3 Creative Writing Tips for Place Marketing
For the past five years, my work has centered on helping cities, regions and states create place marketing content and talent attraction campaigns. I love writing about what makes places special, and I’ve found that a lot of threads from my creative writing past have served me well in this space, whether I’m writing about a place myself or advising clients on messaging and voice.
In other words, all those afternoons I spent sitting in college writing workshops discussing in very serious tones the emotional resonance of comma placement? They haven’t just helped me as a writer. They’ve helped me as a marketer.
And I want to share three specific creative writing tips I employ often that might help you, too. I return to these lessons over and over in my place marketing work — and now you can use them in yours.
1. Mine your quirks
One of my memoir professors in college was obsessed with this phrase and would write it in red pen all over our drafts and repeat it over and over during writing workshops. In the world of memoir writing, “mine your quirks'' means to dig into your own weird, offbeat, perhaps hidden qualities and share them with the reader. The irony is that often, the weirder and more specific you get in sharing your own story, the more your audience will be able to see themselves in it.
“What makes you special? What makes you weird and unique? What are the cultural quirks and idiosyncrasies that locals talk about with a mix of self-deprecation and pride?”
How does this apply to place marketing? Few things hurt my place-marketing heart more than seeing a city’s branding revolve around some generic combination of “We’re a great place to live, work, and play!” That may be true, but a lot of places can make that claim (and almost all of them do). What makes you special? What makes you weird and unique? What are the cultural quirks and idiosyncrasies that locals talk about with a mix of self-deprecation and pride?
A few years ago I was giving a presentation at IEDC and encouraged everyone in the room to “mine the quirks” of their city. Someone in the audience raised their hand and told a story about their city’s “quirk”: a giant industrial structure that loomed in the background of every shot of their skyline; a reminder of a shut-down factory, a past they wanted to forget. For years, local marketers and economic developers had tried to divert attention away from this massive structure, regarding it as a shameful scar on an otherwise lovely place.
But then they tried something different: embracing it, and featuring it proudly in their imagery, marketing, and storytelling.
“Now,” she said, “it’s a symbol of our community’s past and future. People line up to take their wedding photos underneath it.”
Your quirks, of course, don’t need to be of the looming architectural variety. When I’m working with a city on content and branding, my favorite question to ask is, “What is possible here that isn’t possible anywhere else?” The answers often reveal something odd and absurd and wonderful, from “You can order a local delicacy called a ‘garbage plate’ at any diner” to “It’s not uncommon to find yourself chatting with a world-renowned rocket scientist in the cereal aisle.” Those are your quirks.
Your city might have a great story and sparkly amenities and attractions, but it’s the quirky, unexpected things about the culture and the place that create a real and deep affinity. Mine those quirks. Bring them into the light. Share them. That’s the stuff that resonates.
2. Notice What’s Vivid
These three words are part of an Allen Ginsberg quote. The whole thing is “ “Notice what’s vivid. What’s vivid is self-selecting.”
In writing, this is a call to pay special attention to the things that call for your attention, because those are the people and moments and scenes that are going to naturally spring from the page.
This idea can also be applied to place marketing, in that the most effective storytelling and marketing efforts aren’t trying to make up for or distract from what you don’t have, they’re highlighting what you do have.
A frequent request I get from clients during the content creation process is, “Can you make us look more diverse/hip/exciting/etc than we actually are?” I get it. You want to appeal to people who are looking for these things, but trying to play up your city’s lacking or average qualities is a losing game.
The things that are going to really sing when you talk about them, post about them, showcase them? The things that are already vivid. The things that stand out organically.
When someone walks down the street of your city for the first time, what stands out? What strikes them? If a newcomer chatted with 10 randomly selected locals, what themes and topics would run through every conversation? When you’re visiting somewhere else and asked to describe the place you live, what words or amenities do you always share?
Notice what’s vivid — and bring those things forward.
3. Implicate Yourself
The best personal essays and nonfiction books have something in common: the narrator is not a passive observer or a helpless victim; they implicate themselves as part of the dynamic and own up to their faults, complexities, and shortcomings.
I have been lucky enough to visit a lot of places as a travel writer, journalist, and consultant. The vast majority of cities roll out the red carpet for visiting writers, and for good reason: of course you want to showcase the best of your city and the successful efforts you’ve made to improve it.
The best press trip I ever went on, though, was one that ignored the traditional idea of “look at all these shiny things and ignore the other stuff.” Instead, the organizers of this particular press trip to Milwaukee took it upon themselves to share a complicated and real view of their city with a group of journalists from all over the country. They brought in local experts and historians to tell us about successes and missteps. They encouraged honesty and didn’t flinch or shy away from extremely painful and complex issues like racism and police brutality. They showed us closed down factories and struggling neighborhoods. They let us interview a diverse group of locals about why they loved their city — and how it fell short.
I wrote about the trip here, and it became one of the most widely read articles I’ve ever written.
Why? Because it wasn’t just a rote recap of all the city’s cool amenities and attractions. It tells the story of a place that’s complicated and messy and reckoning with what it means to move forward while looking back.
When you’re talking about your city — whether in your own marketing materials, in the press, or directly to a prospective resident — don’t shy away from addressing complexity and shortcomings. Be real. Be vulnerable. Be, as RoleCall’s unofficial slogan says, effusively honest.
Something else happened on that trip to Milwaukee. I talked to a young woman who was part of a career mentoring program, and she said something I’ll never forget: “Young people aren’t looking for a perfect city. We’re looking for a place that will invite us to help make it better.”
It’s scary to be honest about the not-so-great parts of your city, but prospective residents will appreciate the authenticity. Implication, in fact, can be an invitation.
Read more: