Earlier this month, Resonance Consultancy published its 2024 World's Best Cities ranking. Or, in their words: its definitive power ranking of the 100 global cities that it believes are shaping tomorrow.
These are always fun to flip through, which is I guess why people do them and why people look at them; but I do think it's important to look at the underlying methodologies. Otherwise, what does "world's best" even really mean?
In this case, they're looking at global cities through the lens of three key categories: livability, lovability, and prosperity. More specifically though, the report looks at factors that are demonstrated to have moderate to strong correlations with attracting talent, visitors, and/or businesses.
This makes it distinct from rankings that are more focused on things like livability. Because according to Resonance, factors such as commute times, crime, and housing affordability don't tend to correlate strongly (at least in the short-term) with a city's ability to attract talent, tourism, and investment.
While this may seem a bit counterintuitive, it does also make sense. People don't move to London because they're looking for affordable housing and a reasonable commute. They move to London because they want to be in the center of the world.
And yes, London tops their power ranking:
The top of this ranking isn't all that surprising. It's the usual suspects. But I continue to be impressed by how quickly Dubai has transformed itself into a top global city. Also impressive is how Dublin punches above its weight of just over 500,000 people.
I am medium surprised to see Hong Kong nowhere on this first page (there are another 65 cities not shown here). It usually features as a top global city. But presumably this is the result of Beijing meddling. People are looking elsewhere -- like Singapore.
For the full list of cities and to download a copy of the report, click here.
Whenever you see a best-of-anything ranking, you should probably ask yourself what the hell "best" even means. In this case, Resonance Consultancy is ranking the world's cities based on six alliterative categories: place, people, programming, product, prosperity, and promotion.
Some of these metrics are qualitative, but many are, in fact, quantitative. Number of COVID-19 infections in 2020; number of direct destinations served by the city's airports; number of foreign-born residents; number of top-rated restaurants (TripAdvisor); most Instagram check-ins, and so on.
The result is this list of the world's best cities:
London
New York
Paris
Moscow
Tokyo
Dubai
Singapore
Barcelona
Los Angeles
Madrid
Rome
Chicago
Toronto
San Francisco
Abu Dhabi
I arbitrarily chose the top 15 cities in order to make sure that Toronto was included in this ranking. If you'd like to download a full copy of the 2021 World's Best Cities report, you can do that over here. I recommend you check out their performance criteria.
Toronto, for example, performs very well when it comes to "people." That's fairly consistent across most of these rankings. But it didn't fare so well when it comes to "place." That category includes things like the average number of sunny days and the number of high quality sights & landmarks.
Tourism Toronto launched a new campaign this week and with it came a great video that has been making the rounds online. It feels authentic. It actually feels like Toronto. Watch it here if you can’t see it embedded below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS_tYWIoZzk?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
But why exactly is it a successful example of place branding?
Resonance (place branding consultancy) wrote a post about it and also spoke with Tourism Toronto’s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer. Here’s an interesting excerpt about the two things they wanted to achieve in the campaign/video:
“The campaign—and certainly this video—is trying to achieve two things,” Andrew Weir, Tourism Toronto’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, tells Resonance. “First, international visitors tend to think of destinations by country, so we had to connect Toronto to the Canadian story.” He says the sprawling, wild country is still generally known for mountains, forests and wilderness, and Toronto wasn’t connecting to that narrative. Enter the “Canada’s Downtown” identity as a way to both incorporate the destination in a national context and differentiate from it. “Toronto is home of the country’s stock exchange, the center of media, the big sports teams are here, we have the long-run theater productions,” Weir rhymes off. “It is the urban center of Canada.”
The second objective for the campaign (and one held high throughout the commercial) was to be unabashedly proud of the city’s unique alchemy, diversity and inclusivity.
“We’ve seen the foundation for local pride laid by people and brands like Drake and the Raptors and we wanted to build on that, to separate ourselves from other cities. We tapped into that energy that’s embedded in Toronto’s identity and sense of place.”
Pride—and a devotion to inclusivity and openness—jumps off the screen. Given the current political direction towards closed borders and suspicion, the goosebumps pop often while viewing.
At the end of the day though, I think it comes down to the fact that it feels like it captures the zeitgeist of Toronto. As I said at the beginning of this post, it feels authentic. And good place branding doesn’t invent identity. It takes things that are already latent and then exploits them.
It’s either that or I just like seeing the Chinese food place I go to at 3am featured in a video.
Earlier this month, Resonance Consultancy published its 2024 World's Best Cities ranking. Or, in their words: its definitive power ranking of the 100 global cities that it believes are shaping tomorrow.
These are always fun to flip through, which is I guess why people do them and why people look at them; but I do think it's important to look at the underlying methodologies. Otherwise, what does "world's best" even really mean?
In this case, they're looking at global cities through the lens of three key categories: livability, lovability, and prosperity. More specifically though, the report looks at factors that are demonstrated to have moderate to strong correlations with attracting talent, visitors, and/or businesses.
This makes it distinct from rankings that are more focused on things like livability. Because according to Resonance, factors such as commute times, crime, and housing affordability don't tend to correlate strongly (at least in the short-term) with a city's ability to attract talent, tourism, and investment.
While this may seem a bit counterintuitive, it does also make sense. People don't move to London because they're looking for affordable housing and a reasonable commute. They move to London because they want to be in the center of the world.
And yes, London tops their power ranking:
The top of this ranking isn't all that surprising. It's the usual suspects. But I continue to be impressed by how quickly Dubai has transformed itself into a top global city. Also impressive is how Dublin punches above its weight of just over 500,000 people.
I am medium surprised to see Hong Kong nowhere on this first page (there are another 65 cities not shown here). It usually features as a top global city. But presumably this is the result of Beijing meddling. People are looking elsewhere -- like Singapore.
For the full list of cities and to download a copy of the report, click here.
Whenever you see a best-of-anything ranking, you should probably ask yourself what the hell "best" even means. In this case, Resonance Consultancy is ranking the world's cities based on six alliterative categories: place, people, programming, product, prosperity, and promotion.
Some of these metrics are qualitative, but many are, in fact, quantitative. Number of COVID-19 infections in 2020; number of direct destinations served by the city's airports; number of foreign-born residents; number of top-rated restaurants (TripAdvisor); most Instagram check-ins, and so on.
The result is this list of the world's best cities:
London
New York
Paris
Moscow
Tokyo
Dubai
Singapore
Barcelona
Los Angeles
Madrid
Rome
Chicago
Toronto
San Francisco
Abu Dhabi
I arbitrarily chose the top 15 cities in order to make sure that Toronto was included in this ranking. If you'd like to download a full copy of the 2021 World's Best Cities report, you can do that over here. I recommend you check out their performance criteria.
Toronto, for example, performs very well when it comes to "people." That's fairly consistent across most of these rankings. But it didn't fare so well when it comes to "place." That category includes things like the average number of sunny days and the number of high quality sights & landmarks.
Tourism Toronto launched a new campaign this week and with it came a great video that has been making the rounds online. It feels authentic. It actually feels like Toronto. Watch it here if you can’t see it embedded below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS_tYWIoZzk?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
But why exactly is it a successful example of place branding?
Resonance (place branding consultancy) wrote a post about it and also spoke with Tourism Toronto’s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer. Here’s an interesting excerpt about the two things they wanted to achieve in the campaign/video:
“The campaign—and certainly this video—is trying to achieve two things,” Andrew Weir, Tourism Toronto’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, tells Resonance. “First, international visitors tend to think of destinations by country, so we had to connect Toronto to the Canadian story.” He says the sprawling, wild country is still generally known for mountains, forests and wilderness, and Toronto wasn’t connecting to that narrative. Enter the “Canada’s Downtown” identity as a way to both incorporate the destination in a national context and differentiate from it. “Toronto is home of the country’s stock exchange, the center of media, the big sports teams are here, we have the long-run theater productions,” Weir rhymes off. “It is the urban center of Canada.”
The second objective for the campaign (and one held high throughout the commercial) was to be unabashedly proud of the city’s unique alchemy, diversity and inclusivity.
“We’ve seen the foundation for local pride laid by people and brands like Drake and the Raptors and we wanted to build on that, to separate ourselves from other cities. We tapped into that energy that’s embedded in Toronto’s identity and sense of place.”
Pride—and a devotion to inclusivity and openness—jumps off the screen. Given the current political direction towards closed borders and suspicion, the goosebumps pop often while viewing.
At the end of the day though, I think it comes down to the fact that it feels like it captures the zeitgeist of Toronto. As I said at the beginning of this post, it feels authentic. And good place branding doesn’t invent identity. It takes things that are already latent and then exploits them.
It’s either that or I just like seeing the Chinese food place I go to at 3am featured in a video.
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