Embracing the potential of ambiguous place brands: Illustrations from the Wild Atlantic Way

Abstract

This paper argues that a capacity to embrace ambiguity allows market actors to accommodate the symbolic, dialectical and dynamic nature of place brands. Using the Wild Atlantic Way as an illustration, the paper considers how this brand is appropriated by diverse actors to create value through place performances and experiences. Brands can embody tourism imaginaries and are part of the cultural media for creating and circulating place meanings. When brands are mobilised in ways that result in convergent or coherent meanings, the result is a living brand, accommodating an evolving sense of place. The paper contends that the ambiguity of place branding is manifest in the spaces in-between materiality and discourse, reality and imagination, object and experience, concept and performance.