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

jeremy@jeremyhildreth.com

Category Archives: Travel writing: the fun stuff

In Hong Kong, a shampoo Jean Valjean

From:    jeremyhildreth To:         triplist Date:     Fri 3/15/02 3:35 AM Subject: Dispatch from Hong Kong Dear friends, As I travel the world for the next three months, I’ve promised to keep in touch with all of you as much as possible. Please feel free but not obligated to reply to these dispatches. I arrived [...]

Heat Treatment ’02: Revisiting the travel writing that started it all

The famous “Heat Treatment ’02″ dispatches.

Adventure in Timor 4: A destination in the making

Day 7 Leaving my hotel about ten o’clock on Friday, One Last Bar is where I went first. Here I met a UN adviser named Scott who advised me that the next bar to go to was a Brazilian place down by the beach called Exotica. I took a taxi (it’s just outside of central [...]

Adventure in Timor 3: “The warrior spirit” embodied

“The warrior spirit” embodied

Adventure in Timor 2: Xanana’s hideout

In East Timor, Jeremy lifts the floorboards and climbs into Xanana Gusmao’s hideout.

Adventure in Timor 1: Something extraordinary happened here

Note: I wrote this in 2005; it’s only ever seen the light of day in the Saffron-produced ‘how to sell East Timor’ book I wrote and directed for an identity project in this tumultuous country. But I loved Timor. The country has just celebrated 10 years since its people voted for freedom from Indonesia (a [...]

Dispatch from Ghadames, Libya

With Saint-Exupery in a tent in the Sahara.

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 [...]

The problem with first impressions

…is that you don’t know what you don’t know, sometimes, when you’re looking at something. Take, for example, this scene in Vilnius (where I am delighted to be living for the summer), which I photographed while jogging today. It is a normal scene, a bit of urban decay, some concrete blight. Very common around here. [...]

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, [...]

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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