Place branding, Talent attraction
Improving Brain City Berlin
22-05-2019
We had the great pleasure of helping Berlin become even better at attracting talent and investment – through the Brain City Berlin campaign.
Berlin is not only a global centre for cool startups, a vibrant tech ecosystem and dance friendly underground techno music. It is also a leading science city, boasting one the largest and most diverse science ecosystems in Europe, comprising a host of R&D intensive companies, more than 40 world-class universities and a large pool of science talent.
The science intensive activities are branded and marketed under the umbrella brand and campaign Brain City Berlin, coordinated by Berlin’s investment and innovation promotion agency Berlin Partner, in cooperation with a big group of science institutions. The purpose of the campaign is to attract science activity, science talent and science intensive companies. One of the main channels of the campaign is the Brain City Berlin ambassador network of scientist and science talent in Berlin.
Strategy review of Brain City Berlin
We at Future Place Leadership had the great pleasure and honour of being selected by Berlin Partner to help lead a strategy review process of Berlin Brain City in 2018 and 2019.
We facilitated a series of workshops with key stakeholders and did a survey to both evaluate the existing campaign strategy as well as repurpose and reorient the future brand platform and campaign strategy and activities. We could conclude that the current campaign had been successful in general, but that its impact could be improved through new, creative activities, and that the involvement of the science institutions could be enhanced.
We therefore proposed – in close dialogue with the Berlin Partner team and the stakeholder institutions – new strategic concepts and activities such as repurposing the current Brain City Berlin ambassador network to a kind of ‘Scientists of Berlin’ network and launching a social media takeover programme to showcase what it is like to work for one of the partner science institutions.
The new campaign strategy will also include a new brand message revolving around academic freedom – something that is increasingly important in a world where different freedoms are under attack from populist and extreme right-wing forces.
More information
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Check out the book “Innovation Talent Attraction: A practitioner’s guide for Cities, Regions and Countries”.
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