The study, entitled ‘The City Brand Barometer’ and created by London-based Saffron Consultants, ranks 72 of Europe’s largest cities based on a comparison of their assets and attractions against the strength of their brands. To support the analysis, Saffron commissioned a YouGov poll of 2,000 consumers to find out what people most want from a city.

Unsurprisingly, Paris and London emerged as the cities with the best assets and the strongest brands to match. Among old Europe’s other capitals, Berlin is the striking example of a city with a brand that is significantly stronger than its assets. On the other hand, Rome is more blessed with what people want than the German capital but it is not as effective at communicating this – hence its brand is considerably weaker than Berlin’s. Vienna, Austria, was the only city deemed to get precisely the reputation its assets deserve – its brand was judged to be fully consistent with what the city has to offer.

However, the Barometer also reveals a clutch of undervalued cities, which could provide pointers to Europe’s future ‘city gems’, provided they learn how to promote themselves. Bulgaria’s Sofia has many of the assets tourists want from a city but doesn’t have the reputation to match. To a lesser extent, the same applies to other EU accession cities, such as Poland’s Krakow and Wroclaw and Lithuania’s Vilnius – Europe’s Capital of Culture in 2009. These cities are hidden gems and greater devotion to flaunting their wares can help them onto Europe’s top table.

Saffron’s research suggests a handful of old Europe cities, including Antwerp and Lisbon are in a similar position, punching well below their weight. They have many of the qualities people want in a city but are losing out by failing to promote themselves.

Conversely, Scottish capital Glasgow, Irish capital Dublin and English city Liverpool emerge as some of the cities whose brands punch above the weight their attributes deserve. The study finds that other cities, like Bradford, England, which have neither good assets nor strong brands, risk obscurity if they do not act to improve their brand, which requires both material improvement of assets and better promotion.

The study also underlines the contrasting fortunes of Barcelona and Naples – two potentially comparable cities in terms of regional significance, yet the Catalan capital has trounced its Italian rival in projecting a distinctive idea of what it stands for and who it’s appealing to. The southern Italian city is rich in good climate, history, culture and gastronomy but it has devoted little time to creating a reputation among Europe’s cities. Naples’ well-documented refuse crisis makes the need for deliberate action to improve its image even more acute. It has the necessary attractions to help shift perceptions in its favour.

The report concludes that a city wanting to improve its standing in the world should work on a set of ten things, which Saffron has identified as the factors which determine a city’s brand. These include factors such as a distinctive sense of place, ambition/policy vision and business climate and civic pride.

Jeremy Hildreth, Saffron’s head of place branding, told City Mayors that the main purpose of the study was to identify the ‘undervalued stocks’ amongst European cities. “Interestingly, although we have a tendency to think of a city’s star as permanently fixed, in reality the fortunes of places rise and fall over time. Our perceptions shift, too, but they are imperfectly correlated with reality. We continue to think well of a place even if it no longer deserves it. It seems we’ll forgive a place anything provided it’s sexy and going there gives us something to talk about when we get home. A city’s brand is an overall image and set of associations that resides in people’s heads and branding means the deliberate actions taken to alter or improve an image. It entails a place gathering its leaders together and deciding what assets it has to work with and what weaknesses it needs to correct,” Hildreth explained.

Click here to view the results for all cities.