EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Branding your City

Branding your City – a guidebook for city leaders

Introduction

City branding has become a ‘must do’ for cities. In today’s globalised, networked world, every place has to compete with every other place for its share of the world’s consumers, tourists, businesses, investment, capital, respect and attention. Cities are increasingly the focus of this international competition. If understood and implemented well, branding is an effective tool for cities to define themselves and attract positive attention. This practical guidebook by CEOs for Cities takes city leaders by the hand in developing their own city branding strategy.

Description

The purpose of this report is to help urban leaders increase their understanding of what it means to pursue a brand strategy for a place, to describe why place branding is necessary, and more importantly, to describe how to initiate a brand strategy with an ideal eight-step process:

Step 1: Define Clear Objectives – Start with more general objectives, address them in greater detail along the way
Step 2: Understand the Target Audience – audiences need to be minimized in number and prioritized in importance
Step 3: Identify Current Brand Image – understand how the target audience perceives the place today, to determine the gap between the current and the aspirational stage
Step 4: Set the Aspirational Brand Identity – this identity should be both credible to the target audience and sustainable over time
Step 5: Develop the Positioning – the positioning is a promise or a benefit that a place wants to own in the minds of the target audience in the short term
Step 6: Create Value Propositions – specify what the positioning means for specific parts of the target audience
Step 7: Execute the Brand Strategy – identify and prioritise ‘touchpoints’ (every interaction or point of contact with the target audience)
Step 8: Measure Success – to show stakeholders that their investment in time and money results in even more returns; the report offers six broad measures

Background information

CEOs for Cities is made up of more than 80 urban leaders, representing 29 US cities. It’s a network of mayors, corporate CEOs, university presidents, foundation officials and business and civic leaders from leading America cities. CEOs for Cities provides its members with insight into the challenges that matter to the success of cities and the new partnerships and new thinking required to find innovative responses.

Conclusions

The guide book concludes with twelve ‘Guiding Principles for Branding a City’:

Have a Purpose
Credibility Is Key
Be Specific
Be Resourceful
Grassroots Drive Word of Mouth
Make It More than a Tagline
Look beyond Words
Make It Emotional
It Takes Time
Make It Consistent
Ensure Stakeholders Are Involved
Keep Stakeholders Informed of Success

After reading the guide book, one could compile the following guidelines to help you create your cities brand strategy:

Be credible and build your city's image on assets your city truly possesses: ‘It is easy to have aspirations for a place, but they must be grounded in reality. (…) A brand is the DNA of a place, what it is made of, what it passes from generation to generation. It is authentic and indicates what makes a place different from others.’ (Branding your City, pp. 21-22)
It is not only the city government that represents the city. Inhabitants and businesses are just as well ambassadors of the city. It's crucial to involve all necessary stakeholders – to be consistent and to mobilise all support necessary to successfully put your city’s brand in the minds of your target audience.

Contact info

CEOs for Cities
Ms Sheila Redick, tel. +1 202 470 6038

Publication date

01/03/2006

Links

Download "Branding your City" (PDF, Eng, 125 KB)For more information, please visit the CEOs for Cities website More documents on city branding on the EUKN website

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Competitiveness