The Place Trust Driver™

Reporting

You are deeply rooted in community and place-based impact.

What’s Important

Localization & Community: Prioritizing the local or regional community’s well-being, employing residents, and leveraging local suppliers and vendors.

Glocalization & Regeneration: Balancing global awareness with local action, often spearheading or participating in community-led initiatives.

Invests in Place: Demonstrating real investments in local infrastructure, small businesses, or cultural activities that strengthen the local economy.

What’s National is Local: Shifting from seeing “markets” to seeing interdependent geographic ecosystems that must be nurtured.

Place-Based KBI’s (Key Behavioral Indicators)

Internal KBIs:

Quantitative:
- Local sourcing as a percentage of total procurement
- Number of local hiring initiatives conducted annually
Qualitative:
- Internal pride and engagement in community/regional impact

External KBIs:

Quantitative:
- Economic contribution to local economies (jobs created, local tax contributions)
- Local stakeholder satisfaction with the company’s community integration efforts
Qualitative:
- Reputation as a community-oriented organization (local media, community awards)

Mapping The Place Driver

B Corp Standards:

Developed by B Lab Global for businesses to become b corp certified.

PSG2: Considers stakeholder impacts in decision-making.

ESC5: Collaboration with suppliers for environmental objectives.

GACA2: Collective action for social/environmental impact.

FW3: Enabling suppliers to pay living wages/incomes.

SDG Standards:

Adopted by the United Nations to help the world push toward ending poverty, protect the planet and increase and prosperity.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Place-Based

Trust Signals

Local economic ecosystems, geographic regeneration, rooted impact. Trust Signals:

Local First/AMIBA Membership

Local Nutrition Cetification / Badge

Made in [City/State] Verified

Neighborhood Business Association Certification

IndieBound Affiliate or American Booksellers Association

Urban Land Institute Awards for Community Impact

Trusted Place-Based Focused Brands:

Askinosie Chocolate: Sourcing globally but heavily investing in local community programs in Springfield, Missouri.

Bull City Burger & Brewery: Durham, NC brewpub prioritizing local sourcing and city revitalization.

Shorefast: Revitalizes Fogo Island (Newfoundland) through community-owned social enterprises.

Farm Fresh Rhode Island: Builds up local food systems through markets, distribution hubs, and education.

Tillamook:

HOW DOES GEOGRAPHY MANIFEST IN YOUR BUSINESS?

Ecosytem Activation

In today’s complex business environment, understanding your ecosystem is critical. We help you design holistic, values-driven strategies for sustainable business growth through the art of messaging improvisation

Every medium your brand uses must be adaptable. We help your team select platforms that allow for dynamic communication—whether digital or physical—ensuring your leaders can improvise messaging based on the specific needs of your stakeholders.

Your artifacts must reflect the evolving nature of your business ecosystem. We help your team design artifacts that integrate dynamically into your ecosystem, allowing your leaders and partners to respond to stakeholder needs with flexibility.

Messaging is most impactful when it can evolve in real time. We work with your team to develop messaging strategies that empower them to improvise based on the moment, creating artifacts

Ecosystem Journeys

The days of thinking people are droping through funnels have lead us to believe people – and therefore marketing – are less complex than they actually are.

We empower your leaders to communicate your Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values (PVMV) dynamically. Instead of following a rigid script, we teach your team to engage in brand improvisation, adapting messaging based on real-time interactions.

For stakeholders ready to engage in an exchange—whether purchasing a product or exploring a partnership—improvised messaging ensures a more personalized and responsive experience.

Brand improvisation is key to navigating multi-stage journeys with your stakeholders. We work with your team to develop strategies that allow them to adapt messaging fluidly across different touchpoints

Audience Research

We RESEARCH people. They are not users or targets in markets — they are visitors and stakeholders in ecosystems.

We favor the use of “audience personas” over “target audiences”. While the latter can be useful in certain applications, we must acknowledge that people are complex and multi-layered, and those that have similar “profiles” may not share similar beliefs or ideas.

Communities are not built from the top down. As Harvard Business Review (HBR) has noted, they are not built by leaders. Robust, long-lasting ecosystems enable a variety of meaningful roles to be played within them.

Successful connection with audiences is dependent upon the ways we use your touchpoints to engage them. Like other complex systems involving people, we’ll need a strategy to assure the physical, digital, print, and human touch points are all in sync.

Geographic Data

Demographics are a lost art. They’ve been used poorly in the past, but we use them strategically to bring location and community demographics data to life. With this set of tools, we can offer insights on the people and ecosystems that are relevant to your business.

The Place Trust Driver™

What’s Important

Place-Based KBI’s (Key Behavioral Indicators)

Mapping The Place Driver

B Corp Standards:

SDG Standards:

Trust Signals

HOW DOES GEOGRAPHY MANIFEST IN YOUR BUSINESS?

Ecosytem Activation

Medium Selection

Dynamic Artifacts

Contextual Messaging

Ecosystem Journeys

Brand Journeys

Exchange Journeys

Dynamic Journeys

Audience Research

Audience Persona’s

Ecosystem Archetypes

Touchpoints

Geographic Data

Census Data

Current Population Survey

Demographics Estimates

Our Case Studies