Rabat – Following last month’s successful “WeCasablanca” festival, Casablanca Events & Animation (CEA) is organizing the 2nd edition of the “Africa Place Marketing” (APM) symposium, on November 24 and 25 in hybrid mode.

The international symposium aims to reinforce the sharing of experience and promote monitoring and territorial intelligence under the theme “All actors of hospitality and attractiveness of territories.”

Various meetings will take place between different experts, researchers, and actors of territorial marketing. Experts, partners and participants will choose whether to attend in-person or virtually via a platform entirely dedicated to the event.

“APM symposium also aims to share with the various stakeholders the best practices of territorial marketing and to co-build a territorial reflection adapted to African territories,” said the organizers in a statement.

“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, territories are looking more than ever to retain and support the assets that are present there (residents, investors, young people, tourists, students, etc.),” said Mohamed Jouahri, CEO of Casablanca Events & Animation.

The theme chosen for this year’s session reflects the organizers’ focus on the attractiveness and marketing of territories by engaging several actors in discussions such as elected officials, local authorities, and civil society.

The 2021 Africa Place Marketing symposium will see the participation of various panelists of researchers and professionals, having worked in more than 14 different territories representing case studies in the field.

Panelists and participants are expected to highlight key success factors and the levers of territorial hospitality to further develop a reflection around its ability to radiate and attract relevant targets.

Through debates and reflection sessions, experts are expected to come up with a proposal for a common territorial marketing approach adapted to African territories.

Four conferences, two workshops, a Think Tank, and an APM competition are scheduled in the 2-days event to allow young university students to confront their points of view and develop “out of the box” reflections around a specific theme of territorial marketing: “how to (re)energize a territorial brand, casa de WeCasablanca.”

APM is an important component of the WeCasablanca attractiveness approach, the organizers explained. They noted that the event is a collective and shared project to develop the attractiveness of the city of Casablanca, which is now an essential pioneering platform for exchanges, new practices and trends of territorial marketing in Africa.