Introductory note
Unpacking key findings
after intensive peer-learning on place branding
Reporting note on the CityLogo final conference
Utrecht, 25-26 March 2015
Miguel Rivas, lead expert for URBACT CityLogo
Great political backing
After 30 months working intensively on city branding with the URBACT method, April 2015 was the
closing month of CityLogo. To celebrate this, and in order to unpack and disseminate all the
experiences taken along this time, the project coordinator Haye Folkertsma designed a final
conference very dynamic and interactive. It included a series of different sessions of different
formats (keynotes, videos, parallel sessions, panel discussion, live interviews, official final
statement) with the overall facilitation of Edwin Jacobs, the unconventional director of the Utrecht
Centraal Museum, where the conference took place, in the heart of the so called Museum Quarter.
This final event pursued three main objectives:
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Exhibiting the new knowledge accumulated along these years, and the CityLogo added
value to the whole community of practitioners in city branding & marketing in Europe. The
means used for that were an interview with the project´s lead expert, two keynotes from
speakers outside the partnership but with great affinity with the CityLogo vision about the
meaning and scope of city branding, and overall a number of parallel thematic workshops
organized and conducted by the CityLogo partner cities.
Showcasing the work done at local level, by means of a poster exhibition in the conference
room about the different Local Action Plans, and short films giving voice to the high
number of stakeholders that have been involved by all the participating cities 1.
Rising awareness on the real meaning and
untapped potential of city branding,
especially among politicians and top policy
decision-makers. To that aim a final
statement was agreed under the form of key
policy recommendations, and a panel
discussion was organized, with the
participation of some of the elected
representatives that traveled to Utrecht for
the CityLogo final event.
“Plotting a city marketing
strategy includes, I think, a
strong aspect of improving one's
self-knowledge, which is greatly
improved by both a look in a
mirror and a good talk with a
close friend. This project enabled
us to do both”
Jan van Zanen, Mayor of Utrecht
To support this goal, Jan van Zanen, Mayor of Utrecht, attended the conference, not only
to give a word of welcome, but also to enthusiastically underline the value of cooperation
between the European cities, evoking the spirit of the Hanseatic League.
1
See some examples:
Zaragoza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ns-RrGg_tM&feature=youtu.be
Genoa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE6J90BYesk&list=UUfiBOZoTRfbj487W72aYbjg
Utrecht: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9kHSapB-lo&feature=youtu.be
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CityLogo final conference was intentionally connected to a major marketing event for the city of
Utrecht which was the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2015, as well as the official
inauguration of the impressive new City Hall, as part of the urban complex of the new Utrecht
central station linking the historic town with the Jarbuus plain area.
Mayor of Utrecht Jan van Zanen at the CityLogo final conference. Photo by Rob Huibers.
Two inspirational contributions
David Adam is a renowned speaker on cities and globalization and was invited to talk not
specifically about city branding but to set the ground of the field in the context of globalization. He
drew a hyperconnected world, in continuous technological change, where urban population growth
seems to be unlimited.
In this context, the need to build up compelling urban identities and gain more visibility for them is
likewise fast growing. However, this is already a common assumption that very few put in
question. The big discussion now is what method, what communication channels are the most
effective to connect your key messages as city to your target groups. Are they the same channels
and methods that are used by commercial brands? How to communicate the city today?
To David Adam, city brand management may have come of age, and today professionals involved
in this field should bear in mind a number of the trends:
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You can’t control the city´ story, so you have to focus on the “product” – “actions speak
louder than logos”.
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Cities should “tell a global story”, lying over cosmopolitan values. In other words, cities
should qualify themselves on solutions that are responses to major global challenges.
The job of city brand professionals may be to curate and find the good stories and share
them internally. If the city is basically a community, even a community of users (not only
frequent users but also occasional users), then, why not to leave they may speak by
themselves, duly curated?
Left, Marketing Liverpool CEO Chris Brown. Right, David Adam of Global Cities. Photo Rob Huibers.
Second keynote came from Chris Brown, CEO of Marketing Liverpool. In fact, the rise of city
branding was closely associated to huge changes in most of the UK´s core cities, moving from old
industrialism to new post-industrial economic patterns. That was the case of Liverpool. The city
underwent fast decline in the first part of the 20th century, and then was trapped into a spiral of
economic and social decline and chronic lack of infrastructure investment. Only from mid 1990s the
city began to experience a positive transformation. The programme for the European Capital of
Culture in 2008 was a catalyst of that process, and when they started to make systematic use of
city brand techniques and strategy.
Thus, main goal of the #itsliverpool strategy was
“Ever changing and unique for
simply to create commonalities and a shared working
everyone, it’s virtually impossible
area for the teams and stakeholders in the city
to communicate what’s special
targeting business/investors, visitors, students and
about Liverpool with a single
also the residents. So, they worked in two directions.
snappy marketing message”
On the one hand, building up a more compelling city
image and more consistent and unifying city narrative.
Chris Brown, Marketing Liverpool
In this respect, the idea of using one single claim
synthetizing the whole city was refused. As Chris said
“ever changing and unique for everyone, it’s virtually impossible to communicate what’s special
about Liverpool with a single snappy marketing message”. Probably, this applies to every city.
On the other hand, creating a brand platform (Marketing Liverpool) that includes a full-time
dedicated marketing team placed within the city´s economic development company, Liverpool
Vision. As a matter of fact, all the challenges Chris Brown raised up in Utrecht for the near future
were related to governance and management:
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Partner buy-in. That is, the need to improve the collaborative model in city branding by
engaging more actively the whole range of stakeholder, public and private ones.
Funding. A new funding model, with the concourse of the key stakeholders, to cover the
branding and marketing activities, according to the city´s ambition.
Skills, especially in content marketing. It´s about the capability to tell good stories about
the city for a variety of environs and communication channels –transmedia storytelling.
What’s the impact? The need to measure the impact of city branding & marketing activities
in terms of final results.
A conversation with the CityLogo lead expert
Edwin Jacobs had a lively conversation with Miguel Rivas, the CityLogo lead expert and the man
who also was behind the project concept, from the very beginning. The aim was to check the state
of the art and future prospects in city branding and assess the impact of CityLogo. What is below is
an excerpt of the interview.
EJ. Miguel, if you had to highlight just one impact or relevant factor from the CityLogo experience,
which would it be?
MR. The provision of a concise, clear thematic roadmap to city branding. A roadmap that does not
come from the creative, branding/marketing field, but from the experience of urban management
and urban issues. This is unusual.
Our roadmap covers a long list of different topics organized into four main pillars, namely: urban
narratives and politics of city representation; city brand governance or how to shape the
collaboration model; city´s target groups and the articulation to the different sector-oriented city
marketing practices; and the new ecology of communication channels and actions for the city. This
model, which combines theory and practice, has given guidance to a large-scale peer-learning with
the participation of around thirty cities.
EJ. Why the name CityLogo?
Well, we needed a punchy name and CityLogo
sounded good. But, as a matter of fact, it is an
irony, a kind of provocation, since our
understanding of placebranding is just the opposite
of a matter of logos & mottos. If you go to the logo
of CityLogo, you may appreciate more clearly that
ironic purpose of the project name.
“In some way, people are sick of
that business logic and business
language which is invading every
aspect of life: public spaces,
cities… even “personal branding”
is now a rising concept”
CityLogo is actually a reaction to the most common gaps in the field. Even it can be seen a sort of
de-brandization of city branding. In some way, people are sick of that business logic and business
language which is invading every aspect of life: public spaces, cities and places… even “personal
branding” is now a rising concept. The branding approach is certainly useful for cities, but that
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automatic translation to cities and places of the concept as it comes from business is not a right
focus, I guess.
EJ. However sometimes logos and claims may work pretty well… think about I love NY or
Iamsterdam.
MR. Yes, it´s true. Logos and visual identities can play a role, but not always, and never the main
role. Even if you get a brilliant logo you are immediately exposed to rapid imitation. Just think
about the popular red & black colour combinations, I´m formulas, cities that “love you”, etc.
inspiring capitals. Better than logos, the real challenge is to work on city image, promoting better
urban imageries. As we live in a visual world, promoting compelling city imageries is much more
effective and durable than logos. In this respect, Dundee, in Scotland, has done an excellent work.
EJ. How would you define city branding?
MR. I would combine two approaches to understand the meaning and scope of city branding. From
a content perspective, it´s about promoting a more unifying, updated narrative for the city. From a
governance point of view, it is about creating a shared working area for all those local stakeholders
which are communicating the city on a regular basis to a variety of audiences.
Assessing the impact of URBACT-CityLogo. Edwin Jacobs interviews Miguel Rivas
EJ. Why is so difficult for a city to differentiate itself from others?
MR. Yes, you have noticed many cities brand themselves over the same qualifications. You know,
creative cities, knowledge cities… That is curious and even funny, because cities are pretty
different between them. Often city brands seem to work homogenizing instead of differentiating. I
suspect it is due to leave the city storyline basically in the hands of creative and brand agencies,
with the result of an abundance of common clichés.
EJ. Why a growing number of cities are trying to engage their own residents and local entities to
talk about the city?
MR. Because credibility increases when others talk about the city instead of just through official
promotional material. That´s the lesson of tripAdvisor. Information is much appreciated when
there is no any specific interest behind. The challenge for city marketers is to curate and organize
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this potential massive flow of information in a coherent manner, duly aligned to the city big
narrative.
EJ. You have described city branding as an attempt to create shared working areas for the local
entities which are already marketing the city to specific audiences. What formula of collaboration
has proved to be the best?
MR. City brand governance and management is synonymous of collaboration model. There is no
other way. But there is no one-size-fits-all type of formula to institutionalize such collaborative
models at local level. That´s a fundamental message from CityLogo. However, when addressing
this question, a number of key elements, which are
interconnected among them, must be taken into
“Often city brands seem to work
account anyway. Like leadership, normally from the
homogenizing instead of
Local Council, which is necessary to implement
differentiating. I suspect it is due to
over the ground this new integrated approach. If
leave the city storyline basically in
we are talking about co-management with a range
the hands of creative and brand
of city partners, and not only about participation, it
will require somewhat negotiation. Also dedicated
agencies, with the result of an
teams; roughly speaking, a small team, high-skilled
abundance of common clichés”
and with a clear mandate, can be enough, even for
big cities.
Other key issue is funding model. In this respect, I even would speak about learning to promote
the city with small budgets, as a way to break the vicious circle of “no money no action”.
EJ. Why is so important to consider the local population as target group, along with visitors and
business?
Because innovative city branding is not only about attractiveness, but also about identity. I even
would say identity is a condition to attract. Many, for instance Simon Anholt, define city branding
as the art of building up competitive local identities. And you simply cannot build up competitive
local identities ignoring your own local population. In this sense, placebranding is a very political
issue.
EJ. City marketing activities have suffered heavy spending cuts in many cities. How do you see
those activities in a context of austerity?
MR. As said above, cities need now to learn how to promote themselves with smaller budgets. The
fastest way for that is to move campaigns and advertising away from the core and to broad the
concept of communication action, in order to consider other subtler, less obvious ways of
marketing the city. In this sense, we in CityLogo have gathered a good handful of interesting
experiences.
Participating cities take the lead: the parallel workshops
The final conference was also used to give another turn of the screw, in terms of knowledge
production in what respect the main sub-themes in city branding. To that aim a number of parallel
workshops were organized in themes like stakeholder involvement, city narratives and imageries,
governance and management, segmentation and target groups, and communication actions &
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channels. CityLogo partner cities were in charge of organizing and conducting the debates as well
as reporting to the plenary on the main findings. The below is just a sample of that section.
City narratives & imageries - debate conducted by Aarhus and Alba Iulia
Although the initial idea of Aarhus and Alba Iulia was covering three themes - visual culture,
segmented storytelling and customizable contents –, due to time limitations, the focus was finally
put on city image and urban imageries.
An exercise was organized by Line Gerstrand and Stinne Bille, from the Aarhus city brand team,
consisting in discussing about the same collection of 15 city images by three different groups. Each
group of participants had to assess the impact of the images within a city marketing context, and
make a choice on its three best and worst images.
The conclusion was that some of the choices were identical between the groups, meaning that
there are some common elements in visual expression that could be taken into consideration in a
city branding framework. Another conclusion was that the most suitable pictures provoke curiosity.
They make an invitation, sell something, and they are dynamic in some way when it comes of
promoting the city. Static pictures, with no movement, no life, and nothing in particular, were not
attractive for the participants in the exercise. A last conclusion is that image selection depends a
lot of what you want to have as a storytelling, and on the target group you want to address. In
this respect, the same picture could be a good or a bad choice.
Parallel workshops during the CityLogo final event
Governance and management – debate conducted by Oslo and Warsaw
Øyvind Såtvedt, from The Oslo Region Alliance, took the initiative introducing the CityLogo
background on this issue. So, he stated that governing integrated city branding is about building a
collaboration model. Setting that model should be addressed at the beginning of the process,
before launching campaigns, as the core of a city branding process. Also he reminded there is no
one single formula for institutionalization of city branding.
Thus, dedicated marketing-oriented agencies, generally shaped, but not always, as public-private
partnerships and embracing several target groups, seem to work well in big cities, while more
flexible ways of stakeholder engagement - with no need of constituted bodies- are running more
often in medium-sized urban agglomerations. He also stressed the issue of metropolitan
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coordination as right scale when marketing the city internationally and the question of the private
sector mobilization.
As city brand governance and management is about addressing a number of key elements, such as
leadership, kind of partnership, articulation to existing sector-focused city marketing practices,
dedicated team and funding model, the city of Oslo prepared a funny and thoughtful game that
they called the “Marshmallow challenge”.
The task was simple: in eighteen minutes, 2 teams made of 4 people must built the tallest freestanding structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one meter of tape, one meter of string and one
marshmallow. The marshmallow needed to be on top. Only one group succeeded in building the
structure, nevertheless everyone won a small gift from Oslo and Warsaw.
The marshmallow challenge showed that it was
important for the group to have a clear division of
labor and one person taking the lead of the action.
The exercise also showed the importance of being
able to adapt to changing circumstances during
the project. Also one experience that trial and
error is a better strategy than to have an extensive
discussion before going into action. The groups
also experienced that the task and the rules of the
game changed during the project, which is not
uncommon.
The “marshmallow challenge”
showed how important is having a
clear division of labour and one
person taking the lead. The
exercise also showed the
importance of being able to adapt
to changing circumstances
Communication actions & channels – debate conducted by Dundee and Vilnius.
Jennifer Caswell and Diane Milne took the lead in introducing the CityLogo background on this
theme. According to them, communication models have developed and are continuing to adapt to
new tools and opportunities, ways which have a much wider reach than we ever had before, but
often ways over which we have less control. Printed materials are often redundant, even a city’s
website is less of a focus for people seeking information – audiences are often seeking more
informed, user generated content to create for themselves a more authentic experience or a
greater understanding of the city and its people. This works differently for the audiences we seek
to attract – investors, potential visitors, future students, talent etc. – different communication
methodologies required for different audiences. Digital tools continue to develop, people engage
with their preferred tools, be that Facebook, Instagram, infographics or crowd-sourced information
such as Spotted by Locals. We need to embrace these new communication channels and tools.
Then the discussion was centred on two questions: how important is social media?, and what
activities are the most successful in marketing the city? A number of remarks were raised up for
both:
On the role of social media
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It depends on the audiences - had to get the preferred channel for the audience tackling
and inherent danger that many people assume any social media worked for all ages. Not
true for example Twitter used mainly by over 35yrs+.
Print is not defunct. It is still sometimes the best media for certain activities. People like
maps they can hold and scribble on!
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Good quality printed materials appropriately distributed might help get your city noticed.
With everyone getting so much information through their inbox, an alternative approach
might be a winner.
Where cities were smaller, crowdsourcing content
and creating local campaigns seemed to gain more
buy-in than bigger cities.
Borderless issues that impact across cities/regions, on
social media more likely to go viral, i.e. the Vilnius
video of mayor tacking illegal parking.
Print is not defunct. It is
still sometimes the best
media for certain
activities. People like
maps they can hold and
scribble on!
Types of actions
A lot of discussion looked at the type of content and activities as without the right content the
channel was irrelevant. Having said this, content needed to be defined in relation to the channel
to be used. In this respect, the practitioners participating in the workshop agreed on some tips:
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Be authentic.
Consider those initiatives that promote your personality as a city, like “Face of U(trecht)”
where a local person runs the Facebook page every 2 weeks, “Humans of Dundee” or
Copenhagen’s approach asking people to make videos of why they wanted to visit
Copenhagen.
Getting high profile bloggers to visit and promote your city works for specific audiences –
Portland in Oregon did a big tour with bloggers, Dundee have just hosted their first
blogger in conjunction with VisitScotland.
Wherever possible good to link communications to action and then making the action
possible using technology i.e. ticketing, booking etc.
Humour and risk taking – can get you noticed but has to be done well and all stakeholders
behind it i.e. Dundee’s campaign on trailer vans challenging other cities credentials with
their own outside Edinburgh castle – Dundee “we’ve got castles too – 5 of them!”
Great interaction during the conference. Photo: Rob Huibers.
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Summarizing key messages as strategic policy statement
Certainly, after three years of intense cross-learning and research, the project lead expert together
with all the senior practitioners from the partner cities, feel they are in a unique position to share
with other cities their vision on the real meaning and scope of the so-called city brand strategies,
as well as the value of strategic communication for the cities. Thus, the high point of the
conference reached with the reading, and subsequent signature by the city representatives, of a
final declaration that summarizes that vision into ten key policy recommendations. The following is
a summary of those ten principles:
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The need to re-learning city branding. For many place-branding is still about logos
and campaigning, when actually it´s about building and marketing smartly local
competitive identities, through long-term initiatives and strategies. To some extent, the
prevailing role of branding and advertising agencies helps to keep that incorrect focus,
resulting in short-sighted practices.
Narrative is the first and most fundamental. From a content perspective, city
branding is about building up a unifying, comprehensive and updated narrative of the city.
That is in essence the concept of brand when applied to cities and places.
Cultivating uniqueness to avoid the lack of differentiation in today´s city
branding. Lack of differentiation often has to do with an uncritical adoption of what
supposedly the “standard modern city” should be: smart, creative, lively streets
everywhere etc. On the contrary, distinctiveness emerges from the singular combination of
different city assets and approaching the city narrative as an honest introspection,
projected with healthy optimism into the future.
Crowdsourcing the city story. As it increases authenticity. Anyhow, there is a growing
active citizenship, digitally educated, able to personalize and share city experiences and
visions, which is opening new exciting opportunities in many aspects of urban
development.
Logos & mottos can play a role, but not always, and never the main role. Logos &
mottos attract the spotlight so powerfully that the more strategic side of city branding
often remains overshadowed and underestimated. From a visual communication point of
view, the real challenge is to promote more outstanding city imagery.
City branding is basically an organisational challenge. From a governance
perspective, city branding is about creating a shared working area for the diverse entities
in the city targeting and interacting with the different audiences.
There is no one single formula but some drivers to institutionalize such
collaborative models. It may not be necessary to found new constituted bodies to
deliver collaboration. What is relevant is to organise specific platforms, alliances or
agreements involving the range of key stakeholders, provide some leadership from the
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local government, organize highly professionalized dedicated teams to run the day to day
and arrange new funding models.
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City branding does not come to replace the different sector-focused city
marketing practices. On the contrary, its reason for being is to give support to the
operations carried out by the entities working in destination marketing, cultural events,
inward investment, etc. Those specialized marketing teams will keep a vital role for sure,
within a new context where synergies can be now fully exploited and the range of city
messages and stories will gain in consistency.
Branding the city might not be something disconnected to the local population.
Branding can be a question of internal marketing too. Place-branding techniques can be
used to socialize flagship projects and emerging processes in the city that need to be
installed in the collective imagination.
Cities need to expand the concept of what communication action is. This is as a
way to overcome an approach dominated by a campaign logic and to learn to promote
cities with small budgets, if necessary. The challenge for cities is to make a revised choice
on their particular mix of communication tools in today´s world.
Signature of the strategic policy statement
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Looking forward
CityLogo, as overarching cross-learning experience in city branding, has been sucessfuly
completed. Even so, a discussion was organized in Utrecht in order to explore potential continuity
to the collaboration. Several ideas and optiones were considered:
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A technology-driven project, probably based on social medial-based tools, in order to
produce adapted platform to engage the local population and stakeholders in city brand
building and development. In order words, what platform to duly curate and organize the
potential massive flow of information, stories, endorsements, images... about the city from
committed citizens and stakeholders? Perhaps, Horizon 2020 could be the right framework
for this kind of project.
All related on how to measure and evaluate the impact of city brand policies and initiatives.
Maybe some kind of balance scorecard measuring global image and attractiveness
capacity. It would requiere modelization work stablishing consistent cause-effect
relationship regarding conscious policies and concrete mesasures on city attractiveness,
city branding and city marketing. Likewise, as R&D type of project, Horizon 2020 would be
the right framework for it.
In-depth cross-learning not in city branding but any of the sector-focused city markeitng
practices, like talent attraction and retention.
Cities with same profile and interests pooling resources to implement jointly specific
communication actions. For instance, targeting China and Asia as big power in the FDI
global market and growing role in the tourist sector, joining efforts to attent global events
like World Expos, etc.
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Led by the city of Utrecht, URBACT-CityLogo is a three-year transnational network working at two
levels: locally, shaping specific platforms for stakeholder involvement in each of the participating
cities, with the mission to co-produce innovative strategies on integrated city branding; at network
level, it is running a range of transnational activities, including baseline study, thematic workshops,
study visits, case studies, peer-review and final report. Initiatives at network level are open to any
interested cities and third parties.
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Introductory note
Photo covers: Rob Huibers, Utrecht