kavaratzis and ashworth - city branding - effective assertion of identity or a transitory marketing...

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie – 2005, Vol. 96, No. 5, pp. 506–514.© 2005 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAGPublished by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

CITY BRANDING: AN EFFECTIVE ASSERTION OF IDENTITY OR A TRANSITORY MARKETING TRICK?

MIHALIS KAVARATZIS* & G. J. ASHWORTH**

*Research assistant, Urban and Regional Studies Institute, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, the Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]**Professor of Heritage Planning and Urban Tourism, Department of Planning, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen the Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]

Received: September 2004; revised February 2005

ABSTRACTCities throughout Europe are increasingly importing the concept and techniques of productbranding for use within place marketing, in pursuit of wider urban management goals, especiallywithin the new conditions created by European integration. However, there is as yet little consensusabout the nature of city branding, let alone its role in public sector urban planning andmanagement. This exploratory paper will first, use contemporary developments in marketingtheory and practice to suggest how product branding can be transformed into city branding as apowerful image-building strategy, with significant relevance to the contemporary city. Second, itwill define city branding, as it is being currently understood by city administrators and criticallyexamine its contemporary use so that a framework for an effective place branding strategy canbe constructed.

Key words:

Place marketing, city branding, brand components, corporate branding

FROM PLACE MARKETING TO PLACE BRANDING

Places have long felt a need to differentiatethemselves from each other, to assert theirindividuality in pursuit of various economic,political or socio-psychological objectives. Theconscious attempt of governments to shape aspecifically-designed place identity and promoteit to identified markets, whether external orinternal is almost as old as civic governmentitself. Thus, any consideration of the funda-mental geographical idea of sense of place mustinclude the deliberate creation of such sensesthrough place marketing.

City ‘boosterism’ as described in the many his

-

torical cases in Gold & Ward (1994) and Ward(1998) was not a new idea in the nineteenth

century but a reaction to the growing competi-tion between places occasioned by the nation-alisation and globalisation of markets. Howeverit was not until around 20 years ago that therewas a general acceptance that promotion (largelytreated as a synonym for advertising) was a validactivity for public sector management agencies(Burgess 1982), and that the systematic applica

-

tion of marketing was relevant to collective goalsand practices and thus an essential componentof the study of places and their management.

The transition from the random addition ofsome often crude and disembodied promotionto the existing tool box of planning instrumentsto a more far reaching application of marketingas a means of viewing and treating places as awhole was neither smooth nor complete. How-ever by the beginning of the 1990s there was a

CITY BRANDING

507

© 2005 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG

serious attempt to create a distinctive placemarketing approach (e.g. Ashworth & Voogd1990; Berg

et al.

1990; Kotler

et al.

1993).Since then a number of paradoxes have

become evident. On the one hand marketingspecialists have continued to refine their conceptsand ideas and place marketing has become acommonplace activity of cities, regions andcountries. On the other hand very few market-ing specialists have given much thought to itsapplication to places, treated as products, and,if they do, they too easily assume that places arejust spatially extended products that requirelittle special attention as a consequence of theirspatiality. Equally public sector planners havelong been prone to the adoption, overuse andthen consignment to oblivion, of fashionableslogans as a result perhaps of their necessity toconvince political decision-makers who place apremium on novelty, succinctness and simplicity.

It is not surprising therefore that despite theappearance of a small number of publicationson the topic of city branding in the last fewyears (Ashworth 2001; Hankinson 2001, 2004;Trueman

et al.

2001, 2004; Hauben

et al.

2002;Rainisto 2003), there is a recognisable gap inthe literature with regard to the brandingprocess of cities in general (Hankinson 2001)and real case studies in particular (Anholt2002; Rainisto 2003). ‘This is in contrast to theincreasing evidence in the press that branding,at least as a concept, is increasingly being appliedto locations’ (Hankinson 2001, p. 129).

Place marketing has been facilitated by theoret-ical developments within the marketing disciplinethat paved the way for an understanding of mar-keting implications for urban planning and man-agement (Ashworth & Voogd 1990). The transitionfrom city marketing to city branding is facil-itated not only by the extensive use and successof product branding, but also by the recently butrapidly developed concept of corporate brand-ing (e.g. Balmer 2001; Balmer & Greyser 2003).

The purpose of this paper is not to re-examinethe extensive literature on corporate and productbranding but to focus specifically upon the self-conscious application of branding to places asan instrument of urban planning and manage-ment. The application of place marketing islargely dependent on the construction, communi-cation and management of the city’s image,because, at its simplest, encounters between

cities and their users take place through percep

-

tions and images. Marketing therefore cannotother than be ‘the conscious and planned prac-tice of signification and representation’ (Firat& Venkatesh 1993, p. 246), which in turn is thestarting point for examining place branding.

One of the cornerstones of marketing thoughtis undoubtedly consumer orientation; thinkingabout the product, the company and the way we‘do business’ from the consumer’s viewpoint. Incity marketing and especially in the case of thecity’s existing residents, consumer’s orientationwould have to be how the residents encounterthe city they live in, how they make sense of it,which physical, symbolic or other elements theyevaluate in order to make their assessment ofthe city. The field of cultural geography hasdealt with such matters and has developed anunderstanding, which is useful at this point.

In general, people make sense of places orconstruct places in their minds through threeprocesses (see e.g. Crang 1998; Holloway &Hubbard 2001). These are first, throughplanned interventions such as planning, urbandesign and so on; second, through the way inwhich they or others use specific places; andthird, through various forms of place repre-sentations such as films, novels, paintings, newsreports and so on. It is generally acknowledgedthat people encounter places through percep-tions and images. As Holloway & Hubbard(2001, p. 48) describe, interactions with placesmay be ‘through direct experience or the environ-ment or indirectly through media representa-tions’. However, what is critical is how, thisinformation is processed, via mental processesof cognition, to form stable and learned imagesof place, which are the basis for our everydayinteractions with the environment. It is themental maps that individuals create that allowthem to navigate through complex reality,because ‘our surroundings are often more com-plex than the sense we make of them’.

Branding deals specifically with such mentalimages. Place branding centres on people’s per-ceptions and images and puts them at the heartof orchestrated activities, designed to shape theplace and its future. Managing the place brandbecomes an attempt to influence and treatthose mental maps in a way that is deemedfavourable to the present circumstances andfuture needs of the place.

508

MIHALIS KAVARATZIS & G. J. ASHWORTH


WHAT IS PLACE BRANDING?

The easy answer to this central question is thatplace branding is merely the application ofproduct branding to places. This substitutes thequestion, what is a product brand and what isthe process of product branding? How is itdifferent from product differentiation, productpositioning within competitive situations or justthe unique selling proposition of a product; allof which are well known and easily understoodconcepts. Unfortunately there is no singleaccepted definition and the marketing expertshave often compounded the problem by theirattempts to elaborate. Currently, there is at leasta general agreement in the marketing literaturethat the brand is more than an identifying namegiven to a product. It is also not (as some market-ing commentators seem to be suggesting) asynonym for a single catchy slogan, howevermuch this might embody the aspirations of thecity authorities. Places do not suddenly acquirea new identity thanks to a slogan and a mem-orable logo. This would imply that what gavemeaning and value to the paintings of PabloPicasso was the characteristic signature he usedand not the innovative ideas and style of hisart. Slogans and logos may be useful practicalinstruments in a place branding strategy butthey are not the strategy itself.

A brand embodies a whole set of physical andsocio-psychological attributes and beliefs whichare associated with the product (Simoes & Dibb2001). It is more than the shaping of distinctive

-

ness: it is the forging of associations. ‘[A] brandis a product or service made distinctive by its posi

-

tioning relative to the competition and by itspersonality, which comprises a unique combina

-

tion of functional attributes and symbolic values’(Hankinson & Cowking 1993, p. 10). Brandingis a deliberate process of selecting and associatingthese attributes because they are assumed toadd value to the basic product or service (Knox& Bickerton 2003). From this value stems aseries of consequential and important attributesabout the nature of the product, of its market-ing and of consumer behaviour towards it.

THE COMPONENTS OF THE BRAND

De Chernatony & Dall’Olmo Riley (1998)identify 12 perspectives on the definition of the

brand found in the literature. After a criticalexamination of those perspectives, they suggestthat ‘the brand is a multidimensional constructwhereby managers augment products or ser-vices with values and this facilitates the processby which consumers confidently recognise andappreciate these values’. The boundaries of thebrand construct are, on the one side the activitiesof the firm and on the other side the percep-tions of the consumers. The brand becomes theinterface between these two.

A number of elements lie at each end of theboundaries of the brand construct. For the brandowners, these elements are the features andbeneficial attributes imbued in the brand. Inaddition, marketers may chose to stress symbolic,experiential, social and emotional values (DeChernatony & Dall’Olmo Riley 1998), creatingthe brand identity. But these elements are notenough by themselves to construct a brand, as thebrand relates to quality and values as perceivedby the consumer. Branding is a mode of com-munication and communication is always a two-way process. From the consumer’s side, centralto the concept of the brand is the brand image,which incorporates perceptions of quality andvalues as well as brand associations and feelings.

In summary, brand identity, brand positioningand brand image are related as in Figure 1:

Figure 1

CITY BRANDING

509


The product –

A branded product requires a

brand identity

, a

brand differentiation

and a

brandpersonality

(Aaker 1996). These are not so muchseparate attributes as re-statements of the samefeature from different perspectives. Identifyingand clarifying the brand identity, or the

core iden-tity

, is in itself an instrument of differentiationof one product from another and recognisingits

brand positioning

,

that is its relationship to com

-

peting products within a defined competitivearena. The process of

product branding

is bothcreative initiation and careful maintenance.This

brand management

is thus both strategic andtactical although disproportionate attention inthe literature is generally paid to the former(Keller 1998, p. 594). The objective of the processand method of measuring its degree of successis the increase in

brand equity

which is the extrabenefit enjoyed by the consumer above the bareutility value of the product. Such equity in turnis composed of the two elements of

brandvalue

(i.e. the associations themselves) and

brand awareness

(the strength of the recognitionof such associations).

The producer –

Product marketing and specifi-cally product branding has shifted much ofthe focus of its attention recently to the natureof the producer and specifically the idea ofcorporate level marketing, and thus

corporatebranding

, which is a development of traditionalproduct branding, necessitated and, at the sametime, enriched by the rise of other corporate levelconcepts, such as corporate image, corporateidentity and corporate communications (e.g.Balmer 1998; Balmer & Greyser 2003).

Product branding is now generally subsumedinto the branding of the organisations that makeand sell them. The c

orporate brand

has beendefined as the ‘state of will of the organisationand the active part of the image building process’(Kapferer 1992). It is the expression of a cor-porate identity, which ‘articulates the corporateethos, aims and values and presents a sense ofindividuality that can help to differentiate theorganisation within its competitive environment’(Van Riel & Balmer 1997, p. 355). ‘The associ-ations represent what the brand stands for andimply a promise to customers from the organisa

-

tion’ (Aaker 1996) or even an explicit ‘covenant’(Balmer 2001) between an organisation and,not only its customers, but also its key stake-

holder groups. This links the integrity of theproduct brand to the organisation and peoplebehind the brand: ‘a corporate brand is thevisual, verbal and behavioural expression of anorganisation’s unique business model’ (Knox& Bickerton 2003, p. 1013). The brand isexpressed through the company’s mission, corevalues, beliefs, communication, culture andoverall design (Simoes & Dibb 2001). Crudelyexpressed, our products are different becausewe are different and they have added valuebecause we have such value.

The difficulties, limitations and vulnerabilityto unpredictable and unmanageable eventsof a corporate brand as so defined have beenwidely noted. ‘[A]lthough prevailing corporatethinking considers identity to be a monolithicphenomenon, this premise is narrow andinadequate’ (Balmer & Greyser 2002). It seemsso self-evident as to be not worth stating thatorganisations are not a single organism but area composite of individuals and thus inevitablypossess multiple identities. These may ‘co-existcomfortably within the organisation even if theyare slightly different’ (Balmer & Greyser 2002,p. 16) but equally may not and organisationsmanage their multiple identities to avoid poten-tially harmful misalignments.

The consumer –

Branding is not only a differ-entiation of the product; it is also a differen-tiation of the consumer. The objective is

brandequity

, loosely defined as the extent and natureof the consumers’ knowledge of the brand,which is the sum of

brand value, brand awareness

and

brand loyalty

. The first is the balance ofpositive or negative associations, the second,the degree of recognition of the distinctivenessof the brand and the third, the consistency ofthese variables over time.

Each could be further refined and linked to

brand image

as ‘the perception of the brand inthe minds of people . . . it is what peoplebelieve about a brand – their thoughts, feelings,expectations’ (Bennett 1995) or ‘

brand identity

as the creation of a relationship between thebrand and the customers with a value proposi-tion that consists of functional, emotional, andself-expressive benefits’ (Kapferer 1992). Itperhaps needs reiterating here that althoughbranding is performed by producers for theiradvantage, it is also in the interest of consumers

510



in so far as it facilitates consumer decision-making. Brand equity simplifies choice by allow-ing consumers to rapidly identify products whosesupply is guaranteed, quality controlled andstabilised (Kapferer 1992, p. 9).

Brands are not only considered as valuableassets of a company, but furthermore, as someexperts believe in post-modern consumer cul-ture, brands play a vital role in the constructionof consumer identity (Elliot & Wattanasuwan1998). Furthermore, brands are said to possessa ‘linking value’, which links the brand users intogroups or communities (Cova 1997). Certainlythere are links between the adoption of life-stylesas group identifiers and the strong associationbetween these and specific brands to the extentthat groups themselves become branded withthe product (the ‘Armani set’). Much brandmanagement in practice is an interactionbetween such life-style brands and the productsthey feature with producers attempting toexploit, create or, on occasion, eschew suchassociations.

FROM PRODUCTS TO PLACES

Places can be easily assumed to possess theabove characteristics of identity, differentiationand personality and can thus be managed tomaximise equity, value and awareness. However,whether the terms suffer a significant shiftin meaning when applied to place productsremains to be considered.

The importance of the image for the con-sumer or user of the place is what connects citybranding to cultural geography. It also focusesupon the ever-necessary consumer orientation.We think of the place from the viewpoint of theend user; in terms of the way they sense, under-stand, use and connect to the place.

An immediate, persistent and convincingobjection to this whole line of argument is thatplaces are just too complex to be treated likeproducts. This would explain Hankinson’s(2001, p. 129) comments that ‘in contrast to themarketing of locations, there are relatively fewarticles to be found in the academic literaturewith regard to the promotion of locations asbrands. This is in contrast to the increasingevidence in the press that branding, at least asa concept, is increasingly being applied to loca-tions’. Place branding, like place marketing in

general, is impossible because places are notproducts, governments are not producers andusers are not consumers.

Our contention however is that place brand-ing is not only possible, it is and has been, prac-ticed consciously or unconsciously for as longas cities have competed with each other fortrade, populations, wealth, prestige or power. Inthe marketing literature, it is acknowledgedthat the brand and the product are not synon-ymous. At its simplest, the difference refers tothe added values that branding attributes to theproduct. Jones (1986) defines the brand as ‘aproduct that provides functional benefits plusadded values that some consumers valueenough to buy’. This is the augmented product,well known in various marketing articles. Thenovelty is that branding attempts to market thisaugmented product. It is the added values thatprovide the guidelines for the construction ofthe functional benefits and not vice versa. Allbranding tries to endow a product with a specificand more distinctive identity (Cova 1996) andthat is, in essence, what most city marketing seeksto do for cities. A place needs to be differentiatedthrough unique brand identity if it wants to befirst, recognised as existing, second, perceivedin the minds of place customers as possessingqualities superior to those of competitors, andthird, consumed in a manner commensuratewith the objectives of the place. Thus identity,differentiation, personality and thereby position

-

ing in competitive arenas are all transferableconcepts as long as the implications of thistransfer are fully understood. By this we meanthat we can accept places as brandable productsif their intrinsic and distinctive characteristics asplace products are understood and a specialform of marketing developed which accommo-dates and utilises these characteristics. Much ofthe literature from marketing specialists is notencouraging in these respects.

There have been numerous studies of thepromotion of individual and groups of places,since Burgess’ (1982) pioneering account ofpromotional media used in UK local authorities.Almost 20 years later Hankinson (2001) studiedthe practice of branding in 12 English cities, dis-covering that it was both widely used and littleunderstood, which was a not altogether startlingor indeed very helpful conclusion but is all tootypical of many such investigations. Trueman

CITY BRANDING

511


et al.

, (2001, pp. 8–13) struggled with this pro

-

blem of transfer of conventional product brandanalysis to places, concluding that it was possible,‘provided sufficient weight is given to differentstakeholders’. This is no more than a recognitionthat places have more varied ‘users’, ‘owners’and ‘governors’ than do commercial corpor-ations and thus not only are the products morevaried, so also are the goals of the producersand the utilities of the consumers. The twointrinsic weaknesses of stakeholder approaches,namely that the list will never be all-inclusiveand the weighting between them crude, are somore evident with places than with commercialproducts as to effectively admit that the condi-tions can never be met.

The similarities between corporate brand

-

ing and city branding have occurred to manyobservers therefore shifting from the commer-cial corporation to the public sector agencyseems a logical extension of the idea because‘place brands resemble corporate umbrellabrands to some extent’ (Rainisto 2003, p. 50).Both have multidisciplinary roots (e.g. Ashworth& Voogd 1990), both address multiple groupsof stakeholders (e.g. Kotler

et al.

1993; Ashworth2001), both have a high level of intangibilityand complexity, both need to take into accountsocial responsibility (e.g. Ave 1994), and bothdeal with multiple identities (e.g. Dematteis1994). However it is far easier to state thesesimilarities than to measure them, let aloneaccommodate them in applications of placebranding. In addition public place managementcorporations may have considerable difficultyin projecting a single clear corporate identitybecause most democratic political systemsencourage the open expression of alternativesrather than concealing them within a spuriouscommunal unanimity.

There are at least three different sorts ofplace branding which are often confused in theliterature, but which are really quite differentoperations conducted by different types ofproducers for widely different objectives. Thefirst is geographical nomenclature, the second,product-place co-branding and the third, brand

-

ing as place management.Geographical nomenclature is merely where

a physical product is named for a geographicallocation. The archetype is the sparkling wine‘Champagne’. This is not place branding as we

mean it here. It is merely a copyrighted brandname, legally preventing other places fromadopting the word but not the ‘champagnemethod’ and presumably preventing other pro-ducers in the location naming their differentproducts with the same place title. There is noconscious attempt to link any supposed attri

-

butes of the place to the product, which gainsnothing from the association, which is only anhistorical-geographical accident, which couldconceivably have been somewhere else withoutloss. A place becomes only a name for a specificbrand or, in other instances, a generic name fora production process. The place has no othersignificance and neither determines the locusof production or any other transferable char

-

acteristic: Parma ham receives nothing fromNorthern Italy nor muslin from Mosul. Howeverthere are many instances where it would be dif-ficult not to name the product from its location,as the geographical location is an importantpart of what is being sold. Property agents andtourism promoters come immediately to mindas they are unavoidably selling actual locations.Here the typology begins to move away fromthe first category towards the second and thirdespecially when sellers begin to select, modifyand manipulate geographical nomenclaturecreating in effect their own geographies. Placebranding, however, is not about using the qual-ities of the place to promote local products innational and international markets. BrandingBrussels as the hometown of sprouts is very dif-ferent from branding it as the capital of Europe.On the contrary, part of place branding is aboutusing the qualities of local products to ascribemeanings and associations to the place.

Co-branding is common enough amongphysical products (‘fish and chips’ would be atextbook example. Co-branding of product andplace, attempts to market a physical product byassociating it with a place that is assumed tohave attributes beneficial to the image of theproduct. An example often quoted in thetextbook is ‘Swiss watches’. This is a differentuse of place nomenclature than ‘Champagne’because the objective is to transfer characteristicsof reliability, fastidiousness and meticulousnessassumed to be associated with the Swiss peopleor the country Switzerland, to watches for whichthese are assumed to be desirable attributes.This is an intrinsically dangerous practice if only

512



because place images are both multifaceted andunstable. The above characteristics of the Swissassumed to be beneficial to the product couldbe substituted by the much less helpful, andequally assumed, characteristics of parsimony,parochialness and creative dullness. Equally suchplace associations can change quite rapidly,shifting from positive to negative associations.

Third, place branding can be treated as aform of place management. At its simplest levelmuch place management depends heavily uponchanging the way places are perceived by speci-fied user groups. For instance, ‘urban renewalincludes the creation of an identity with its ownexperiential value, which is profoundly originaland uncopiable. This touches upon such pointsas structure, programming, functions, the sortof actions and activities that characterize theimage of the city, events and in the last resortthe chemistry of the people who operate there’(Florian 2002, p. 24). The creation of a recog-nisable place identity, little more than a sort ofcivic consciousnesses, and the subsequent useof that identity to further other desirable pro-cesses, whether financial investment, changes inuser behaviour or generating political capital.It should be clear from the above definitions thatthis is more than the creation and promotionof place images as part of place management.

The question we have to answer is, can thecity’s brand (or even only examining and think-ing about the city as a brand) operate as anumbrella that can cover a multitude of stake-holders and audiences? Can city brandingcreate in the mind of people who encounterthe city the feeling (or even illusion) that theyare dealing with an entity, with one thing, withwhich they could have a relationship?

In theory, and also in practice, the answer isyes, as long as the values that are developed asthe core of the brand are bound together by avision which gives them meaning, impetus anddirection (De Chernatony & Dall’Olmo Riley1998). But then we need to develop an inte-grated framework that will clarify all aspects ofdeveloping a city-brand and give guidance formanaging it.

What if the answer is no? Should we dismisscity branding as a misleading irrelevance? Evenif the city brand cannot work as an umbrella tocover all aspects of life and activity in the city,then it might be worth breaking it down into

its components in terms of the major audiencesit addresses. This is what has been practicedwithin city marketing. The city is simultaneouslya place of residence and a place of work forthe people that live in it, a destination for thepeople that visit it (or plan to do so), a place ofopportunity for the people who invest in it. Canwe, then, develop different brands for each ofthose audiences? Practice shows that we can. Sothe city becomes a multitude of brands, a brandline similar to a product line. This logic stemsfrom product branding. It is a city marketingapproach, where market segmentation, separa-tion and targeting are the critical activities. Weplan, create and sell different products to thevarious segments.

The main suggestion of corporate brandingis that the whole organisation is branded, noteach product. Each product can enjoy the bene-fits of belonging to the corporate brand family.That is not to say that market segmentation haslost its meaning or usefulness (although somepost-modern commentators do argue that).But it is not used for the corporate brand. Thecorporate brand is attached to more universalvalues, such as social responsibility, environmentalcare, sustainability, progressiveness, innovation,trust, quality, etc.

Applying corporate branding to placesdemands a treatment of the place brand as thewhole entity of the place-products, in order toachieve consistency in the messages sent. At thesame time it demands associating the place with‘stories’ about the place not by simply addingthem next to the name or trying to imply themby isolating beautiful images of the place. First,the ‘stories’ need to be built into the place, notleast by planning and design interventions,infrastructure development and the organisa-tional structure and, subsequently, they can andmust be communicated through the moregeneral attitude of the place and through pro-motional activities (Kavaratzis 2004). Whenthis is achieved, place marketing will be able toeffectively deny the accusations of selectivemanipulation of meanings (Griffiths 1998),creation of inauthentic traditions and irrelevantcultural motifs (Kearns & Philo 1993) andexacerbation of social inequalities and unrest(Griffiths 1998).

It is not the main purpose of this brief paperto outline in detail the practical techniques

CITY BRANDING

513


used by places to brand themselves. Suffice it tosay here that the three main techniques cur-rently fashionable among urban planners havebeen listed as ‘Personality branding’ (or ‘TheGaudi gambit’ after the success of its Barce-lona application), ‘Flagship construction’ (or‘The Pompidou ploy’ after the

grands projet

onthe Paris Beaubourg) and ‘Events branding’. Allare designed to not only attract attention andplace recognition (thus

brand awareness

) butalso to raise associations between the place andattributes regarded as being beneficial to itseconomic or social development (thus

brandutility

).

PLACES, PRODUCTS AND BRANDS

This paper began with the assertion of theexistence of a gap between two approaches andusages of place branding; that of the publicsector place managers and that of the commer-cial producers. This gap has not been bridgedhere but its dimensions have been specified andsome of the confusion resulting from two quitedifferent approaches can, to an extent at least,be ordered.

The Kotler

et al.

(1993) approach, shared im-plicitly by most of the marketing science expertscited here, stems from the standpoint and experi-ence of commercial product marketing. Here,there is no logical or practical difficulty intransposing physical and place products, com-mercial and public corporations, customers andplace users. Place branding becomes the use ofplace names as products and the use of placeattributes as associations for products.

In contrast our approach stems from the view

-

point and experience of place management,where marketing terminology, techniquesand philosophies have been used for at least adecade as part of public sector management forcollective goals. In so far as brands are assets,which are expensive to create and manage, it isnot surprising that brand owners endeavourto protect them from predatory competitors. Itis perhaps a significant distinction that copy-right law rarely applies to place products. (The‘champagne’ type case copyrights the nomen-clature as product name not the place productin our sense of the word.) The disputes thathave occurred, such as the ‘battles’ betweenspatial jurisdictions for ‘Robin Hood Country’

or ‘King Arthur’s Camelot’ have not resorted tojudicial resolution, which indicates a number ofsignificant differences between place productsand other products.

Place branding from the standpoint of theplace recognises that place products remainplaces with the distinct attributes that accrueto places, such as spatial scale, spatial hierarchies,resulting scale shadowing, the inherent multi-plicity and vagueness of goals, product-usercombinations and consumer utilities. All theseand more (as outlined in Ashworth & Voogd1990) make places distinctive products and thusplace branding a distinctive form of productbranding. If these distinctions can be recog-nised and incorporated into the process then itbecomes a valid and effective form of manage-ment: if not, it is an irrelevant distraction.

REFERENCES

A

aker

, D.A. (1996),

Building Strong Brands

. New York:Free Press.

A

nholt

, S. (2002), Foreword to the Special Issue onPlace Branding.

Journal of Brand Management

9,pp. 229–239.

A

shworth

, G.J. (2001), The Communication of theBrand Images of Cities. Paper presented in theUniversidad Internacional Menendez Pelayoconference: The Construction and Communica-tion of the Brand Images of Cities, Valencia.

A

shworth

, G.J. & H. V

oogd

(1990),

Selling the City:Marketing Approaches in Public Sector Urban Planning

.London: Belhaven Press.

A

ve

, G. (1994), Urban Planning and Strategic UrbanMarketing in Europe.

In

: G. A

ve

& F. C

orsico

, eds.,

Marketing Urbano International Conference

. Torino:Edizioni Torino Incontra.

B

almer

, J.M.T. (1998), Corporate Identity and theAdvent of Corporate Marketing.

Journal of MarketingManagement

14, 963–996.B

almer

, J.M.T. (2001), Corporate Identity, CorporateBranding and Corporate Marketing: Seeing throughthe Fog.

European Journal of Marketing

35, pp. 248–291.B

almer

, J.M.T. & S.A. G

reyser

(2002), Managing theMultiple Identities of the Corporation.

CaliforniaManagement Review

44, pp. 72–86.B

almer

, J.M.T. & S.A. G

reyser

, eds. (2003),

Revealingthe Corporation: Perspectives on Identity, Image, Reputa

-

tion, Corporate Branding and Corporate-level Marketing

.London: Routledge.

514



B

ennett

, P.D. (1995),

Dictionary of MarketingTerms

. 2nd Edition. Chicago: American MarketingAssociation.

B

erg

, L.

van den

, L.H. Klaassen & J. van der Meer(1990), Marketing Metropolitan Regions. Rotterdam:European Institute for Comparative Urban Research.

Burgess, J. (1982), Selling Places: EnvironmentalImages for the Executive. Regional Studies 16,pp. 11–17.

Chernatony, L. de & F. Dall’Olmo Riley (1998),Defining a Brand: Beyond the Literature withExperts’ Interpretations. Journal of Marketing Manage-ment 14, pp. 417–443.

Cova, B. (1996), The Postmodern Explained toManagers: Implications for Marketing. BusinessHorizons 39, pp. 15–23.

Cova, B. (1997), Community and Consumption:Towards a Definition of the ‘Linking Value’ ofProducts and Services. European Journal of Marketing31, pp. 297–316.

Crang, M. (1998), Cultural Geography. London:Routledge.

Dematteis, G. (1994), Urban Identity, City Imageand Urban Marketing. In: G.O. Braun, ed.,Managing and Marketing of Urban Development andUrban Life. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.

Elliott, R. & K. Wattanasuwan (1998), Brands asSymbolic Resources for the Construction of Identity.International Journal of Advertising 17, pp. 131–144.

Firat, A.F. & A. Venkatesh (1993), Postmodernity:The Age of Marketing. International Journal of Researchin Marketing 10, pp. 227–249.

Florian, B. (2002), The City as a Brand: Orches-trating a Unique Experience. In: T. Hauben, M.Vermeulen & V. Patteeuw, City Branding: ImageBuilding and Building Images. Rotterdam: NAIUitgevers.

Gold, J.R. & S.V. Ward, eds. (1994), Place Promotion:The Use of Publicity and Marketing to Sell Towns andRegions. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

Griffiths, R. (1998), Making Sameness: PlaceMarketing and the New Urban Entrepreneurialism.In: N. Oatley, ed., Cities Economic Competition andUrban Policy. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.

Hankinson, G. (2001), Location Branding: A Studyof the Branding Practices of 12 English Cities.Journal of Brand Management 9, pp. 127–142.

Hankinson, G. (2004), Relational Network Brands:Towards a Conceptual Model Of Place Brands.Journal of Vacation Marketing 10, pp. 109–121.

Hankinson, G. & P. Cowking (1993), Branding inAction. London: McGraw-Hill.

Hauben, T., M. Vermeulen & V. Patteeuw (2002),City Branding: Image Building and Building Images.Rotterdam: NAI Uitgevers.

Holloway L. & P. Hubbard (2001), People and Place:The Extraordinary Geographies of Everyday Life. Harlow:Pearson Education.

Jones, J.P. (1986), What’s in a Name. Gower: Aldershot.Kapferer, J.N. (1992), Strategic Brand Management,

New Approaches to Creating and Evaluating BrandEquity. London: Kogan Page.

Kavaratzis, M. (2004), From City Marketing to CityBranding: Towards a Theoretical Framework forDeveloping City Brands. Journal of Place Branding 1,pp. 58–73.

Kearns, G. & C. Philo, eds. (1993), Selling Places.Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Keller, K.L. (1998), Strategic Brand Management:Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity.New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Knox, S. & D. Bickerton (2003), The Six Conven-tions Of Corporate Branding. European Journal ofMarketing 37, pp. 998–1016.

Kotler, P., D. Haider & I. Rein (1993), MarketingPlaces: Attracting Investment, Industry and Tourism toCities, States and Nations. New York: The Free Press.

Rainisto, S.K. (2003), Success Factors of PlaceMarketing: A Study of Place Marketing Practices inNorthern Europe and the United States (DoctoralDissertation, Helsinki University of Technology,Institute of Strategy and International Business).

Simoes, C. & S. Dibb (2001), Rethinking the BrandConcept: New Brand Orientation. Corporate Com-munications: An International Journal 6, pp. 217–224.

Trueman, M., M. Klemm & A. Giroud (2004), Cana City Communicate? Bradford as a CorporateBrand. Corporate Communications: An InternationalJournal 9, pp. 317–330.

Trueman, M.M., M. Klemm, A. Giroud & T. Lindley(2001), Bradford in the Premier League? AMultidisciplinary Approach to Branding and Re-positioning a City, Working Paper 01/04. Bradford:Bradford University, School of Management.

Van Riel, C.B.M. & J.M.T. Balmer (1997), CorporateIdentity: The Concept, Its Measurement andManagement. European Journal of Marketing 31,pp. 340–355.

Ward, S.V. (1998), Selling Places: The Marketing andPromotion of Towns and Cities 1850–2000. London:E & FN Spon.

kavaratzis and ashworth - city branding - effective assertion of identity or a transitory marketing...

Documents