Place Branding from Scratch: Naming, framing, and finding Campina de Faro

This chapter addresses the pivotal role of the name of a marginal place as a first stepstone for creating awareness of it as a location for tourists to potentially visit, that is, creating a place brand. To that end, the coastal plain Campina de Faro in the Algarve region of Portugal is chosen as a case in point. First, a conceptual framework is introduced to support the analysis of the linguistic, cognitive, and commercial factors that affect the naming and framing of a place with a special focus on how this can be achieved on a limited budget. Then, a survey is reported conducted among international and national visitors to the Faro-Albufeira coastal area. The survey results provide a firmer basis for assessing visitors’ degree of familiarity with the name “Campina de Faro” and the expectations evoked by it via quantitative and qualitative indicators. These results, as supplemented by insights gained from field inquiries on the spot, are applied to identify which parameters could be operated on to enhance the potential of the place name as a fixpoint for developing a more salient place-brand image. That includes a brief consideration of possible learnings for and from other INCULTUM pilots.