On 24 November the fin
al event of BaltMet Promo took place in Warsaw. The event, which was hosted by the City of Warsaw, summed up the results from the two-year EU-funded project, working to promote the Baltic Sea region to foreign markets in order to attract more investments, tourists and talents to the region.
BDF is a project partner in this partly EU-funded project along with City of Helsinki, Aalto University, Greater Helsinki Promotion, City of Riga, City of Vilnius, City of Warsaw and City of Berlin.
The mayor of Warsaw Ms. Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz gave the opening speech of the event and stressed in her speech the necessicity of continuing close cooperation within the field of promotion and branding. Among the speakers was also Vice-Chairman of the Commitee of Constitutional Affairs in the European Parliament, Mr. Rafal Trzaskowski who assured the audience that the current budget discussions had a strong focus on urban development.
BDF was represented by two speakers; Hans Brask who reminded the audience that the project has a strong link to the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea region as BaltMet and BDF have been named Horizontal Action Leader for regional identity on the basis of their involvement in the project. The other BDF speaker was Marcus Andersson, who has been the main branding expert in the project and who gave the audience and introduction to region branding.
Furthermore the final results of the BaltMet Promo project were presented by representatives from the project partners.
The main results include among other things:
- A co-production forum for film talents
- Tourism marketing products Live like Locals promoting the Baltic Sea region aimed at tour operators.
- An Investor’s Guide, which gives investors a good overview of investing opportunities in the region’s cities.
- Valuable demand and supply research, found here
- A report mapping promotional initiatives and projects in the region
- A report discussing the topic of regional identity
- A Policy Action Plan encouraging politicians and other political stakeholders throughout the region to support actions of common regional promotion
- A final publication, “the BaltMet Promo Story”
The Policy Action Plan is one of the final results of the project and has been compiled on the basis of 1) input from 4 Policy Round tables with participants from relevant policy and business stakeholders 2) research made in the project, including the reports produced during the project 3) Project partners experience throughout the project 4) experience from sources outside the project (other projects and stakeholders).
BDF has been responsible for compiling this information in the Policy Action Plan, which is meant to carry the results of the project on to another level by hopefully engaging more stakeholders in building a regional promotion platform. Some of the initiatives in BaltMet Promo, such as the Investor’s Guide are already taken up and carried further on by Baltic Sea Region Investment Agencies, but in order to build on the good momentum created in the project some of the project partners are working together to create a new project BaltMet Brand ID which is to take the idea of regional branding and promotion to the next level.
Text: Ditte Folke Henriksen, BDF
