.
In his role at Brand Finance, Konrad has advised a variety of place branding organisations, including the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Campaign, New Zealand Story, and Cape Town Tourism.
Before moving on to grow the place branding practice, Konrad was the Communications Director of Brand Finance and Managing Director of Brand Finance’s PR agency – Brand Dialogue for 5 years. He has a proven track record in executing integrated communications strategies, having been responsible for publishing nearly 100 industry and country reports on the world’s most valuable brands on an annual basis.
Konrad has qualified with the Professional PR Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). He studied European Studies MA at King’s College London and the Humboldt University in Berlin, and International Relations with Political Science BA at the University of Birmingham.
David has had a successful career in the private and public sector, with senior roles at organisations such as Microsoft, and New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. David is a published author on New Zealand Innovation, with two highly successful books – No.8 Re-wired, and No.8 Recharged.
He’s an ex-comedian, TV and Radio actor, semi-finalist for New Zealander of the Year, and a genetically modified organism who documented his battle with cancer in his book A Mild Touch of the Cancer.
David co-founded sosbusiness.nz a not-for-profit initiative to help cafes and other small businesses during covid-19. It quickly became a huge hit and to date has sold over $2 million in vouchers for over 2500 small businesses.
David released a new book, Silver Linings in March 2021, and continues to act as a consultant for government and industry, as well as a director on a number of boards, including as chairman of The Icehouse, the Hi-Tech Trust and the Well Foundation.
David is now CEO of The New Zealand Story, an ambitious organisation marketing New Zealand to the world.
Larissa Perdomo has served as Country Brand Manager at Uruguay XXI since 2014, bringing over 20 years of experience in corporate communications and institutional image management. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Sciences from the University of the Republic (Uruguay) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Cultural Management and Policy from the University of Barcelona.
She has led the development and consolidation of the Uruguay Country Brand project, coordinating efforts with ministries and public institutions under the framework of CIACEX. Previously, she worked as Image and Communication Manager at Uruguay XXI, where she promoted media and public relations campaigns.
Larissa has represented Uruguay in international Nation Branding forums and coordinated regional projects within the framework of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Redibero.
Todd Babiak is co-founder of the strategy consultancy Story Engine, based in Vancouver. In 2019 he joined a former client, the state of Tasmania, to help implement a place-brand and economic development strategy. He is currently CEO of Brand Gold Coast and lives in Hobart. See Tasmanian.com.au and find him on LinkedIn here.