BIOGRAPHY
An expert in place branding, placemaking and the future of cities, he is a pioneer in the approach to place branding in Brazil, viewing it as something far beyond visual identities or marketing campaigns. By overlaying the layers of place branding and placemaking, he has contributed to the strengthening and resilience of dozens of places in Brazil and around the world, through the identification of their unique characteristics, the strengthening of their identities and the involvement of local communities.
In 2016, he wrote the book “Place Branding”, co-authored the Brazilian edition of the book “Imaginative Communities”, published “Cidade Antifrágil” in 2021 and, in 2024, “Lugares Futuros”, in which he encourages reflection on the importance of strategic futurism for the development of places, strengthening them in the face of uncertainty.
Active in the international discussion on place branding and placemaking, he was a contributor and judge for City Nation Place in London. He is a member of the Institute of Place Management in Manchester, UK, and is affiliated with the IPBA (International Place Branding Association), The Millennium Project, and the World Future Studies Federation, as well as a guest reviewer for “Place Branding & Public Diplomacy”. In Brazil, he is a columnist for “O Futuro das Coisas”.
He coordinated the Branding Experience postgraduate programme at IED-SP and the Place Branding MBA at Faculdades Integradas Rio Branco in São Paulo, and is a lecturer in place branding on various postgraduate courses across Brazil, including at FIA-SP, Alfa-GO and IED-RJ/SP.
BOOKS
Caio Esteves is the author of the chapter ‘Placemaking and the Importance of Vibrant Public Places’ in the Elgar Encyclopedia of City and Place Branding (Edward Elgar, 2025). An international academic reference.
Published in 2024, it is both a synthesis and an evolution: it revisits the place branding of the first book, deepens the reflection on identity and community from the second, radicalises the anti-fragility of the third, and goes a step further, proposing Place Strategic Foresight© as a methodology for building places prepared not for one future, but for multiple possible futures.
Drawing on Nassim Taleb’s concept of anti-fragility—the idea that some systems not only survive chaos but evolve because of it—Caio Esteves applies this thinking to the world of places.
Many of us feel uneasy about the lack of international recognition our community, city, region or country receives, and about the outdated stereotypes and clichés through which ‘foreigners’ define us.
Published in 2016 by Editora Simonsen, Place Branding brings together Caio Esteves and contributors from a range of fields—including architecture, urban planning, communication, marketing and public management—to discuss a topic that was still in its infancy in Brazil: how to build place brands that stem from a place’s true identity, rather than from an image manufactured for external consumption.
MEDIA
Gramado begins a new phase of strategic planning with the establishment of a steering committee
