We rarely conduct a brand workshop or focus group for a community when someone doesn’t say, “this is the best place to live, work and play”. Further, many advocate that it should be the city tagline. Unfortunately, for many communities that do not use objective outsiders to assist their brand planning, they too often pat themselves on the back and agree that they’ve found the holy grail of place branding for their city - and “a great place to live, work and play” it is.
I am currently researching and writing an updated edition of “Destination Branding for Small Cities” and decided to Google the term, “a great place to live, work and play” and found over 4 million results. There are also over one hundred videos on YouTube with various spokespersons for communities using the term.
Scrolling through Google, I lost count of the number of communities that actually use the term as a tagline. So if you are considering joining the masses in building a brand based on being “a great place to live, work and play”, you have simply identified a threshold credential to play the game. There are tens of thousands of places in the USA and even more around the world that can match the claim. This is where you have to dig deeper to uncover the true essence of the place that will be valued and meaningful to target audiences. And why use the line to communicate with residents? They already live there and know it!
It’s amazing how many places pat themselves on the back and settle for this self-adulation and waste their time, on a line that is probably the most commonly used by citizens to describe the place where they live. Why bother! Even worse, they call it their brand.

