A&NMT Chair Presentation

Operated by IMPGT and founded by more than 20 French local authorities, the “Regional Attractiveness & Place Marketing” Chair is the first “regional chair” dedicated to attractiveness and new place marketing practices throughout the world. It has a strong focus on innovation and follows an operational approach of place marketing. Supported by french local authorities, the Chair promotes a holistic vision of attractiveness: from the capacity of local places to "shine" and promote their offers to their ability to attract on-site people (tourists, businessmen, researchers, students, retired, new residents ...) and capital (investors, developers, new entrepreneurs ...)

A CHAIR FOCUSED ON INTERNATIONAL AND OPERATIONAL 

By its organization and program, the Chair intends to be a research and sharing place and a service and tools producer to its founders, partners and professionals.

In order to meet their expectations, the Chair is giving into an international approach (speakers and international study cases in the training, simultaneous translation during the Place Marketing Forum, international benchmarking, international publications) and into an operational methodology of attractiveness and place marketing. It can be noticed throughout its facilitators (who are all professionals with a real management experience), its training program (mainly covered by the persons who set up the approaches or actions - based on concrete examples and experiences' feedback), its international benchmark (online plateform allowing to follow and analyse best practices worlwide) and its yearly convention (exchanges and experiences sharing between international professionals).

WHY THIS CHAIR ?

Three observations are behind the launch of the Chair:

1. Nowadays, regional attractiveness has become a major concern for the local authorities’ future. Taking account of its impact on employment, economy and culture, as well as its inhabitants’ quality of life in general; especially since the authorities’ budgets are being cut and the outcomes of the regional marketing measures which have been implemented have been deemed inadequate by councilors and professional sectors.

2. Throughout the world, a new form of regional marketing is starting to spread. This is a result of the hyper-competition between the regions and recent upheavals in the regional political environment, as well as economic, sociological, climatic, demographic and technological upheavals. These new approaches and practices in attractiveness and regional marketing are changing the role of the citizen and drastically changing the management, governance and current practices of the most successful authorities, which are implementing them.

3. French local authorities have a small knowledge with the world’s best-performing territories practices. There is currently no permanent monitoring of best regional marketing practices across all the various professions and sectors involved in regional attractiveness. Thus, the chair has been created to cross these three challenges and enable the local authorities to develop more effective place marketing strategies.

OBJECTIVES AND AMBITION

Becoming the European leader in information, research and training of place marketing is the strong ambition of the A&NMT Chair, supported by a large-scale program and a commitment of the founding local authorities and partner companies over several years. To this end, the objective is to make the membership of a territory a bigger source of value creation for local authorities, as well as for businesses, via:

• The benchmarking of trends and innovative best practices of place marketing in the world.
• The improvement of training, research and sharing information on place marketing practices and research.
• The reflection and the development of new models, with place marketing operational tools.

4 GREAT PROJECTS

MONITORING AND RESEARCH on the best practices of attractiveness and place marketing, with a focus on the most effective or most innovative strategies in the world, with benchmarking sheets and summaries, available on a web platform.

EXPERTISE scientific, in place marketing, to enhance the benchmarking: academic publications, specific research programs on themes proposed by the founders and partners such as: «attractive metropolises», «specific attractiveness», «IMAGETERR: the image of territories».

TRAINING Master Degree training, non-leading to a qualification training are offered to professionals and students with the participation of experts.

EVENTS Organization of several meetings on place marketing including the Place Marketing Forum, but also participation of the Chair in scientific conferences and symposiums.