Efforts of creating and communicating positive images constitute a considerable part of contemporary regional development strategies. The use of different marketing practices has become a popular way to promote attractiveness for tourists, business and in-migrants in growth regions as well as in peripheral and economically vulnerable regions across Europe. In this article I explore the employment of different place marketing strategies as a development tool in specific local contexts. The study aims at understanding the role of place marketing in the process of image building in municipalities with experiences of negative economic development and unfavourable images. The empirical material used consists of a case study with six small industrial municipalities in the Swedish Bergslagen region. Strategies of image building are described and analysed by using a conceptual model of different cultural economy approaches to development. The case study indicates that place marketing in a broader sense should not only be looked upon as a matter of selling the municipality to outsiders such as tourists and potential in-migrants. In some types of municipalities, place marketing efforts are rather a matter of adding new aspects to, or entirely changing the place brand. An important target group is in this case the inhabitants of the region. By selling itself to ‘insiders’ the municipalities are trying to create a discourse of attractiveness.