The world's most curious man contemplates writing, branding and travelling with an insane degree of nuance.

jeremy@jeremyhildreth.com

Category Archives: Best of

Everything I know about place branding

Everything I know about branding places

Dispatch from Kaliningrad 3: The Curonian Spit

Read Part 1. Read Part 2. You’d think you’d know it if you were on a mile-wide strip of sand with water on both sides. But the Curonian Spit is so heavily forested that you cannot see anything but trees when you drive along the main road. The Spit is a geographical anomaly: it’s narrowness [...]

Two centuries of branding theory and practice boiled down to two lines

‘Seeming’ versus ‘being’: two centuries of branding theory and practice boiled down to two lines.

Dispatch from Kaliningrad 2: Konigsberg transmogrified

Read Part 1. There is a Baltic legend of the city Wanetha, a coastal conurbation which was sunk into the sea in retribution for the sins and errors of its citizens. Anybody familiar with this myth would certainly recall it when listening to the tale of Kaliningrad. Konigsberg, as the city was called until 1946, [...]

Why to bother keeping up appearances

I know Ignalina nuclear power plant is scheduled to close at the end of this year. And rationally I know that managing two atomic reactors — even if they are almost identical to the vintage Soviet RBMK-1000s at the heart of the Chernobyl hiccup — and keeping an aquarium have nothing to do with each [...]

Dispatch from Kaliningrad 1: The bridge to Tilsit

Stuck at the Russian border for 6 hours.

Sign of the times?

At the Monaco Grand Prix, Jeremy pays 50 euros for a rum and Coke.

The tell-tale moai

For The Wall Street Journal, Jeremy communes with the moai of Easter Island.

Easter Island five days after Easter

This morning I stood with the moai at Ahu Tongariki and watched the sunrise, listening to Stockhausen’s Stimmung on my iPhone. Recommended.

Selling yarns

Everybody drives in Los Angeles. Everywhere. Always. Except if you’re 13, as I was in 1987 the year the free copywriting lessons started. Then you walk home from school (Paul Revere Junior High, in my case) to find on your doorstep a catalog from a new clothing company called J. Peterman — a catalog with [...]

New destination

The WhereBrands place branding blog is the new soapbox for my strong opinions and invaluable wisdom about place-related marketing.

You’ve found me!

Not always easy. As an international brand copywriter, Wall Street Journal arts page contributor and near-nomad, the road is my home.

The constant stimulation of an ever-changing confluence of people, place and moment has shown itself to be the ideal salve for my painful curiosity about this astounding phenomenon we call human conscious life.

So I travel.

Meanwhile, I tell my stories and I help others tell theirs, doing my bit make the world safe for good writing and good marketing. I've had an eventful career so far (read the full "about me" stuff here; for better or worse, it's almost all true).

At present, I am creative director of WhereBrands, a company I founded to coach cities, countries and companies on how to make the most of [a] place. WhereBrands' site is devoted wholly to place-related marketing, branding and communications, as is the WhereBrands place branding blog.

The rest of my brilliant insights about marketing, writing and travelling you'll find right here (along with the lousy ones). I encourage you to leave comments, or, if you feel yourself a kindred spirit, drop me a line; I'm always glad to hear from clever, exotic people like you.

Speaking on YouTube

Speaking on YouTube

A string of funny and insightful anecdotes about the way countries regard (or loathe) themselves, and how that affects outsiders' perceptions (clip: 2 mins).

In the news: Branding the hard way

In the news: Branding the hard way

Jeremy tells CNN/Fortune that Estonia getting the Euro is an 'unfakeable' positive signal for the country. "It's something that they've earned from scratch."

In the news: Jeremy’s new book is out

In the news: My new book is out

Brand America (2nd edition): the making, unmaking and remaking of the greatest national image of all time. Co-authored with Simon Anholt.

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