The author(Jens Wietschorke) is interested in: “Where modernity was invented”. And he examines two options: “Vienna – Berlin”. This is the title of the book published by Reclam in 2023. The curious brand maker gets to read something completely different. She learns entertaining and unexpected facts about how Vienna and Berlin became city brands. Two observations are particularly striking. Firstly, the intimate relationship between the cities repeatedly determines the processes of brand development: “There is no Vienna without Berlin” (201). Secondly, the respective development into a city brand largely manages without professional brand makers.
The first point is a welcome reminder that the comparative is the relevant intensifier for the development of strong brands. The basic form (positive) is not enough: to be great. And the superlative does not necessarily have to be used: to be the biggest. The comparative is used to compare two things. It indicates that they are different and that one of them is better (or worse). A Golf is a fast car. But a BMW is even more fun to drive. In terms of cities: Vienna and Berlin are both major European cities. Nevertheless, they are rarely confused. However, Jens Wietschorke ‘s most important point is that “you learn more about Vienna and Berlin if you think of them in context” (9). This is what his “Tale of Two Cities” is about: how the two cities develop (primarily between 1870 and 1930) as a pair of cities. Of course, they are in competition with each other and vie for the better public perception. However, they always refer to each other: “most descriptions of cities [are] inscribed with a relational moment, a view from one city to the other ” (24, emphasis in original). Although it is about the respective differences, both benefit from each other in the battle for attractiveness with the target audience. For example, the question of who is the musical capital of Europe is often disputed. However, there is agreement that it can only be one of these two cities. This competition between cities should therefore be welcomed as a win-win situation (and not condemned as a zero-sum game ). Certainly a desirable position for ‘classic’ brands too: Coca-Cola or Pepsi, Mercedes or BMW, Samsung or Apple, Edeka or Rewe … and therefore always a brand strategy option worth considering.
Secondly, the author leaves no doubt about the “transformation [of both cities] into a recognizable brand” (186). The overall narrative thrives on the “reality-defining power” of these city brands: “The difference between Vienna and Berlin is […] above all an empirical fact, a fact of the social world” (22f.). And this is based on a thoroughly paradoxical basic constellation: “On the one hand, cities are far too complicated, confused, tense and contradictory entities to have a clearly identifiable individuality. […] And yet one can imagine that nowhere else is like this” (27). The respective brand essence (the author does not use the term) is revealed – beyond the changes over time – by countless “urban narratives of traditional Vienna and history-less Berlin” (186). Elsewhere, this means: “In Berlin the presence of the present, in Vienna the presence of the past” (204). What is remarkable from the point of view of the brand industry is that the entire study is largely devoid of those supposedly responsible for brand development. Advertising managers and PR experts only appear very occasionally and then only in passing. By contrast, architects, professors, chess players, pub owners, composers, painters, art critics and, above all, writers (“big city literature”) repeatedly dominate the urban hustle and bustle in competition with each other. The author is amazed at “how exactly the city narratives” resemble each other and convincingly states “that some of these narratives played a central role” in the development of the city brands (186).
As mentioned at the beginning: the author is not centrally interested in the topic of “city brands”. In fact, it only appears explicitly in passing. And yet – according to the assessment here – Jens Wietschorke delivers a very clever book on the subject of brand development. This does not ‘only’ apply to city brands (for corresponding “rules of the trade” for city brand makers, see Eric Häusler and Jürgen Häusler: Wie Städte zu Marken werden, Springer Gabler-Verlag 2023). General lessons can certainly be drawn from this. Hence the modest proposal at this point: brand makers, read more books thatthink intelligently about the topic of brands without the word brand prominently displayed on the outside!
