Increasingly researchers and practitioners manage places as brands. But they have yet to elaborate on the question: is it possible to build and/or manage place brands? This question is addressed by recourse to the origins of branding; explication of differences between such origins and one dimension of place brands, ie destination brands; and exemplification by means of resident-tourist interactions. The answer offered is that place brands may not be as manageable as ‘ordinary’ brands — or, at least, that places are so different from traditional brands that it has to be accepted that at least one dimension of place brands is unmanageable to an extent that questions taken-for-granted assumptions underlying traditional brand knowledge. Consequently, the paper discusses what branding can(not) do for the management of places.