Beyond the logo: Brand

management for cities

Received (in revised form): 3rd October, 2007

GREGORY ASHWORTH
was educated at St. John’s College Cambrige (BA, 1962), University of Reading (MPhil, 1967), Birkbeck College,
University of London (PhD,.1974). He has taught at the University of Wales, Cardiff Department of Geography,
Cyncoed. 1966–1969; University of Portsmouth, Department of Geography, 1969–1979. University of Groningen,
Faculty of Spatial Sciences 1979– . Since 1994, he is Professor of Heritage Management and Urban Tourism in the
Department of Planning, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.

MIHALIS KAVARATZIS
was born in Athens, Greece. He studied business administration in the University of Piraeus in Greece and then
obtained an MSc in Marketing from the University of Stirling in Scotland. In 2004 he joined the Urban and Regional
Studies Institute (URSI) of the University of Groningen. He is completing his PhD on city marketing in Europe.

Keywords
place branding; city
branding; corporate
marketing; city-brand
management
Abstract
A city’s brand is increasingly considered an important asset for urban development and an effective
tool for cities to distinguish themselves and improve their positioning. The introduction of corporate-
level marketing concepts and, especially, corporate branding has significantly contributed towards
the development of a city branding theory. In practice, however, there is an evident confusion of a
wide branding strategy with one of its components, namely the design of a new logo and slogan
or, at best, the development of a promotional campaign. This paper first describes the rise of city
branding and the reasons of its popularity and, after a short review of the basic elements of
corporate branding, it goes on to identify essential similarities between these two forms of
branding. It finally detects the need to adapt any branding tools to the needs of cities and
addresses the necessity of a comprehensive city brand management framework.
Journal of Brand Management (2009) 16, 520–531. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bm.2550133;
published online 23 November 2007

INTRODUCTION in this debate and the suggestions for the

Mihalis Kavaratzis
Urban and Regional Studies
Institute,
University of Groningen,
P.O. BOX 800,
Groningen 9700 AV,
The Netherlands
Tel: + 31 50 363 8289
E-mail: m.kavaratzis@rug.nl
City branding has in recent years become
a prevailing activity within city manage-
ment. Cities all over the world use several
conduits to promote themselves to rele-
vant audiences such as investors, visitors
and residents and in their efforts they
commonly include striking logos and
captivating slogans that feature in wel-
coming websites and advertising campaigns
in national and international media. At
the same time, a substantial debate over
the usefulness and proper application of
city branding has accumulated among
academics, consultants and government
officials. Various issues have been raised
implementation of branding campaigns
within cities are often countered by crit-
ical voices. This paper examines the
phenomenon of city branding attempting
to clarify some of the issues involved. To
that end, two related literatures need to
be brought together, namely the steadily
growing literature on place branding and
the extensive literature on corporate brands.
CITIES AS BRANDS
Slogans such as ‘Das Neue Berlin’, ‘Basel
beats differently’ or ‘Edinburgh: Inspiring
Capital’ are increasingly commonplace.

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www.palgrave-journals.com/bm

Amsterdam has recently launched a
branding campaign centring around the
slogan ‘I amsterdam’; Athens successfully
hosted the Olympic Games of 2004 and
is now anxiously anticipating their posi-
tive effects inviting you to ‘surprise your-
self in Athens Attica’; London has
become ‘Totally London’ and will also host
the Olympic Games of 2012, expecting
the same results. The examples of cities
attempting to brand themselves could fill
many pages. The popularity of place
branding but also the necessity for a wide
discussion on the topic is demonstrated in
the special issues devoted to it ( Journal of
Brand Management, 2002) and the launching
of a specialised journal in 2004 (Place
Branding—Palgrave Publishers). Place
branding is defined as ‘the practice of
applying brand strategy and other
marketing techniques and disciplines to
the economic, political and cultural devel-
opment of cities, regions and countries’
(http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pb).
This raises questions about what actually
is being done in practice and whether it
is possible to apply strategies developed
for commercial products to places or
whether a new type of branding is
required. Branding is only one of many
possible instruments for managing and
developing places and its effectiveness
needs, therefore, to be evaluated in that
context. Although ‘…the practice of place
branding has far outpaced the extent to
which it has been written about in the
public realm’,1 recently there has been a
considerable increase in publications that
raise and attempt to answer these and
other similar questions.
The commentary on the theoretical
value and practical implementation of
place branding has followed distinct routes
in the literature, apparently depending on
the background and research interests of
particular commentators.2 Apart from
© 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR CITIES
those contributions that attempt to deal
with the subject as a whole,3,4 a major
trend, especially among marketing
academics and consultants has been the
discussion on national branding,5–7 usually
in connection to the use of the country
of origin in product branding.8 A second
trend, mostly outside the marketing disci-
pline, has been the discussion on the
effects that the evident popularity and
widespread use of cultural and entertain-
ment branding have on cities and their
physical and social character.9,10 A major
stream of publications has dealt with the
issue of destination branding: treating
places as brands for their benefits to
tourism development.11 This field has
probably been the more developed in
terms of suggesting concrete and practical
measures for managing destinations as
brands. Arguably a large part of the theo-
retical development in this field comes
from Hankinson.12,13 Starting from his
belief that ‘as yet no general theoretical
framework exists to underpin the devel-
opment of place brands apart from clas-
sical, product-based branding theory’,14
he provides a refined framework for
understanding cities as brands, focusing
on cities as tourism destinations. Another
emerging view is the attempt to examine
the possible adaptation of the concept of
corporate branding and specific method-
ologies developed in this field in place
branding.15–19 The arguments for imple-
mentation of branding within cities are
routed in the assumption that, in essence,
people ‘understand’ cities in the same way
as brands. It is in people’s minds that the
city takes form through the processing of
perceptions and images about the city.
This process is the same as that followed
in the formation of images of other enti-
ties like products or corporations, which
have long been managed as brands.
Extending this assumption, comes the
521
 ASHWORTH AND KAVARATZIS
argument that the best way to attempt to
influence peoples’ perceptions and images
about cities must be similar to the way
that businesses have been successfully
attempting the same for their products,
namely branding. The above assumptions
are, of course, subject to scrutiny as is
found in the academic literature on place
and city branding.
Practice shows that city administrators
are ready to adopt branding as a develop-
ment strategy for their city. They eagerly
(and sometimes uncritically) accept the
suggestions of consultants that city
branding is the only way of surviving in
a fiercely competitive environment.
Perhaps tempted by the supposed novelty
of such methods, their apparent contrast
with past practices, and also perhaps
fearing that they will indeed be left behind
the competition that is engaged in brand-
ing, cities readily adopt branding tech-
niques. An evident problem, though, with
city branding implementation is that, all
too often cities adopt only a part of the
branding process, namely the develop-
ment of a catchy slogan and/or the design
of a new logo to be attached in promo-
tional material. City marketing in general
in its organised and more refined form is
a relatively recent activity and it seems to
suffer from the-not unfamiliar-delusion
that marketing equals promotion. Most
city marketing efforts start and finish with
promotional activities and most city
branding efforts start and finish with the
visual elements of logos and slogans. Cases
of cities that undertake a thorough and
more careful implementation of the city
marketing process as a whole are rather
exceptions to the rule.20 Therefore, this
paper will demonstrate something that is
well known to marketing academics,
namely that branding needs to be thought
of as a complete and continuous process
interlinked with all other marketing efforts.
522 © 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
CORPORATE BRANDING
There has been, recently, a growing body
of work that points to the inability of
earlier positioning tools to cope with the
substantially changed environment that
organisations now face. One response to
this inability has been the suggestions of
relationship marketing, which considers as
the key element of marketing the building
of relationships with relevant stakeholders
and, especially, customers, the relationships
with which are viewed as opportunities
that need to be managed21 in order to
increase customer retention.22 Of partic-
ular relevance to place branding in this
vain is the conceptualisation of the brand
as something that consumers can have a
relationship with.23 Indeed, place
marketing in general can be thought of
as a form of relation between local author-
ities and local or wider audiences. In fact,
‘… it may be as much about communica-
tion between citizens as clients and public
authorities as service providers as about
attracting exogenous investment, employ-
ment or customers. A place is sending
messages to itself. The purpose is the
fostering of a civic consciousness and self-
confidence. This is both an end in itself
and a necessary precondition for external
marketing’.24 This is a concept that
changes the whole attitude towards
marketing activities and provides a clearer
focus for the whole place branding process.
A different response to the above stated
inability of earlier positioning tools has
recognised ‘the need to deepen the
marketing view of the brand to encom-
pass organizational attributes and to shift
focus from the integrity of the product
brand to the organisation and people
behind the brand.’25 Currently, brands are
considered valuable assets of a company
and there is general agreement in the
marketing literature that the brand
embodies a whole set of physical and

socio-psychological attributes and beliefs.26
The notion of corporate branding is a
development of traditional product
branding, necessitated and, at the same
time, enriched, by the rise of other corpo-
rate-level concepts, such as corporate
image, corporate identity and corporate
communications. As Balmer and Gray27
describe ‘in the early 1990s several brand-
ing and communication consultants
mentioned and then went on to assess
what was then called the “company
brand”. The later half of the 1990s
witnessed a gradual crescendo of writing
on the more encompassing and more stra-
tegic-sounding “corporate brand”, which
has since then seized the imagination of
scholars and managers alike and its rise
has been inexorable.’28
Establishing successful corporate brand
management practices relies on the iden-
tification of two factors29: first, the mix of
variables that comprise the corporate
brand and, secondly, the development of
a brand management system for under-
standing the process of direction and
control. A notion strongly linked with
those terms is corporate identity, which is
central to an appreciation of the concept
of corporate brands.30 Corporate identity
is a holistic concept that ‘articulates the
corporate ethos, aims and values and
presents a sense of individuality that can
help to differentiate the organisation
within its competitive environment’.31 A
strong identity is very important for trans-
mitting a consistent internal and external
image among stakeholders, creating a
valuable asset.32 A particular problem with
the study of corporate identity is the
ambiguity regarding the elements that
constitute such an identity.33 To address
this problem, Balmer34 undertook an
investigation of the literature about the
elements comprising the ‘corporate
identity mix’ and he went on to design
© 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR CITIES
a new corporate identity mix, which
consists of the following components:
strategy (management vision, corporate
strategy, product/services as well as
corporate performance, corporate brand
covenant, corporate ownership); structure
(relationships between parent company
and subsidiaries, relations with alliance
or franchise partners); communication
(total corporate communication, which
encompasses primary, secondary and
tertiary communication) and culture (the
soft and subjective elements consisting
of the mix of sub-cultures present
within, but not always emanating from the
organisation).
A valuable distinction is between the
elements that constitute an identity and
the mix of elements that require orches-
tration when managing such an identity.
In addition to the elements forming the
identity, management needs to take into
account the environment, reputations and
stakeholders.35 According to Balmer and
Greyser, ‘Although prevailing corporate
thinking considers identity to be a mono-
lithic phenomenon, this premise is narrow
and inadequate… (A)n organisation has
multiple identities, which “can co-exist
comfortably within the organisation even
if they are slightly different”’.36 Balmer
and Greyser37 suggest that management
needs to have understanding across those
multiple identities and they provide a
framework (AC2ID Test), which includes
five types of identity. These are: Actual
identity (the current attributes of the
corporation); Communicated identity
(revealed through controllable corporate
communication); Conceived identity
(perceptions of the company held by rele-
vant stakeholders); Ideal identity (the
optimum positioning of the organisation
in its market in a given time-frame)
and Desired identity (the vision of cor-
porate leaders for the organisation).
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 ASHWORTH AND KAVARATZIS
Organisations must manage their multiple
identities to avoid potentially harmful
misalignments.38 Furthermore, corporate
brand management needs to take into
account and is inextricably linked to the
management of identity.39
‘A corporate brand is the visual, verbal
and behavioural expression of an organi-
sation’s unique business model’.40 The
brand is expressed through the company’s
mission, core values, beliefs, communica-
tion, culture and overall design.41 It is
argued42 that at the core of a corporate
brand is an explicit covenant (other
commentators use the term promise)
between an organisation and its key stake-
holder groups. The importance of the
corporate covenant is such that it may be
viewed as a distinct identity type, which
in turn means that corporate brand
management requires alignment of the
brand covenant with the five other iden-
tity types, mentioned above. Corporate
branding draws on the traditions of
product branding, in that it shares the
same objective of creating differentiation
and preference.43 This activity is, however,
rendered more complex by managers
conducting these practices at the level of
the organisation rather than the individual
product or service, and by the require-
ment to manage interactions with multiple
stakeholder audiences.44 ‘The entity in
corporate branding has a higher level of
intangibility, complexity and social respon-
sibility, making it much more difficult to
build a coherent brand’.45 There is an
agreement in the relevant literature on the
need for corporate branding to be multi-
disciplinary, combining elements of
strategy, corporate communications and
culture, a view further refined by Hatz
and Schultz,46 who point to the interplay
of three variables—vision, culture and
image—as a context for corporate
branding. Finally, Kapferer47 claims that
524 © 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
we have now entered a new age of
brand identity, which can be viewed as
comprising six variables namely, physique,
personality, culture, relationship, reflection
and self-image.
Brands in general and corporate brands
specifically are seen as the base for the
long-term success of firms and organisa-
tions. In contemporary marketing, bran-
ding is central, as it integrates all the
strategic elements into one success formula.48
The whole marketing programme—
objectives, strategies and tactics—is derived
from brand positioning.49
FROM CORPORATIONS TO CITIES
It is widely accepted that cities cannot be
thought of simply as products. City brands
may be fundamentally different from
product brands, but this does not mean
that they cannot be treated as corporate
brands. In fact, there are many similarities
between corporate branding and city
marketing that can be seen if one compares
the characteristics of corporate brands
as summarised by Balmer and Gray50
with the city marketing literature.
Examples of these characteristics are
that both corporate brands and city
brands have multidisciplinary roots,51
both address multiple groups of stake-
holders,52,53 both have a high level of
intangibility and complexity,54 both need
to take into account social responsibility,55
both deal with multiple identities,56 both
need a long-term development.57 In this
sense, corporate branding seems to offer
valuable suggestions for implementing
branding within cities, something that has
occurred to several commentators,58–60
who point at the metaphor of place as a
corporate brand.61 Trueman et al.16
conclude that ‘city branding can draw
parallels from the corporate branding
literature in terms of relationship building,
communications, personality and identity,

supported by strategy, creativity and
resources’ and they go on to provide a
useful comparison of the similarities and
differences between corporate marketing
and city brands.
Hankinson,62 after a review of both
corporate branding and place branding
literatures provides five very useful guiding
principles for destination brands based on
corporate branding theories. He argues
that ‘there are sufficient similarities
between these two types of brand to allow
useful lessons to be drawn’63 and suggests
that efficient destination branding depends
upon (a) a strong, visionary leadership,
(b) a brand-oriented organisational culture,
(c) departmental coordination and process
alignment, (d) consistent communications
across a wide range of stakeholders and
(e) strong, compatible partnerships. The
argument for applying corporate branding
tools on cities is made also by Trueman
et al.,64 who applied the AC2ID Test of
corporate identity65 in the city of Brad-
ford, in order to identify gaps in the city’s
official communication strategy, revealing
conflicting messages between local govern-
ment policy and different stakeholder
groups and highlighting gaps between the
vision of the city’s leaders (desired or
conceived identity), its official publica-
tions (communicated identity) and the
reality of living and working in the city.
This might be a useful tool to address a
common charge against city marketing,
namely the problem of the gap between
the city’s image and its reality, between
the projected and the perceived identity
of a city. The above research found ‘indi-
cations that it is possible to examine the
city as a brand using conventional meth-
odologies for brand analysis provided that
sufficient weight is given to different
stakeholders’.66 Rainisto 67 also asserts that
‘…to some extent… place brands resemble
corporate umbrella brands’ and that ‘a
© 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR CITIES
place’s brand image needs both the
tangible “service” characteristics and the
brand’s personality, like corporate
brands’.68
It is certainly possible to adopt a
branding philosophy for the management
of cities and to use tools and principles
of corporate branding particularly. It is
necessary, however, to adapt such tools
and models to the specific characteristics
and demands of cities. Cities are
neither products nor corporations in the
traditional meaning of the terms and,
therefore, a distinct form of branding
is needed.
MANAGING CITY BRANDS
A major element of this distinct form of
branding would have to be the develop-
ment of a city branding framework that
would incorporate the elements that need
to be aligned. There have been attempts
towards that end which this paper will
examine. There is, however, an issue that
needs to be clarified first, which has to
do with the relations between the city
brand and the nation brand and the
possible ways to manage both.
Corporate branding in the commercial
world is related to the notion of brand
architecture, which examines the relations
of the corporate brand to the rest of the
brands of individual products/services or
product-lines that the same corporation is
offering. Different business strategies may
require different brand architectures.69
Often individual brands are managed as a
part of or under the ‘umbrella’ corporate
brand but in other cases some corpora-
tions choose to manage each individual
brand separately. There is perhaps a parallel
of this in the field of branding places.
Places exist in geographical or place-scales
(country, region, city, commune) therefore
it might be useful to examine place
525
 ASHWORTH AND KAVARATZIS
branding taking place-scales under consid-
eration. In other words, to examine a
brand architecture approach for managing
all place brands that belong to the same
nation. It is worth examining this point
in more detail. A suggestion is to create
one ‘umbrella’ nation brand and several
sub-brands for each region and city of the
country. As has been shown,70 however,
nation brands and region/city brands have
different characteristics and are affected by
different factors that influence their eval-
uation. Countries have more stable and
enduring brand images, whereas cities are
more dependent on the trends of the
market, and fulfil more self-expression
needs compared to countries.71 ‘An
“umbrella” [nation] brand may either
become too heterogeneous (i.e. a non-
brand), too bland (i.e. appealing to no-one
in particular) or too skewed (focusing on
certain activities at the expense of
others)’.72 That is arguably the case for
any place brand, whatever place-scale they
refer to, as they all attempt to cover the
needs of different economic sectors and
to address multiple audiences.73 Nation
brands, however, have to address the addi-
tional tensions created by the inevitable
place-competition within the country
itself. The solution of creating an umbrella
nation brand, under which city brands
will be managed is, therefore not supported
here. This is not intended in the least to
undermine the significance of nation
brands. Indeed a country’s reputation (or
the nation brand) ‘has a direct and meas-
urable impact on just about every aspect
of its engagement with other countries
and plays a critical role in its economic,
social, political and cultural progress’.74
Therefore, a nation brand is certainly
useful, especially in terms of issues of
public diplomacy and the support of the
country’s exports—what is known as the
country-of-origin effect. What is ques-
526 © 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
tioned here is the effectiveness of managing
the regional or city brands under a general
nation brand or as sub-brands of this
nation brand. It is perhaps better to main-
tain a clear distinction between the nation
and city brands but this is indeed an issue
that demands more attention in the rele-
vant literature.
With this distinction in mind, the
proposed city-brand-management frame-
works will now be examined. A general
framework of place branding is proposed
by Rainisto75 concentrating on the
marketing of places as business locations
and in particular the activities of inward
investment agencies. The framework
consists of nine success factors of place
marketing and branding practices.
According to this framework, the core
building stones of place marketing (and
most important success factors) are: Plan-
ning Group (the organ responsible to plan
and execute marketing practices), Vision
and Strategic Analysis (the insight of
the place about its future position),
Place Identity and Image (a unique set of
place brand associations, which the
management wants to create or maintain),
Public–Private Partnerships and Leader-
ship (the capability to conduct complex
processes and obtain the organising
power). These are factors that a place can
actively influence and that represent the
organising capacity of the place. Another
four success factors assist the above to
meet the challenges in the environment
where place marketing practices are
performed; these are Political Unity
(agreement about public affairs), Global
Marketplace, Local Development and
Process Coincidences (remarkable occur-
rences of events during the marketing
process).
Anholt76 describes a framework for
evaluating city brands called the city
brand hexagon that is used to create the

Anholt-GMI City Brands Index. It has
been developed as a means of evaluating
the effectiveness of branding activities.
The hexagon consists of the following
components: Presence (the city’s interna-
tional status and standing—how familiar
people are with the city), Place (the phys-
ical aspects of the city—how beautiful and
pleasant or otherwise the city is), Potential
(the opportunities the city has to offer, for
instance in terms of economic or educa-
tional activities), Pulse (the existence of a
vibrant urban lifestyle or lack thereof-how
exciting people think the city is), People
(the local population in terms of openness
and warmth; also safety issues) and Prereq-
uisites (the basic qualities of the city; the
standards and price of accommodation
and public amenities).
Cai’s77 framework (which mainly
considers tourism destinations) regards
branding as a recursive process that
revolves around an axis formed by brand
element mix, brand identity and brand
image building. Brand elements are chosen
to identify the place and to start the
formation of brand associations that reflect
the attributes (the perceptual tangible and
intangible features of the place), affective
(personal value and benefits attached to
the attributes) and attitudes (overall eval-
uation and motivation for action) compo-
nents of an image. The framework also
includes the image projected by Destina-
tion Marketing Organisations through
these components and goes on to suggest
that image-building takes place through
marketing programmes, marketing
communications and managing secondary
associations. Marketing programmes are
designed to enhance the brand identity
and marketing communications select an
optimal mix of media to support marketing
programmes in enhancing the identity.
The secondary associations do not result
from programmes or communications and
© 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR CITIES
although normally beyond the control of
the organisation, they can be borrowed or
leveraged. As contextual preconditions of
branding, four components are suggested,78
namely the destination’s size and compo-
sition, its existing organic image, its
existing induced image and the posi-
tioning and target markets chosen.
Kavaratzis79 suggests a framework
which describes the way in which brand
communication takes place through the
choice and appropriate treatment of
different variables, which have both func-
tional as well as symbolic meaning. It is
suggested80 that the communicated iden-
tity of a corporation includes three types
of official communication: Primary (the
customer experience of products and
services), Secondary (advertising, PR, etc)
and Tertiary (word of mouth). Accord-
ingly, this framework suggests that the city
brand is communicated through the same
distinct types of communication. Tertiary
communication does not lend itself to
extensive control by a city’s authorities.
The two types of controlled communica-
tion are:
1. Primary Communication, that relates
to the communicative effects of a city’s
actions, when communication is not
the main goal of these actions. It is
divided into four broad areas of inter-
vention: Landscape Strategies (interven-
tions relevant to urban design,
architecture or public spaces in the
city); Infrastructure Projects (projects
developed to create, improve or give a
distinctive character to the various
types of infrastructure, whether
improving accessibility to the city or
sufficiency of various facilities like
cultural centres, conference facilities,
etc); Organisational and Administrative
Structure (the effectiveness of the city’s
governing structure, emphasising
527
 ASHWORTH AND KAVARATZIS
community development networks
and citizens’ participation in the deci-
sion making, along with the establish-
ment of Public–Private Partnerships);
and finally, the City’s Behaviour (the
quality of service provision, the type
and scale of events organised in the
city and such issues as the city leaders’
vision for the city, the financial incen-
tives provided).
2. Secondary Communication, that is
the formal, intentional commu-
nication, that most commonly takes
place through well-known marketing
practices like advertising, public rela-
tions, graphic design, the use of a
logo, etc.
In another attempt, Hankinson81 suggests
a model of place brands based on the
conceptualisation that brands form a rela-
tionship with the consumer, which can be
the result of congruity with the consum-
er’s self-image or the development of a
brand–consumer fit between the consum-
er’s physical and psychological needs and
the functional attributes and symbolic
values of the brand. Of critical importance
for this conceptualisation (and the features
that make it clearly relevant to place
brands) are (a) the notion of the consumer
as a co-producer of the place-product, (b)
the ‘experiential’ nature of place-consump-
tion and (c) ‘marketing networks as vehi-
cles for integrating all stakeholders in a
collaborative partnership of value enhance-
ment’.82 The starting point is the core
brand, which can be defined by the brand
personality, the brand positioning and the
brand reality. The effectiveness of place
branding relies on the extension of the
core brand through effective relationships
with the various stakeholders. These rela-
tionships are grouped in four categories:
(a) Primary Service Relationships (serv-
ices at the core of the brand experience,
528 © 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
such as retailers, events and leisure or
hotels); (b) Brand Infrastructure Relation-
ships (access services, brandscape/built
environment, various facilities); (c) Media
Relationships (organic communications,
marketing communications) and (d)
Consumer Relationships (residents and
employees, internal customers, managed
relationships from the top). More recently83
the same author provided a new frame-
work, which reveals the leading role of
the Destination Marketing Organisation,
concentrating on ensuring consistent
communication, both collectively and
individually with all stakeholders: partners,
visitors and residents.84
A useful way to look at branding in
general is to conceptualise it as managing
consumers’ expectations. City branding in
particular should be understood as a
process of generating expectations in
actual and potential city users’ minds and
ensuring that these expectations are met
in the way people experience the city.
Creating or, at least, influencing expecta-
tions about the city takes place through
communication and promotional activi-
ties. More importantly, however, the
second part of attempting to meet the
expectations demands the alignment and
consistency of all other marketing activi-
ties. This distinction is evident in all
frameworks described here but needs to
be put across into the practice of city
branding, something that has so far not
been achieved. All the frameworks
described above make their own contri-
bution but, at the same time, have to
address their own limitations. The frame-
work by Kavaratzis is clearly theoretical
and certainly demands an examination of
its practical applicability and then a re-
evaluation of its components and clarifi-
cation of any practical contribution. The
same can be argued for the Rainisto
framework. The Anholt framework clearly

adopts a consultant’s perspective and is
suggested mostly as a tool with which to
investigate the effects of branding activi-
ties in the fields that are included. It there-
fore needs first a reappraisal as to the
theoretical values it is based upon and,
secondly, if it is to be used as a guide for
managing a city’s brand, the ways and
measures to ensure success in the fields
included in the framework need to be
clarified. Both Hankinson’s and Cai’s
models are limiting their focus on cities
as tourism destinations. They, therefore,
need an expansion to other fields
that branding can be useful for cities,
because cities cannot function only as
tourism destinations. It is clear that a lot
more research is necessary in order to
arrive to a comprehensive framework of
city branding.
THE FUTURE OF PLACE BRANDING
A number of paradoxes have become
evident. There is a growing academic
literature exploring the nature and
meaning of branding when transferred
from conventional products to places:
there is no widely accepted blueprint for
applying such ideas to places as an instru-
ment of place management. Cities
throughout contemporary Europe have
never been more engaged in place
branding of one sort or another: the goals,
instruments and impacts remain vaguely
formulated and only partially understood.
There is rapidly accumulating body of
case experience as cities launch and re-
launch branding campaigns but as yet no
framework of comparison allowing lessons
to be drawn. Each new campaign remains
unique to the place that initiates it and
each reinvents and rethinks the process
from its fundamentals. The very competi-
tiveness of the arena within cities now
operate discourages a free interchange of
© 2009 Palgrave Macmillan 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 16, 8, 520–531
BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR CITIES
ideas or experiences. The gaps between
conceptualisation and practice and
between commercial corporate branding
and place branding remain wide but, in
the interests of the effective use of a
potentially powerful instrument of place
management, must be bridged.
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 BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR CITIES

(59) Hankinson, ref 15 above. and exotic friendliness in coordinated national

(60) Kavaratzis, ref 17 above. tourism and investment promotion’, Discussion
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