Brand Strategic Role in Territory Marketing

The continuous and unpredictable evolution of business scenarios requires a new attention as to the ‘brand’ meaning, which is more and more associated to the territory belonging or even to the origin ‘typicalness’. In a wider perspective, which means district for the enterprise and territory for the community, brand comes to acquire a crucial importance even for the recognition of the marketing proposal of the enterprise operating in the territory, which uses, thanks to a natural and synergic belonging, the below-the-line communication power of the territory brand. Obviously, it is not simple to design and, most of all, to implement a really effective territory brand, which, in other words, could be able to stimulate (towards account and prospect customers) recognition, distinction, attraction and loyalty. As a consequence, it is very interesting to analyze the possible strategies of territory brand, by moving, because of an inevitable observation, from the success of ‘made in Italy’ products. Furthermore, the emphasis of this study is even more significant if we consider that elements with a more emotional than technical nature, in this scenario, seem to have a tough importance in the expression of the territory brand power, because it generates a strength, which is closer to a spirit of suggestion more than evaluation, anyway always by having an indispensable respect for quality and excellence of products and processes. Thus, the orientation of this study proposes to drive enterprises, most of all SMEs, to build association synergies in the territory and to give them a ‘name’ and a ‘value’, in order to promote their territory and, at the same time, their commercial proposal.