Re-learning City Branding: the Role of Management

More and more cities in Europe are involved in one way or another in branding or re-branding themselves. That is, in processes of positioning and re-positioning through specific strategies of communication, trying to gain visibility in an extremely changing economic landscape. However, such kinds of initiatives are often addressed without method, or they are merely approached as a matter of logos & campaigns, with little empathy with their own local communities. Many of those initiatives end up in circumstantial or inconsistent results.

In addition, the lower public funding environment is pushing to a radical re-thinking about how cities should promote and market themselves. And certainly, this is an opportunity to set up more effective patterns for stakeholder involvement and management (business community, tourist promotion boards, university and the local knowledge system, main urban facilities…), which should aim at both co-production of the strategy and co-delivery of the communication initiatives, including in terms of financial co-responsibility.

In this context, CityLogo, the URBACT network on city brand management, has been conceived as a reaction to the most common gaps in the field. A sort of re-learning as the practice is still under the influence of a too conventional marketing approach. Thus, CityLogo´s thematic roadmap is covering four main themes in innovative city branding, namely: management and new organizational models; updating city narratives and politics of city representation; channels & communication tools: the digital shift; and new segmentation strategies. The first one was the subject of the first thematic workshop that was held in Oslo. It was an uncommon opportunity for in-depth discussion on governance and management models in integrated city branding, and that explains how the event also caught the attention of another plus ten cities, non CityLogo partners. So, in total twenty European cities were participating at the Oslo discussions. 

Why integrated city branding? An organizational challenge

From a content perspective, the question of integration in city branding and marketing is about building up a unifying, comprehensive and updated narrative of the contemporary city. That means, in essence, the concept of “brand” when applied to cities and places. A narrative then filtered through communication codes in order to produce a coherent set of core messages and storytelling (textual pieces) together with a related imagery (visual pieces of a communication strategy). 

Of course, place-based marketers working at the operational level, over the ground, can produce more precise storytelling, adapted to specific target groups if necessary (tourists & visitors, business and investments…), but preserving a common core, a sort of “big narrative” of the city. So, integrated place branding is much more than marketing. It is also, or even basically, about building up urban identities and keeping them alive and current.

From a governance perspective, integrated city branding is about creating a shared working area for the diverse entities in the city targeting and interacting with different groups: visitors, investors, knowledge... and also residents. It is about activating synergies between the different city assets to build up a unifying narrative resulting in a clearer positioning. It is also a response to the current need of a more comprehensive and strategic communication of the city, inside and outside. In Tim Manson´s words, from Marketing Birmingham, integrated place branding is “the glue between different assets for different target groups”. From the organization point of view that is a big challenge, since such a common working area should lay upon a collaboration model, involving at least those local stakeholders with a more relevant role in the international dimension of the city. There is no other way.  

Creating internal conditions within the local government

Addressing both sides of integrated city branding, content and governance, is a collective work that, at some extent, has to be conducted by the Municipality as democratic expression of the community too. However, a mix of maturity and innovation in local governance is needed for taking the lead on this matter. In this sense, not every city is ready for integrated city branding, and the following internal conditions might be promoted in some way.

First condition is to remove, as far as possible, most common misunderstandings on the meaning and scope of city branding, especially between politicians and key policy-decision makers. Adopting the brand concept directly as it comes from the business and marketing schools is heavily damaging the field, and it wrongly places the production of logos and claims and PR campaigns at the peak of the process. This often explains the lack of smooth integration of place branding within urban governance, even the total absence of integrated city branding & marketing as an explicit local policy.

Another condition is leadership from the local government to promote the collaboration model in city branding, that is, “flexible collaboration with flexible partners”. The city marketing team within the municipality must be legitimated enough to take the lead, at least at the initial phase of the process, and it means precise assignment of responsibilities and clear political backing. At this point, it is usual to find contradictions between public declarations on the relevance of city branding and the real institutional weigh of the units in charge of it.

Jan Schmidt-Sørensen, one of the three leading discussants in the Oslo workshop and director of business development in Aarhus, said that “powerful leadership is essential in the ongoing implementation” and many times it is only a matter to appoint a “communicator-in-chief and some dedicated high-ranked people to follow”.

A third facilitating factor would be a better alignment of energies and efforts through effectiveinter-department cooperation within the local government, since integrated city branding has a strong cross-sector profile. In this sense, the Utrecht´s way of synchronizing different working agendas at department level into a common city branding roadmap can be a benchmark. In any case, it can be helpful some dose of awareness and capacity building between city officers about the role of strategic communication and marketing for the city.

Institutionalizing city branding: one direction, many formulas

There is no one single formula to success in organizing and managing integrated city branding, but dedicated marketing-oriented agencies, shaped as public-private partnerships and covering several target groups, seemingly used to work in big cities above 400-500,000 inhabitants, while more flexible ways of stakeholder engagement, that is, with no need of constituted bodies, runs more frequently in medium-sized urban agglomerations. Regarding the latter a small team (highly skilled and with a strong relational capacity) must be appointed in any case for conducting both the strategy and concrete actions.   

Anyway, to keep in mind a collaboration model should be the main driver when addressing a governing system for the city brand. And since we are talking about co-management and not just about consultation, the collaborative model has to be negotiated. Moreover, effective involvement implies a result-oriented behaviour and getting feedbacks for continuous improvement. As numerous parties play a role in marketing the city, a major challenge in a context of systematic city branding is to clarify about responsibility and subsequentaccountability. 

Dundee´s family of brands

Read more

• CityLogo Minisite - URBACT Website
• Download CityLogo Citybrand management thematic report (2.69 MB) Reporting note on the CityLogo-Eurocities thematic workshop, Oslo, 17-19 April 2013