Communicating the city with city branding

What is city branding?

Inprinciple it is place branding, i.e. the strategic communication of a place to a specific target, a strategy that also applies to countries and cities . It encompasses a set of activities, such as the creation of a logo and a corporate image, aimed atbuilding the identity of an area with a view to promoting it, attracting people and making itself more competitive than other cities. Just as happens with a brand.

However, citybrandingis not just a logo, itis not a slogan, because a city is much more . It is a compendium of history and stories, of people and symbols, of values, of more or less complex facets: the objective of branding is to find a common factor that can sum up all these elements and make them attractive to others. Yes, but who others?

Certainly the tourists, who will choose that city for their next holiday. The workers ,but also companies and investors, who will find new opportunities for their future in the city. The inhabitants, whether temporary like students or not, attracted by the lifestyle and all that the city has to offer, who will call it home.

The strategy to make a city memorable

In the beginning is place branding, i.e. the strategic communication of a place to a specific target, a strategy that also applies to countries and cities . It encompasses a set of activities, such as the creation of a logo and a coordinated image, aimed atbuilding the identity of an area with a view to promoting it, attracting people and making it more competitive than other cities. Just as happens with a brand.

However, citybrandingis not just a logo, itis not a slogan, because a city is much more . It is a compendium of history and stories, of people and symbols, of values, of more or less complex facets: the objective of branding is to find a common factor that can sum up all these elements and make them attractive to others. Yes, but who others?

Certainly the tourists, who will choose that city for their next holiday. The workers ,but also companies and investors, who will find new opportunities for their future in the city. The inhabitants, whether temporary like students or not, attracted by the lifestyle and all that the city has to offer, who will call it home.

To build a city branding strategy, as for a real brand, it is important to take intoaccount the tangible aspects of the city (architecture, art, culture, environment, food and wine) and the intangible ones, such as personality and the emotions it arouses .Storytelling is an essential element of communication, to be developed in synergy with strategic marketing tools. These include:

• Positioning: to better understand the city’s distinctive elements
• Objectives: that are clear and long-term
• Visual identity: that best represents the message to be communicated

Through the city’s narrative , avalue proposition is developed, a real promise addressed to the target audience(s), which as we have already seen includes tourists, workers, current and potential residents.

Cities as brands: 4 examples

To concretely explain city branding, how can we not start with one of the most striking cases of city-branding? Let’s talk about New York and its famous logo I ❤️ NY that you will have seen at least once.Besides New York, there are several cities that have engaged in successful branding campaigns over the years. We show you some of them.

Amsterdam

The Amsterdam rebranding project represents one of the first cases of city branding in Europe and was developed in 2004 by the agency Kesselskramer. It is a slogan consisting of two simple words: I am Amsterdam. ‘I am’ is emphasised in red, celebrating the individuality and diversity of every person who relates to the city, whether citizen, worker, student or tourist .Every individual is part of the city. Amsterdam is welcoming and inclusive.

The slogan, among other things, also became an imposing urban sculpture – removed a few years ago, a true icon of the city.

Melbourne

In 2009 ,Melbourne‘snew visual identitywas presented , created by the Australian agency Landor. Until then, the city had had a large number of different logos, giving it a fragmented and confused image.

Thanks to Landor’s work, Melbourne adopted one of the first modular visual systems of logos, based on the city’s initial. The capital M, the cornerstone of visual communication, changes from time to time in colour and content, while always remaining recognisable: it is a reflection of a city of many shades, constantly evolving.

Porto

In June 2014, White Studio designed Porto’s new identity. The starting idea is to create avisual identity that goes beyond the logo and represents the complexity of Porto and the strong bond that every inhabitant has with their city .

Thefirst step was to add a dot to the name: Porto. to emphasise the character and personality of the city and its inhabitants . From a figurative point of view, the studio took inspiration from the traditional Portuguese blue tiles, the azulejos, and developed a flexible system of more than 70 icons, organised in categories, to narrate all aspects of the city.

Bologna

The towers, the porticoes, the gastronomy, the history and culture, its liveliness: these are just some of the aspects that characterise the city of Bologna, whose identity is very multifaceted. And it is from the need for a unique narrative that a project for the strategic promotion of Bologna was launched in 2013.

Bartoli and Pastore, winners of the Bologna City Brandingcompetition , developed a narrative system open to all, an alphabet composed of symbols drawn freely taking up some of the city’s figurative archetypes: from the city walls to the brick mosaic, from the lily to the heraldic banner.

By typing a word, the geometric shapes produce a new symbol, which changes each time according to the concept to be expressed. The payoff, however, does not change: ‘it is Bologna’.

From branding to the future of the city

We have just seen some famous cases of city branding, but not all campaigns have been so successful. As they say: not all that glitters is branded. A branding strategy does need ideas and a strong visual identity, but even more it needs time (not a given!), collaboration, foresight and active support from investors and institutions to have modern infrastructure, safe spaces, efficient services: more than a beautiful image, the key to a successful strategy is being able to identify and communicate what the city wants to become in the future.