Stakeholders’ engagement is one of the most urgent issues in city branding today. Over the last few years this new part of marketing has made a great way from being optional to becoming obligatory in developing a place brand. Engaging stakeholders is already a well investigated issue in the corporate branding, but the city is a thing of a different nature, so the methods of engagement are also different if compared to business. The city branding needs new approaches relevant to its peculiar features. This work contributes to the new field of branding expertise by proposing the classification of techniques and methods of engaging city brand stakeholders, as well as the ways of estimating their efficiency.

The theoretical part of the article briefly reviews relevant literature on the issue and formulates the basic stakeholders’ engagement principles. Then the author proposes some new theoretical approaches to the topic, develops the classification of engagement methods and their estimation, including quantitative and qualitative indicators that might become the standard for place branding efficiency assessment in case of a wide and successful empirical verifi cation.

The practical part contains a case-study and describes the above-mentioned principles that were applied while developing a city brand for Dobryanka. The determined parameters of engagement classifi cation and evaluation can be used to estimate other cities’ brands, especially the ones of small cities. Besides, the success of Dobryanka branding project allows to develop new approaches of brand acceptance estimation among stakeholders, basing on empirical data.

Verification of the proposed methods by the example of Dobryanka case reveals the possibility of a scientific approach to stakeholders’ engagement in city branding. It also shows the depth and complexity of its implementation. The derived conclusions will be useful for city brand developers and researchers of place branding issues.