Marketing Places: Attracting Investment, Industry, and Tourism to Cities, States, and Nations.

• Author: Vehaun, David

With the primary focus of governmental units across America shifting more and more to economic development, many areas may be looking for a primer on marketing the local economy. If so, Marketing Places is just the handbook.

Although the authors bring a strong academic background to the essay, the reader will be pleasantly surprised to find that this does not turn out to be academically grueling reading. Instead, the authors provide unique insight into how to market an area--a "place," as they refer to it. Much of the necessary academic reading is in the book, with discussions of business attraction, retention and expansion.

What makes the book so unusual is that every academic "how to" is matched with a real life example of a place that already has tried--and succeeded or failed. This anecdotal approach allows the reader to learn from these successes and failures. Hundreds of examples from cities, counties and states fill this book and provide poignant--and even houmorous--insight into how to, and better yet how not to, market a locale.

The authors' main theme is that a growing crisis is occurring for those wishing to get involved in marketing their place because they face a constantly changing global marketplace, complete with local and national political upheaval and advancing technology. The first few chapters deal with this in detail, explaining how places fall into financial trouble and what they must do to recover. The authors then segue from strategically designing an image for a place to distributing this image. This invariably means attracting business, conference, tourism and resident dollars--and retaining these dollars once they are captured. The book closes with a discussion of the organizational structure that must be in place to achieve these ends.

The reader may take exception to certain content within the book...