In 2013 Plymouth City Council decided to embrace their strong nautical heritage and update their place brand to help build pride among residents and put the city of the map. This case study forms part of our place branding toolkit.
The 'Britain's Ocean City' place narrative and branding was introduced in September 2013, with the aim of presenting a consistent and compelling story about Plymouth to the rest of the world. The 'Britain's Ocean City' place narrative replaced the previous 'Positively Plymouth' narrative developed a few years ago to replace the prior 20-year-old 'Spirit of Discovery' brand.
The council was keen to evolve and move past the existing and previous place narratives in order to tell a stronger and more compelling story about Plymouth that helped position the city nationally and internationally.
The updated 'Britain's Ocean City' place narrative aimed to build awareness of Plymouth, challenge misconceptions and outdated views of the city, and build pride of the city amongst residents. The narrative development was led by the council and a group of stakeholders representing the public, voluntary and commercial sectors. The council aimed to get buy in from across the city from the start of the process and held a series of meetings and workshops in order to gather views and ideas to help shape the narrative. During discussions and brainstorming, stakeholders agreed that the new narrative should celebrate Plymouth's locations, lifestyle offer, pioneering role in marine science and technology and its famous seafaring past, naval and maritime heritage.
The updated place narrative and strapline - ‘Britain's Ocean City' - has been adopted as the formal vision for the city. It is at the heart of the Plymouth Plan, a strategic document that sets out the shared vision for the city, and it is also embedded within the Council's Corporate Plan and visitor strategy.
The success of the updated place narrative and brand has been measured by what people say about Plymouth and positive feedback has been received from local stakeholders via surveys, and increased national media coverage has been achieved referencing Plymouth as ‘Britain's Ocean City'.
An ongoing programme of stakeholder engagement aims to ensure that key organisations and individuals in the city are sharing and talking about the 'Britain's Ocean City' narrative as the city evolves. The council has released an updated version of it's popular ‘Book of Wonder' to reflect the ‘Britain's Ocean City' narrative and council staff and employees in partner organisations, in particular have been involved in workshops and briefings to help ensure that there is a consistent and continued approach to the use of the updated narrative and branding going forward.