The problem with first impressions is that you don't know what you don't know, sometimes, when you're looking at something. Take, for example, this scene in Vilnius, Lithuania, a city I spend a great deal of time in (I took this photo with my phone whilst jogging in July 2009).
This ''vista'' is a very normal one to encounter in cities all around the world - just a bit of urban decay, some concrete blight. In moments when you bother to notice something like it, you might well think to yourself, ''Those poor kids (the ones barely visible at the lower right), they grow up playing in such ugly, rundown parks.''
And in one way, that's true enough. But I knew as I snapped this photo, only because I happened to discover it two days earlier, that that ugly cement mound is a plinth, upon which used to be a monument to Soviet partisans who terrorised Lithuania, then an annex of the USSR, with Stalin's sponsorship.
When Lithuania got its independence in 1991, this statue and dozens like it were dismantled - immediately and with tear-jerking fervour - and a large number wound up in Gruto Parkas in southern Lithuania, where they are now a tourist attraction and where the photograph of the original statue was taken but not by me.
So, yes, the ''poor dear children'' of Vilnius have to play in a pretty ugly park. But they are growing up in a free country, as EU citizens - a fact symbolised by the absence of the statue.
This makes me recall, too, the time I walked through the Killing Fields in 2002 and saw Cambodian children splashing happily in the rainwater that had collected in a pit which used to be a mass open grave. It was a scene of past horror and present abject poverty - yet even still, the present was so much better than the historical alternative. Once you grasped the whole story, the view was as hopeful as it was bleak.
My point is that without knowing the fuller context of a place's history, sometimes your eyes play tricks on you, and you don't really see what you're looking at. If you're an innocent kid, quite possibly that's so much the better. But if you're a consultant like me, or an interested traveller, you need to look deeper; you need to see the unseen.
Presenting yourself positively
A corollary here is worth emphasising: if you are a place, it is up to you to present yourself legibly, to make yourself understood, and at times, to turn what may seem like scars or eyesores to you into points of interest for visitors.
Incidentally, a little informative and well-written signage goes a long way, and it's not expensive. When thinkingplace and I collaborated on a project for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, we found a lot of opportunities for on-the-spot explanation. On Boa Island, for instance, we found the two famous ancient carved figures the island is famous for underneath an unsightly tent, and without any story to tell you what you're looking at.
We recommended the wording for a sign to be placed next to the figures, including the tale of the mythic figures as well as the rationale for the ugly tent: ''You've come at a good time,'' the explanation concluded after giving the story of the artifacts. ''There's a debate now about whether to move these figures indoors to a museum, or possibly, to encase them in glass right here. Meanwhile, we've put up a canopy to keep them from getting rained on, as the repeated expansion and contraction of getting wet and drying might cause them to crack.''
Reading this sign, the visitor feels not disappointment at finding gorgeous and mysterious figures under a canopy that interferes with photographs; instead, the visitor experiences pleasure at his good fortune still to see the statues in their natural habit. All because of a couple of paragraphs of text.
Another example: Working in East Timor in 2005 on a tourism development project, I discovered that one of the major visitor attractions is a rundown cemetery called Santa Cruz. This was the site of a 1991 massacre in which 271 Timorese were gunned down by Indonesian soldiers. At risk of sounding blase about a mass murder, the Timorese regard this as just another atrocity they suffered during the 25-year occupation by Indonesian forces (a reign which resulted in 200,000 people being killed, a fifth of the population). However, since it so happens this massacre was captured by a foreign film crew and broadcast to the world, for outsiders it represents a turning point in the incredible story of Timor's daunting struggle for freedom and sovereignty.
Who's interested?
Indeed, years of consulting have taught us that the self-perceptions a place has often clouds its managers' judgement. ''Who'd want to see this?'' they wonder. ''Who could possibly be interesting in knowing that?'' They don't realise that a site that might be boring or ugly (and/or - and this is important - sensitive or painful for them) might be fascinating, even inspiring, to an outsider.
There are many reasons it's essential to have experienced and imaginative consultants assist a place with its image-making efforts. The fact that they can more easily grasp and advocate the perspective of the customer definitely is one of them.
Jeremy Hildreth is a long-time thinkingplace collaborator. He was head of place branding at Saffron and is now an independent adviser to governments and corporations on brand and reputation.