The city as a brand. (5/6)

A series of six contributions.

It must be the dream of every ambitious brand maker: to turn a city into a strong city brand. It is certainly a highly fascinating task. But is it realistic that cities can be turned into brands? Going even further: is it desirable for cities to be turned into brands?

These questions are addressed in six articles that are published on an ongoing basis in the business of brand management. The articles are each excerpts from Häusler and Häusler: How cities become brands. Developing city brands purposefully and thoughtfully, Springer 2024 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-43776-3 (German version, Springer Gabler 2023 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-41456-6). The articles have been slightly shortened and edited.

The city brand as craftmanship.

Photo: Wolfgang Fach

The following rules do not always and everywhere apply, do not lead to clear action recommendations, overlap in individual aspects and even contradict each other in parts. The ‘simple’ and strict adherence to all rules does not necessarily lead to a successful city brand. Conversely, a successful city brand probably indicates that the rules were not grossly violated.

• The history carries great weight when it comes to developing the optimal positioning space between past experiences and future expectations for a city. What has been built (in part) over centuries cannot be easily reinterpreted. However, what has been positively created in history should be used as material for the creative work on the future image of the city.

• Determining the development of a city brand is the creatively open and pragmatically modest elaboration of—realistic and ambitious—future imaginations for the city. They must be (as far as possible) attractive for external target groups and motivating for the city population. Then they can (in the best case) become direction-setting for the current design of urban realities (built environments), experiences (ways of living) and representations and perceptions (imaginations).

• The relation to give meaning by the brand maker and receive meaning by the existing city population and all other potential target groups, one group has ‘the last word’: city brands must (as far as possible) be developed with the affected city population. Not for them. And of course, in no case over them: as a dictate.

• In city branding, it can only be very limitedly about turning the city brand-adequately—i.e., positioning-conform—upside down. Diversity is vital for the attractive city. Colorful variety and fresh vitality make up the special attractiveness of the urban. Designing a homogeneous overall experience as much as possible should not be the goal of the exercise. It can only aim to use the spotlight in such a way that a (desired) tip is given to the (existing) iceberg.

• Numerous (to shape city images very specific and diverse) communication paths are available. Predominantly, these point away from the brand owner’s own communication (website, brochures), towards others talking about the city, towards so-called unpaid communication (for example, in various media reports). The task of the brand maker in this context is to give third parties something to talk about the city in a brand-promoting way. Such objects of suitable city stories are then usually concrete projects or objects, leaders, stories or events—which correspond to the desired positioning of the city.

• The process of brand development is essentially of a selective nature: accents are set, unpleasant things are faded out. Branding is necessarily a process of social exclusion. City brand makers also (but not only them) systematically avoid the city-shaping walks on the wild side: “the unresting souls of the poor, the marginal, the dispossesed, the depraved, the defective, the recalcitrant. They are the guardian spirits of the urban wilderness in which they lived and died. Unrecognized by the history that is common knowledge, they push invisibly behind it to erect their memorials in the collective unconscious”. City branding regularly does not deal—honestly and appropriately—with the “repressed history of vice and crime, misery and graft, panic and despair, chaos and saturnalia” (Sante, L.: Low life. Lures and snares of old New York. Vintage 1992, pp. xiv-xv. These phenomena naturally belong to urban identity. What remains are only rather helpless objections: The degree of selectivity should not accept any form of discrimination or ghettoization. The sharpening worked out should not be at the expense of valuable and significant potential for the further future. And the search for the unique position in external competition should not unreflectively lead to the internal exclusion of large parts of the city population.

• The development of city brands is part of the broader societal trend towards the commercialization of more and more areas of life. However, cities are not arbitrarily shapeable spaces. They are significant social and political living spaces. They are not simply built-up areas, they are home to many people (analogous to the song lyric: it’s not a house, it’s a home). Therefore, cities cannot convincingly and with conviction become arbitrary ideas, imaginations, brand images. If too many city brands fall into the trap of best practice in their respective search for uniqueness (which happens not infrequently), in the end too many cities will be interchangeable. A city cannot harmlessly (sustainably successfully) become a doll’s house, a museum, a holiday or investment paradise. The real city must not disappear behind the city brand.