Since the fall of communism, nations around the globe have worked not only to distinguish themselves, but to market themselves as well. Now cities are the new nation-states, and competition for markets and dollars is fiercer than ever. Urban centres face enormous opportunity – and pressure – to sell what makes them unique.
Nicolas Papadopoulos, professor of marketing and international business and director of the international business study group at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, talks about the role of city branding in economic development.
What motivates a city to go through a branding exercise?
About 20 to 30 years ago, the idea of “world cities” began to evolve. Some cities were seen to have a world image, with world-level infrastructure, world-level attractions, investment, tourism and business: London, New York, Tokyo and so on. That made other cities become very interested in wanting to learn how to establish that kind of reputation. Now they have to establish themselves, because if they don’t, the local economy is going to suffer.
Thanks to intellectuals like best-selling author Richard Florida, we’re hearing more about the importance of the creative class in the development of healthy local economies.
The idea is that the creative class presumably reflects an increased level of sophistication. And so, if you look at a community where a hospital or university or police department wants to attract the best and the brightest in the business, they want to be able to offer people an environment where they will be comfortable and challenged and well-compensated, and so on. The more a city can portray itself as full of the more creative class, the more likely it is to attract the cream of the crop.
Branding might bring to mind a new logo or a clever tagline. But obviously there’s much more to attracting investment and knowledge workers than that.
Branding is essentially the development of a promise for a target market. Think of a standard brand like Coca-Cola or McDonald’s. Every single time a person opens a Coca-Cola can or visits a McDonald’s, they’re going find a particular kind of quality, selection or price. That is the brand promise.
What common mistakes do cities make in branding themselves?
One is equating branding with logos, advertising, fancy campaigns and so on. Advertising is only a very small portion of what marketing is all about.
The other problem is that there’s a disconnect between what a city’s marketers are saying versus what the city itself can deliver, especially in terms of its people. So, for example, if an advertisement tells me that Vancouver is full of happy people who will happily help me around, and if I come to Vancouver and stop on a street corner and ask for directions and no one pays any attention to me, I’m not going to be very happy. I’ve been duped.
What branding agencies fail to do essentially is help educate a city’s own people, making them aware and getting them to buy into the branding campaign so they can deliver it.
I’ll give you a very simple example that happened to me recently. I was in Miami with my wife for a conference, staying at a big five-star hotel. We read in brochures about some absolutely fantastic things to do and see. The “Venetian Pool,” for example, was mentioned in virtually all the brochures. The concierge had to look it up on Google to find it, and when we finally got there, it was just, well, a big pool, closed for the evening even though it was still early in the day. Interestingly, on the way there, we asked a couple of locals where it was; they didn’t know about it either, although, as it turns out, they were within some 300 metres of it.
What must a successful branding campaign entail to not only develop a local economy, but also help sustain it?
Long-term commitment. Many campaigns suffer from a lack of commitment. They’ll come up with something and say, “Let’s do this.” They do it for two years, and then they forget all about it. For example, right here in Canada, in the 1993 speech from the throne, prime minister [Jean] Chrétien announced a big branding-Canada initiative, lasting close to 10 years. Nation branding, as such, must be a long-term, lifetime effort. A specific campaign may last very little time – for example, Tide detergent promoting its new scent through a three-month TV campaign. [However] Harvey’s has been saying, “Harvey's makes a hamburger a beautiful thing” for over three decades now. But the notion behind it, the branding of Tide and Harvey’s, and the promises that each says it will deliver to their customers, should last forever. Ditto for nation branding. So committing time, resources and power and staying with it is a big issue.
What branding campaigns stand out as being especially effective?
Probably the most successful of them all would be “I love New York.” It’s imitated all over the place, and they delivered on it, big time. Another one is Germany. The suffix of the country for electronic communication is .de, the way we have .ca.. Technically, .de stands for Deutschland, but Germany [used it to] promote very heavily and succeeded in conveying Deutschland Europa. The idea was to erase old memories of Germany not being a good friend to Europe. The .de campaign tried to position the country as being in the centre of Europe, willing to share with Europe, and it succeeded.
Are there any branding campaigns that bombed?
London’s not doing all that well these days. From 2006 to ’08, the country worked frantically to develop a branding strategy to invite investors, and the slogan was “Hit the ground running.” The idea was that London is a world-level city, with such great infrastructure in terms of finance, marketing services, banking and so on, that an investor who invests in Britain already has half his work done. Then we know what happened with the financial crisis. Support was withdrawn because of the economic disaster. So there’s an example of a failed campaign.
Where will place branding go from here?
Branding is still a fad. Lots of cities, regions, provinces and countries have jumped on the bandwagon and are starting to do place branding. We now have a journal called Place Branding and Public Diplomacy. The issue is being discussed all over the place. But for now it’s a fad, and that’s why there are so many errors and examples of poor performance. But in the long run, I think it will work. Place branding makes sense. The future is good. The whole business will mature.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
