Overcoming the Risk of Stereotypes: How Strategic Communications Can Facilitate Sustainable Place Branding

In this chapter I will illustrate how quickly individual events or clichés can destroy reputation and have a major influence on further economic development. In other words, how tourism and investments can fail to materialize in the economy in the wake of highly negative headlines. The chapter contains examples from three countries with a relatively high degree of media perception (Italy, Greece and France), as well as three countries with a low level of media interest (Bahrain, Austria and Vietnam). First, I will portray the behavior patterns of our six examples and how they are connected. Then I will propose a way as to how countries can effectively free themselves from their dependency on headlines in the future.