Toronto-based Cundari Group announced Tuesday, March 11, that in partnership with New York agency GK Brand, it has won the contract for Armenia’s brand development project, The Globe and Mail reports.

The contract is with the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia, a public-private partnership between the government and Armenian business leaders, both within the country and abroad.

A team from Cundari will be travelling to Armenia in a couple of weeks to begin the process of developing the country’s brand strategy. It’s not unfamiliar territory: Cundari helped to create a new brand strategy for Washington, D.C., in 2008, and has done similar projects for the city of Calgary, Ontario’s Niagara region, and Yonkers, N.Y., among others. Armenia is the farthest-flung project it has yet tackled.

“We understand that place branding is very different from product or service branding,” said Kelly Frances, Cundari’s senior vice-president of sales and marketing. “You really have to take in the perspective not just of residents of the place, but of businesses, potential visitors, potential investors. You have to look at the brand from many different vantage points.”

The team will be designing a new logo for Armenia, but the project goes far beyond that. It will be developing a strategy to attract foreign investment, and also to transform the country’s growing tourism industry, according to The Globe and Mail.

A key goal will be an advertising campaign to attract more lucrative, foreign tourists. The key target markets will be Russia, Georgia and Iran, which are all nearby. It will also be doing some promotion in urban centres in Germany and France.

Because Armenia is not a beach destination, it will be advertising itself to tourists who are interested in culture and history. A project is under way, for example, to revitalize the more than 1,000-year-old Tatev monastery. The ad agencies will now be charged with creating a communications plan by the time Armenia is in the public eye next year.