M&M Global has joined forces with City Nation Place Awards, becoming Media Partner for the inaugural celebration of place marketing.

The City Nation Place Awards have been launched to identify and recognise excellence in place brand strategy development and implementation.

With more national, regional and city governments investing in reputation management and communication, these are the first Awards to benchmark the performance of these areas.

A jury of place branding strategists and representatives of governments who are themselves tasked with building the strength of a place brand to attract investment, tourism, talent and trade will decide winners in four categories:

• Best Use of Social Media
• Best Citizen Engagement
• Best Communication Strategy
• Brand of the Year

The Awards are open for entries from city, regional or national government teams, from those working in government funded organisations such as city or country marketing boards, tourism or investment promotion boards and also from the agencies and consultancies working with clients in this sector.

The final deadline for entries is Friday 7 August – click here for more details on how to enter.

“We are delighted to become media partner to the City Nation Place Awards,” said M&M Global editor Alex Brownsell. “M&M Global has long championed the very best of international advertising and media, and the City Nation Place Awards will provide a fascinating insight into the burgeoning world of place branding.”

Clare Dewhirst, managing director at Hubbub Ltd, founder of City Nation Place, added: “Given the budgets committed to international communication strategies to promote the competitive edge of cities and nations around the world, the City Nation Place Awards are designed to provide some much needed benchmarking of effectiveness.

“We are delighted to be partnering with M&M Global to promote these Awards as we are keen to find the best work from the international media and agency world that M&M speaks to.”