from city marketing to city branding: towards a theoretical

58 Place Branding Vol. 1, 1, 58–73 � Henry Stewart Publications 1744–070X (2004)

From city marketing to citybranding: Towards a theoreticalframework for developingcity brandsReceived (in revised form): 30th June, 2004

Michalis Kavaratzisstudied business administration in Greece and marketing in Scotland. Since April 2003 he has been a researcher in the Urbanand Regional Studies Institute (URSI) of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, focusing on the topics of place andcity marketing. His particular interest is in place and city branding and he recently commenced work on a project which willinvestigate branding processes in major European cities.

Abstract Cities all over Europe include more and more marketing techniques andmethods in their administration practice and governing philosophy. The transfer ofmarketing knowledge, however, to the operational environment of cities proves a causeof difficulties and misalignments, mostly due to the peculiar nature of places in generaland cities in particular as marketable assets.

In this paper, city branding is suggested as the appropriate way to describe andimplement city marketing. City marketing application is largely dependent on theconstruction, communication and management of the city’s image, as it is acceptedthat encounters with the city take place through perceptions and images. Therefore theobject of city marketing is the city’s image, which in turn is the starting point fordeveloping the city’s brand. The most appropriate concept to understand marketingapplicability within cities is the recently developed concept of corporate branding, whichwith the necessary modifications is applied to cities.

The core of the paper is a theoretical framework to understand the city’s brand andits management, which was developed through a review of the literature on both citymarketing and the corporate brand. City branding provides, on the one hand, the basisfor developing policy to pursue economic development and, at the same time, it servesas a conduit for city residents to identify with their city. In this sense the relevance ofand need for a framework describing and clarifying the processes involved in citybranding are equally strong for facing increasing competition for resources, investmentand tourism on the one hand and for addressing urgent social issues like socialexclusion and cultural diversity on the other. The framework focuses on the use of citybranding and its potential effects on city residents and the way residents associate withand experience their city, and it is based on a combination of city marketing measuresand the components of the city’s brand management.

Keywords: City branding, city marketing, corporate branding, city image, citybranding variables

Michalis KavaratzisUrban and RegionalStudies Institute,Faculty of Spatial Sciences,University of Groningen,The Netherlands.

Tel: �31 50 363 6602;Fax: �31 50 363 3901;e-mail:[email protected]

with characteristics once distinctive tobusinesses — risk taking, inventiveness,promotion and profit motivation(Hubbard and Hall, 1998). The use ofmarketing was only a naturalconsequence of such entrepreneurialgovernance. Its implementation, however,was (and to a great extent still is) limitedto methods and techniques that wereeasily transferable from the original fieldof marketing application, and in mostcases restricted to promotional measures.One reason for this partialimplementation is the limited knowledgeand limited understanding of marketingamong people with the task toadminister cities, another the embryonicstage of marketing in the public sector, athird the limited understanding amongmarketing academics and practitioners ofthe peculiar nature of places; practitionerswho were frequently asked to implementcity marketing. But as Ashworth (1994:647) states, ‘. . . much of the crudelydefined and vaguely targeted boosterism,widely if inaccurately spread by manypublic sector place promotion agenciesbarely counts as marketing at all.’

The implementation of marketingphilosophy and methodology, or at leastof marketing techniques that were easy toadapt and use in the practice of citygovernance, has been mirrored by theincreasing interest of academics fromvarious fields, who believe that theprinciples of marketing are, with thenecessary modifications, applicable tocities and their operational environment.Ashworth and Voogd (1994) attribute thetheoretical emergence of place marketingto three developments within themarketing discipline that paved the way,by solving the difficulties of transferringmarketing knowledge from its initial fieldof industrial goods and services to places.These are the development of marketingin non-profit organisations, of socialmarketing and of image marketing, all of

INTRODUCTIONWhile the marketing of urban places hasbeen practised, at least, since the 19thcentury (Ward, 1998), cities increasinglytended to rely on marketing methods inthe last three decades, when ‘competitionfor inward investment, tourism revenuesand residents at various spatial scalesintensified’ (Kotler et al., 1999).

It is clear, though, that the earlyexamples mentioned in the literature areonly promotional activities undertaken bycities or regions in various places andtimes. According to Ashworth andVoogd (1994: 39) ‘there is nothing newabout places being promoted by thoselikely to profit from their development.What is new, however, is the consciousapplication of marketing approaches bypublic planning agencies not just as anadditional instrument for the solution ofintractable planning problems but,increasingly, as a philosophy of placemanagement.’

The context in which marketingbecame accessible to city administratorswas provided by the rise of the so-called‘entrepreneurial city’, and the marketingof places has been one of the definingfeatures of the entrepreneurial modes ofurban governance that have come toprominence since the 1970s. Accordingto Griffiths (1998: 41),‘entrepreneurialism as a mode of urbangovernance came about as a response byindividual cities to the collapse of theFordist social democratic arrangementsthat had facilitated the spread ofmanagerial forms of governance’. Theessence of this transformation of urbanpolitics is that policies pursued by localgovernments are steered away from thetraditional activities associated with thecity and state (Hubbard and Hall, 1998).Entrepreneurialism captures the sense inwhich cities are being run in a morebusinesslike manner, and the practicesthat have seen local government imbued

� Henry Stewart Publications 1744–070X (2004) Vol. 1, 1, 58–73 Place Branding 59

From city marketing to city branding

operate, and at the same time a matterthat needs clarification and furtherdevelopment. Borchert (1994)demonstrates that ‘a consensus aboutwhat marketing of urban places shouldinclude is lacking so far, with manyauthors having a very limitedunderstanding of the nature andconsequences of marketing’. AsAshworth (1994) concludes, ‘placemarketing is a legitimate form ofmarketing in the sense that theterminology, techniques and philosophiesof marketing can be applied to places butequally, if it is to be attemptedsuccessfully, then a special type ofmarketing has to be devised’.

One of the basic elements of this ‘newtype of marketing’ is the determinationof the major action areas that theimplementation of a strategic marketingplan should incorporate. It is thearticulation and description of broad,distinct categories of actual measures andfield actions that are or should be dealtwith by city marketers in the effort toimplement integrated city marketing.The intention is to create a mix ofcomponents that need to be managedand orchestrated, and in this way ‘notonly delineate the domain (byarticulating its key elements), but alsoprovide a basis in which the area may beoperationalised’ (Balmer, 2002).

FROM CITY MARKETING TOCITY BRANDINGFirat and Venkatesh (1993: 246) considerthat in postmodernity ‘marketing is theconscious and planned practice ofsignification and representation’. Thisthought plays an important role in thedevelopment of the theoreticalframework, which is described in thispaper. It provides the basic guidelinesthat lead from the city marketing mix tothe city’s brand, which are the two

which contributed to the liberation oftraditional marketing thought from goalsand practices attached to this initial fieldof application. The development of theconcept of non-profit marketing (Kotlerand Levy, 1969) has freed the applicationof marketing from its connection to directfinancial profit making, while the conceptof social marketing (Kotler and Zaltman,1971) introduced the possibility to usemarketing in order to alter or reinforcesets of attitudes held by targetedindividuals or groups, with the final goalbeing the good of society at large. Thenotion of image marketing stems from therealisation that images can be effectivelymarketed while the products to whichthey relate remain vaguely delineated(Ashworth and Voogd, 1994), a notionthat was warm-heartedly accepted by cityadministrators faced with the complex andintricate city product.

There are, however, more recentdevelopments within the marketingdiscipline that make the distance fromtraditional, general marketing to place andcity marketing shorter and the transfer ofmarketing knowledge easier. According toBorchert (1994), ‘the majority ofpublications [on city marketing] are atbest limited to some aspects of marketingand in most cases there exists only a weakrelation with modern developments inmarketing theory’. One concept that hasemerged in recent years and has a clearand direct relevance to marketingimplementation in cities is the concept ofcorporate branding and corporate-levelmarketing, which is a theoretical andpractical development of the earlierconcepts of corporate image andcorporate identity (eg Balmer, 1998;Balmer and Greyser, 2003).

The applicability of marketing theoryand practice in urban governance andurban administration is a matter of greatinterest, especially within the changingenvironment in which cities in Europe


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(a) Promotional measures(b) Spatial-functional measures(c) Organisational measures and(d) Financial measures.

The scope and effectiveness of citymarketing is largely determined by theselection and application of the appropriatecombination of these measures.’

Kotler et al. (1999), although adoptingthe marketing mix as suggested bygeneral marketing, distinguish betweenfour distinct strategies for placeimprovement that are the foundations forbuilding a competitive advantage. Theseare:

— design (place as character)— infrastructure (place as fixed

environment)— basic services (place as service

provider)— attractions (places as entertainment

and recreation).

Hubbard and Hall (1998) describe ageneric entrepreneurial model of citygovernance. As goals of this model theyidentify re-imaging localities and thetransformation of previously productivecities into spectacular cities of (and for)consumption. The achievement of thesegoals is pursued according to the sameauthors through specific policies, whichinclude:

— advertising and promotion— large-scale physical redevelopment— public art and civic statuary— mega-events— cultural regeneration— public–private partnerships.

The city’s imageThere is a notable agreement in theliterature, as shown in the

distinct approaches to city marketingcombined here.

The city marketing mixThe first way to approach the topic isthe determination of a set of instrumentsand activities at the disposal of themarketer that can be combined into amarketing programme and ‘are useful inpursuing a certain market response’ (vanWaterschoot, 2002). In marketing sciencethis has been termed the ‘marketingmix’. The importance of thedetermination of the marketing mix,meaning ‘the combination of marketingmeasures needed to achieve the desiredstrategy’ (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990),has been highlighted in city marketingliterature (eg Kotler et al., 1999; van denBerg et al., 1990) and it is acknowledgedby most commentators as an essentialstep in the whole marketing effort.There have been attempts to articulate amix of elements equivalent to the famous4Ps of the traditional marketingparadigm. The actual determination,however, of what the marketing mixshould include in the context of citymarketing proves to cause problems,which are associated with thepeculiarities of cities and places generallyas marketable assets and with therelevance of the elements of thetraditional marketing mix to citymarketing. Some commentators, forexample, adopt for city marketing theservices marketing mix (eg van den Berget al., 1990); others adopt a wider view.

In the third phase of the citymarketing process, Ashworth and Voogd(1990) suggest what they term ageographical marketing mix, which

‘in contrast to the marketing mix usually foundin traditional business applications, may bedefined as a combination of at least thefollowing sets of instruments:



conflicting messages sent by the city andis formed in the mind of each individualreceiver of these messages separately. AsBailly (1994) observes, ‘like geography,urban marketing is based onrepresentations; this enables us to tacklenot the city itself but its meaning in asymbolic and ideological context’. It isthis line of thinking that makes Hubbardand Hall (1998: 7) come to theconclusion that ‘it is perhaps best toconsider the entrepreneurial city as animaginary city, constituted by a plethoraof images and representations’.

Graham (2002) makes a distinctionbetween two parallel cities that existsimultaneously. The first is the ‘externalcity’, ‘which can, at least superficially, beencapsulated in one or two signaturebuildings or landmarks’. As he suggests,‘urban conservation (. . . in this externallevel) has always been motivated by thedesire to enhance distinctive identity atthe local scale and to distinguish oneplace from another’. The same can besaid about city marketing, in the sensethat it has so far dealt with this externalcity, trying to conceptualise it as acommodity. ‘However, the moreconservation is practised, the less locallydistinctive identity is likely to become’(Graham, 2002: 1009). The argumentraised is that since the methodologiesused by different cities in different partsof the world are the same, the outcomewill inevitably be the same as well,resulting in ‘high streets being ‘‘LauraAshleyised’’ from Dublin to Potsdam’(Ashworth, 2002). Or as Vermeulen(2002: 12) comments about the practiceof city marketing in the Netherlands,‘under pressure from the market, sceneryis being erected all over the countrywhich is in no way rooted in thecultural background of the region’. Thesecond parallel city described by Graham(2002: 1011) is the ‘internal city’, thecity of the mind. ‘This is a much more

above-mentioned sets of marketingvariables, that a crucial role within thecity marketing mix is played by imageformulation and image communication.In some cases, the importance attributedto the image is expressed as a sole focuson the promotion process (eg Burgess,1982; Gold and Ward, 1994; Ward,1998), in other cases as an emphasis onthe conventional promotional measures(eg Kotler et al., 1999) and in other casesas discussing the possibility of urbanpromotion through art, festivals andcultural attractions (eg Kearns and Philo,1993). Borchert (1994: 417) stresses thaturban marketing is a relativelyunexplored new field, whereaspromotion of places is a very old activityindeed, and he further argues that ‘therelation between the two seems,unfortunately, obscure for somegeographers’. But in other cases thesignificance of the image is expressed asunderlining that a city’s image iscommunicated not only by promotion,but also through the rest of themarketing measures (eg Ashworth andVoogd, 1990; Ashworth, 2001;Dematteis, 1994). ‘For example, measuresoperating in spatial design features willcontribute towards urban images andthus reinforce, or contradict, promotionalmeasures’ (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990:31).

The above idea of the communicativeeffect of all marketing measures hasorigins in the repeated emphasis (both ingeneral marketing and in city marketingliteratures) on the need to combine andorchestrate the sets of marketingmeasures, as one set has implications forthe effectiveness of the others. At thesame time it stems from the realisationthat encounters with the city take placethrough perceptions and images, thus theobject of city marketing is not the city‘itself’, but its image. An image is theresult of various, different and often


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the understanding of the nature of theplace consumer. Furthermore, one wouldbe necessarily led to the notion that inreality one is talking about city branding.Cova (1996: 20) asserts that ‘. . . the jobof post-modern marketing is to identifythe cultural meanings and images that areintended for the product’, and goes onto confirm that this ‘image marketingand branding or brand management areclosely related — branding is of criticalimportance in post-modern marketing’.The cultural meanings and imagesintended and desired for the city lie, aswell, in the heart of city marketing (egKearns and Philo, 1993). Brandingendows a product with a specific andmore distinctive identity (Cova, 1996)and that is, in many ways, what citymarketing seeks to do for cities.

Branding is added to the list ofdevelopments that bring marketingtheory and practice closer to the natureand characteristics of places. It provides abase for identifying and uniting a widerange of images intended for the city andmeanings attributed to the city in onemarketing message, the city’s brand. Theframework to understand a city’s brand isprovided by the recent development,within the marketing discipline, ofcorporate branding.

CORPORATE BRANDSFollowing the criticism against themarketing mix concept and the chargethat in the new economy and society itsutility has largely been surpassed (egBrownlie et al., 1999; O’Malley andPatterson, 1998), there were severalattempts to articulate new approaches tomarketing that would be more relevant.One of these approaches is the notion ofcorporate branding and corporate-levelmarketing, which is a development oftraditional product branding, necessitatedand, at the same time, enriched by the

inner-directed mnemonic city, one that isconcerned with social inclusion andexclusion, lifestyle, diversity andmulticulturalism. It is a place of complex,overlapping and ambiguous messages.’

Extending the above thoughts, it ispossible to describe the ‘internal city’ asthe subjective amalgamation of theseambiguous messages, as received by themind according to each individual’sexperiences and priorities. The twoparallel cities exist simultaneously, overlapand interact. The crucial point for themanagement and marketing of the city isthis point of interaction. The point ofinteraction is the perception of the city,as formed by each individual that comesto encounters with the city. It is thecity’s image. Indeed, as Kampschulte(1999) comments, ‘the image of the cityis best described as the link between real,objective space and its perception’.Vermeulen (2002) adds that the imageoriginates only in part from a physicalreality and is based on well-wornprejudices, desires and memories thattake shape in the collective memory. Asthe same author asserts ‘it is not the citybut the image that has to be planned’. Itis, then, the image of the city that is theobject of city marketing activities.Hubbard and Hall (1998: 8) recognisethat ‘the manipulation of city images,cultures and experiences has becomeprobably the most important part of thepolitical armoury of urban governors andtheir coalition partners in theentrepreneurial era’.

If it is, though, the image of the citythat city marketing deals with, thiswould have serious implications for therelevance of many marketing suggestionsfound in traditional marketing on theone hand, and for the persistentquestions that city marketing has so farfailed to answer adequately, namely thedefinition of the city product, thedetermination of the city’s market and



1997: 355). A strong identity is veryimportant for transmitting a consistentinternal and external image amongstakeholders, turning into a valuable asset(Simoes and Dibb, 2001).

Balmer (2002) suggests that theelements that constitute a corporateidentity are:

— strategy (management vision, corporatestrategy, product/services as well ascorporate performance, corporatebrand covenant, corporate ownership)

— structure (relationships between parentcompany and subsidiaries, relationswith alliance or franchise partners)

— communication (total corporatecommunication, which encompassesprimary, secondary and tertiarycommunication)

— culture (the soft and subjectiveelements consisting of the mix ofsub-cultures present within, but notalways emanating from, theorganisation).

As Balmer and Greyser (2002) argue,‘although prevailing corporate thinkingconsiders identity to be a monolithicphenomenon, this premise is narrow andinadequate’. For the same authors, anorganisation has multiple identities,which ‘can co-exist comfortably withinthe organisation even if they are slightlydifferent’. Organisations must managetheir multiple identities to avoidpotentially harmful misalignments.Furthermore, corporate brandmanagement needs to take into accountand is inextricably linked to themanagement of identity (Balmer andGreyser, 2002: 16).

Hatz and Schultz (2001) suggest thatcreating a corporate brand is complicatedand they point to the interplay of threevariables — vision, culture and image —that need to be aligned in order tocreate a strong corporate brand. In an

rise of other corporate-level concepts,such as corporate image, corporateidentity and corporate communications.

The goal of branding as it has evolvedduring the last 40 years has been toexplore ways to add value to the basicproduct or service and thus create brandpreference and loyalty (Knox andBickerton, 2003). Currently, there isgeneral agreement in the marketingliterature that the brand is more than aname given to a product; it embodies awhole set of physical andsocio-psychological attributes and beliefs(Simoes and Dibb, 2001). Brands are notonly considered as valuable assets of acompany, but furthermore, as someexperts believe in post-modern consumerculture, brands play a vital role in theconstruction of consumer identity (Elliottand Wattanasuwan, 1998).

In the early 1990s several brandingand communication consultantsmentioned and then went on to assesswhat was then called the ‘companybrand’ (Balmer and Gray, 2003),reflecting the need to deepen themarketing view of the brand toencompass organisational attributes and toshift focus from the integrity of theproduct brand to the organisation andpeople behind the brand (Knox andBickerton, 2003). The later half of the1990s witnessed a crescendo of writingon the (more encompassing, morestrategic-sounding) ‘corporate brand’,which has since then ‘seized theimagination of scholars and managersalike and its rise has been inexorable’(Balmer and Gray, 2003: 975).

A fundamental notion for corporatebranding is corporate identity. Corporateidentity is a holistic concept that‘articulates the corporate ethos, aims andvalues and presents a sense ofindividuality that can help to differentiatethe organisation within its competitiveenvironment’ (van Riel and Balmer,


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on small municipalities in Britainsuggest that branding as a concept wasseen as relevant, but not alwaysunderstood or applied effectively.Trueman et al. (2001) recognise thatthere is an urgent need for a robustanalysis of the city as a brand thattakes into account a wide range ofstakeholders. At this point the literatureon corporate identity may be relevantsince it offers the dimension of cultureto underpin corporate values (Truemanet al., 2001). Also Rainisto (2003: 50)states that ‘place brands resemblecorporate umbrella brands and canbenefit the value of a place’s image’.At the same time, it is one of thevery few occasions in generalmarketing texts that a direct referenceis made to the relevance of corporatebranding to city marketing and to thefact that ‘corporate level brands canalso be applied to countries, regionsand cities’ (Balmer and Gray, 2003).

But the important question is: in whatways is a city a brand, or if, indeed, acity can be seen as a brand? Thefollowing definition of brands might assistin answering this difficult question: ‘abrand is a product or service madedistinctive by its positioning relative tothe competition and by its personality,which comprises a unique combinationof functional attributes and symbolicvalues’ (Hankinson and Cowking, 1993:10). The key to successful branding is toestablish a relationship between the brandand the consumer, such that there is aclose fit between the consumer’s ownphysical and psychological needs and thebrand’s functional attributes and symbolicvalues (Hankinson and Cowking, 1993).This definition of brands and brandingshows the relation of branding to thegoals of city marketing and managing thecity’s image as identified in the literature(eg Ashworth and Voogd, 1990, 1994;Kotler et al., 1999). Like brands, cities

attempt to define the corporate brandKnox and Bickerton (2003: 1013) state ‘acorporate brand is the visual, verbal andbehavioural expression of anorganisation’s unique business model’.The brand is expressed through thecompany’s mission, core values, beliefs,communication, culture and overalldesign (Simoes and Dibb, 2001). Balmer(2001) argues that at the core of acorporate brand is an explicit covenant(other commentators use the termpromise) between an organisation and itskey stakeholder groups.

Corporate branding draws on thetraditions of product branding, in that itshares the same objective of creatingdifferentiation and preference (Knox andBickerton, 2003). Simoes and Dibb(2001) argue that ‘the entity in corporatebranding has a higher level ofintangibility, complexity and (social)responsibility, making it much moredifficult to build a coherent brand’.

Brands in general and corporate brandsspecifically are seen as the base forlong-term success of various firms andorganisations. According to Aaker (1996),in contemporary marketing branding iscentral, as it integrates all the strategicelements into one success formula. Thewhole marketing programme —objectives, strategies and tactics — isderived from brand positioning (Rainisto,2003).

CITY BRANDSHankinson (2001: 129) comments that‘in contrast to the marketing oflocations, there are relatively fewarticles to be found in the academicliterature with regard to the promotionof locations as brands. This is incontrast to the increasing evidence inthe press that branding, at least as aconcept, is increasingly being applied tolocations.’ The findings of his research



corporate-level marketing do have amultitude of suggestions for marketingimplementation within cities.

THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKOne of the main difficulties for citymarketers is that they are faced with amultitude of target audiences andstakeholders’ groups. The focus of thetheoretical framework here is clearly onthe city’s own residents. This does notimply that other target audiences(visitors, investors etc) are or should beconsidered less important. It just stressesthe fact that all activities (whether theyconcern economic, cultural, social, touristor any other development of the city)are done in the name of the city’sresidents and their ultimate goal is toimprove their quality of life.

The theoretical framework that thispaper centres around is provided by thecombination of all of the above-outlinedapproaches. City marketing measures thatmake up the city marketing mix assuggested by city marketing theory andapplied in practice (described above) andthe components of the city’s brandmanagement derived from the transfer tothe context of cities of the notions ofcorporate branding (also described above)merge to provide the guidelines fordeveloping and managing the city’sbrand. The basic elements arerepresented in the form of a figurewhich describes the way in which imagecommunication takes place through thechoice and appropriate treatment ofvariables (Figure 1).

The beginning lies in the realisationthat all encounters with the city takeplace through perceptions and images. Itis accepted here that it is indeed theimage of the city that needs to beplanned (Vermeulen, 2002) andconsequently marketed. It is theinteraction of the ‘external’ with the

satisfy functional, symbolic and emotionalneeds (Rainisto, 2003) and the attributesthat satisfy those needs need to beorchestrated into the city’s uniqueproposition (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990).Branding provides a good starting pointfor city marketing (Kotler et al., 1999)and a solid framework by which tomanage the city’s image. If it is indeedthe city’s image that needs to be planned(Vermeulen, 2002), managed andmarketed, then city branding would bethe right theoretical and practicalapproach.

There is an interesting, revealing andillustrative of the above thoughts similaritybetween the points made earlier aboutcorporate identities and brands and thefollowing sentence (Florian, 2002: 24)taken from a book entitled ‘CityBranding’: ‘. . . urban renewal includes thecreation of an identity with its ownexperiential value, which is profoundlyoriginal and uncopyable. This touchesupon such points as structure,programming, functions, the sort ofactions and activities that characterise theimage of the city, events and in the lastresort the chemistry of the people whooperate there.’

Additionally, there are commoncharacteristics of corporate branding, assummarised by Balmer and Gray (2003),and city marketing, as described in theliterature, that support the suggestion thatthe framework for understanding citybrands is provided by corporate brandsand their management. Both corporatebrands and city brands havemultidisciplinary roots (eg Ashworth andVoogd, 1990), both address multiplegroups of stakeholders (eg Kotler et al.,1999; Ashworth, 2001), both have a highlevel of intangibility and complexity,both need to take into account socialresponsibility (eg Ave, 1994), both dealwith multiple identities (eg Dematteis,1994). Corporate branding and


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‘Landscape strategies’ refer to fields ofactions and decisions that are relevant tourban design, architecture, green spacesand generally public spaces in the city.The increasingly popular use of publicart is also included in this category,together with heritage planning. Thiscomponent is in reality similar to theproduct component of the traditional 4Psof marketing and has been suggested incity marketing theory as design (place ascharacter) (Kotler et al., 1999) and as thefirst part of the ‘spatial-functionalmeasures’ of Ashworth and Voogd(1990). At the same time it is borrowedfrom the reality of city marketing aspractised so far — the same as urbandesign and place marking (Griffiths,1998) or the sum of large-scale physicalredevelopment and public art (Hubbardand Hall, 1998).

‘Infrastructure projects’ refer toprojects developed to create, improve orgive a distinctive character to the various

‘internal’ city that Graham (2002)describes which becomes the focal pointfor city branding. Everything a cityconsists of, everything that takes place inthe city and is done by the city,communicates messages about the city’simage. All the interventions or actionareas that are included in the frameworkhave, in the context of city branding,both functional as well as symbolicmeaning, which is the main idea thatdifferentiates marketing measures frombranding decisions. The image iscommunicated through three distincttypes of communication, namely primary,secondary and tertiary.

Primary communicationPrimary communication relates to thecommunicative effects of a city’s actions,when communication is not the maingoal of these actions. It is divided intofour broad areas of intervention.



Figure 1: City image communication

City’s image

Image communication

Secondary communication Primary communication

StructureLandscape

Infrastructure Behaviour

Tertiary communication

significance are the type of servicesprovided by the city, together with theeffectiveness of their provision and thenumber and type of events (like festivalsand other cultural, sports or leisureevents) organised in the city. The city’sbehaviour borrows from the practice ofcity marketing, the event-based strategiesthat Griffiths (1998) identifies and thesum of mega-events and culturalregeneration of Hubbard and Hall(1998). It also includes the basic servicesof Kotler et al. (1999) and the financialmeasures of Ashworth and Voogd (1990).Mostly, though, it is a suggestion in thespirit of corporate branding. It is whatBalmer (2002) refers to as strategy, or thesum of vision and culture that Hatz andSchultz (2001) identify as two of thethree elements that need to be aligned.

It has to be stressed that this list is notand cannot be exhaustive. It relies on theskills, the innovativeness and theimagination of every city marketer andcity administrator to enrich it with newideas, practices and techniques. It does,however, provide a basis from which tounderstand the multifaceted process ofbuilding city images and managing citybrands.

Secondary communicationSecondary communication is the formal,intentional communication that mostcommonly takes place throughwell-known marketing practices likeindoor and outdoor advertising, publicrelations, graphic design, the use of alogo etc. It is largely the same as what ismeant by the promotion component ofthe traditional marketing mix and it hasbeen so far the one marketing variablethat cities have adopted with great ease.Secondary communication here is inaccordance with what is meant by thepromotional measures of Ashworth andVoogd (1990) and by the advertising and

types of infrastructure that are needed ina city. On the one hand this element ofthe framework has to do with improvingthe city’s accessibility to the variousaudiences, whether it is accessibility ofthe high street to the residents,accessibility of major monuments tovisitors or the existence of an adequatelylarge airport. On the other hand it refersto the existence and sufficiency ofvarious facilities like cultural centres,conference facilities etc. Infrastructureprojects as a component of the city’sbrand have the same meaning asinfrastructure (place as fixedenvironment) suggested by Kotler et al.(1999) and are the second part of thespatial-functional measures of Ashworthand Voogd (1990).

‘Organisational and administrativestructure’ refers to the effectiveness andimprovement of the city’s governingstructure. Organisational structure is inthe same spirit (but wider) as theorganisational measures of Ashworth andVoogd (1990), it is the natural extensionof the public–private partnerships thatHubbard and Hall (1998) include in theirdescription of city marketing practice. Atthe same time the organisational structureis one of the main suggestions ofcorporate branding, it is the structurethat Balmer (2002) describes as one ofthe components of corporate identity.The most important elements of thiscategory would be communitydevelopment networks and citizens’participation in the decision making,along with the establishment ofpublic–private partnerships. Theorganisation of the marketing andbranding effort itself falls into thiscategory.

Finally, the city’s ‘behaviour’ refers tosuch issues as the city leaders’ vision forthe city, the strategy adopted or thefinancial incentives provided by the cityto various stakeholders. Two elements of


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communication — especially so in thecase of the city’s own residents, who areat the same time the most importanttarget audience of city branding and themost important city marketers.

WHY CITY BRANDING?Helbrecht (1994: 528) discusses therelevance of city marketing philosophyand methods to city governance andlocal development:

‘city marketing enables a new level of qualitywithin the local development policy in termsof comprehensiveness, creativity and flexibility.New resources in the form of ideas, capitaland local knowledge are mobilised for localpolicy. In this way city marketing enables astrategic approach to public planning incollaboration with the private sector.’

In the beginning, local authorities eagerlyembraced marketing in order to attractinward investment (Ashworth and Voogd,1990), and this might be one of thereasons why critical voices have raisedthe argument that city marketingexacerbates social conflicts (Griffiths,1998). According to Paddison (1993)‘within the ‘90s reducing the socialdivisiveness of the city’s marketingimpetus constitutes as much a challengeas maintaining its momentum’. Butthings have changed, as the realisationcame that for most urban authoritiesexternal markets are likely to be, inreality, of minimal importance comparedto internal. In fact:

‘. . . it may be as much about communicationbetween citizens as clients and publicauthorities as service providers as aboutattractive exogenous investment, employmentor customers. Equally, promotion is botheasiest and most effective when it isself-promotion. A place is sending messages toitself. The purpose is the fostering of a civicconsciousness and self-confidence. This is both

promotion of Hubbard and Hall (1998)and Griffiths (1998); it is part of whatBalmer (2002) describes as thecommunication component of corporateidentity. It is what in the practice of citymarketing is regularly confused with thewhole branding effort, so it is useful tostress once more that secondarycommunication needs to be in completeaccordance with the rest of thecomponents and also in total harmonywith the reality of the city asencountered by the various cityaudiences. At least as close to it aspossible, as the well-known rule ofmarketing applies: ‘if you want to kill abad product, advertise it!’

Starting points for secondarycommunication are two elements. Thecontent of this communication is the mostsignificant factor, stressing the self-evident,but often forgotten, fact that there simplyneeds to be something to communicateabout; to put it simply, promotion comesonly after one has something to promote.At the same time it builds upon thecommunicative competence of the city.As Grabow (1998: 4) concludes, the mostimportant factor of city marketing is afunctional communication and ‘thecommunicative competence of a city is akey factor and vital requirement for allphases of successful urban marketing’.This communicative competence of thecity is both a goal, as well as a result ofthe city branding process.

Tertiary communicationFinally, tertiary communication refers toword of mouth, reinforced by media andcompetitors’ communication. It is linkedwith the rest by an interrupted line(Figure 1), as it is not controllable bymarketers. The whole branding processand the other two controllable types ofimage communication have as a goal toevoke and reinforce positive tertiary



is raised that marketing implementationin cities has resulted in a tendencytowards ‘sameness’, diminishing localidentity (Griffiths, 1998; Ashworth, 2002;Vermeulen, 2002). City branding canassist in an attempt to reverse thistendency, since it is largely based uponthe distinctive characteristics of the city.Especially useful at this point is theexamination of the organisationalstructure of the city, which underlinessubjects such as community participation.The second is the notion of the ‘linkingvalue’ of products, services and especiallybrands, a notion developed within theinfluence of post-modernity onmarketing thought. As Cova (1997)remarks, post-modern individuals seekproducts and services less for their usevalue and more for their linking value,in order to satisfy their desire forcommunities; in this sense brands have toserve at the same time the person intheir individuality and the group‘togetherness’. This is the case for citybrands, especially since the city hasalways served and still serves as the placeof this group togetherness.

It is not the main purpose of thispaper to outline in detail the practicaltechniques used by cities to brandthemselves, especially since field researchwill follow. Suffice it to recall here thatthe three main techniques currentlyfashionable among urban planners havebeen listed (Kavaratzis and Ashworth,2004) as ‘personality branding’ (or ‘theGaudi gambit’ after the success of itsBarcelona application), ‘flagshipconstruction’ (or ‘the Pompidou ploy’after the grands projets on the ParisBeaubourg) and ‘events branding’(perhaps Edinburgh and its festival beingthe best-known example). All aredesigned not only to attract attention andcity recognition but also to raiseassociations between the city andattributes regarded as being beneficial to

an end in itself and a necessary preconditionfor external marketing.’ (Ashworth, 2001)

City branding implies a significantchange of perspective on the wholemarketing effort. Marketing is a processthat can be used to accomplish variousgoals set by the city, because ‘to discusscity marketing solely in economic termsis to oversimplify its meaning’ (Paddison,1993: 348). City branding is understoodas the means both for achievingcompetitive advantage in order toincrease inward investment and tourism,and also for achieving communitydevelopment, reinforcing local identityand identification of the citizens withtheir city and activating all social forcesto avoid social exclusion and unrest. Theperspective adopted for this paper andthe study that will follow are incomplete accord with the plea made byAve (1994) for city marketing that canbe called social marketing:

‘because it evaluates the benefits and costs of aspecific project for the whole urbancommunity, not just for the direct beneficiariesor the users of the action carried out. Thisrequires a government action directed atdiscovering the needs of citizens and groupswho cannot speak for themselves. It alsorequires flexibility to change, an ability togather new possibilities along the way, and anevaluation of the finished service’s effect onthe whole city with a view to successiveimprovement.’ (Ave, 1994)

Such a perspective guides the process ofdeveloping and managing city brands.

The study of city brands and brandingis strongly connected to two otherconcepts with significant relevance tocity residents and urban communities.The first is the matter of the city’sdistinctive identity. Although there iswide agreement that one of the mostimportant assets cities possess is theirlocal character and identity, the argument


Kavaratzis

point where all efforts come together,and therefore the point of more possibleconflict or satisfaction (Helbrecht, 1994).In this sense the framework describedearlier is focusing on the most crucialpoint of citizens’ experience with thecity’s marketing effort — on the actualway in which they see, hear and feelwhat marketing is doing for them. Bydoing so, it can serve as the centre of acircle that can be expanded to includethe rest of the city’s key objectives, suchas increasing foreign direct investment,promoting tourism and preserving itsheritage. All these are goals of citybranding and, at the same time, effects ofits successful implementation.

Despite the appearance of a smallnumber of publications on the topic ofcity branding in the last few years(Ashworth, 2001; Hankinson, 2001;Trueman et al., 2001; Hauben et al.,2002; Rainisto, 2003), there is arecognised gap in the literature withregard to the branding process of citiesin general (Hankinson, 2001) and realcase studies in particular (Anholt, 2002;Rainisto, 2003). ‘This is in contrast tothe increasing evidence in the press thatbranding, at least as a concept, isincreasingly being applied to locations’(Hankinson, 2001: 129). Moreover, theconcept of corporate branding (itself arelatively young concept) has notreceived adequate attention bycommentators interested in place and citymarketing, with the exception of theresearch undertaken by Rainisto (2003)and the working paper of Trueman et al.(2001). There is also a ‘remarkablepaucity of real case histories, andsurprisingly little work that is of directpractical application’ (Anholt, 2002).Theory development would need moretheoretical modelling and field studies toget feedback regarding real needs of theplaces for sophisticated developments(Rainisto, 2003). The study that will

its economic or social development. It isworth noticing that none of the abovewas originally planned and intended tobrand the city, but reality showed thatthis could be one of the main functions.The question one has to answer, though,is if the city’s brand (or even onlyexamining and thinking about the city asa brand) can operate as an umbrella thatcan cover a multitude of stakeholdersand audiences. Can city branding createin the minds of all people whoencounter the city the feeling that theyare dealing with an entity, with onething, which they could have arelationship with? Applying corporatebranding to places demands a treatmentof the place brand as the whole entitycomprised of the place products, in orderto achieve consistency of the messagessent. At the same time it demandsassociating the place with ‘stories’ aboutthe place not by simply adding themnext to the name or trying to implythem by isolating beautiful images of theplace. The ‘stories’ need to be built inthe place and afterwards communicatedto all audiences.

This study begins with the belief thatthe single, ultimate goal of citymarketing is to increase living standardsfor city residents. Within the citymarketing context and with this finalobjective in mind, it is the developmentof the city’s brand and the correctunderstanding and treatment of itscomponents that carry the mostimportance for the actual and tangibleresults of the whole marketing strategyand planning, and in this sense carry themost importance for how city marketingaffects the lives of city residents. Theselection, use and combination ofbranding variables, as outlined in thetheoretical framework, is the point ofcontact between theory and practice,between strategy and implementation,between planners and final users; it is the



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follow the development of thistheoretical framework is a step towardsfilling this gap by integrating thetheoretical suggestions found in bothcorporate branding and city marketingliterature into a detailed framework forunderstanding and analysing city brandingprocesses in theory and getting feedbackfrom field research in selected Europeancities.

According to Harding (1994):

‘the more pessimistic scenario (for the futureof urban issues) is that a narrow range ofinterests, driven by inter-urban competition,will continue to favour the pursuit ofdevelopment at any cost. The most hopefulscenario is that a wide variety of interests cancoalesce around the idea that improvements inthe quality of urban life for all — anincreasingly crucial economic as well as socialconsideration — can satisfy a wide range ofdemands and needs.’

The framework described in this papersignifies the beginning of acomprehensive study, the purpose ofwhich will be to contribute to therealisation of this hopeful scenario.

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from city marketing to city branding: towards a theoretical

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