Commercial producers have long seen the
advantage of branding their products, and the idea of branding also attracts
place managers. In general, the name is the core component of the brand. In
place branding, the name is even more crucial. It marks a geographical entity
and creates the identity and image of the place. Having stayed unchanged, it
represents longevity and stability, and can be regarded as the place’s memory.
In addition, place names carry a strong emotional attachment. The longer the
history behind a name, the more meaningful it is as a word.

A strong place brand builds on a strong
place heritage. Heritage is acknowledged as one of the future priorities in
branding research.  It belongs to the
intangibles, in other words associations that differentiate brands and are a
source of tangible wealth. Many of these associations are susceptible to
copying by competitors – but not the heritage or the name.

The purpose of this paper is to
introduce a conceptualization of place heritage, the place name being one of
the focal components. For this, we have conducted an empirical study on the 28
municipalities of South Western Finland and measured their place-heritage
value. In our presentation we will demonstrate different examples of utilizing
this value in place branding.