A Shared Vision on City Branding in Europe Loses Focus

It was recently stated in LEADERS magazine that European place branding was at least a decade ahead of the practice in the USA. So it was with great anticipation that I began reading the report, "A Shared Vision on City Branding in Europe". 

Last weekend I collaborated with my friend Robert Govers who is Adjunct Associate Professor at University of Leuven, Belgium and author on Place Branding in writing a brief critique on the report, which is posted here on Placebranz blog. I must admit that the report has left me scratching my head and thinking of the old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?”

The authors state that the objective of the report is to produce a “best practice guide”, but instead they became fixated on logos and slogans, without providing consistent insight into the strategic rational needed to successfully underpin them. Some of the slogans included:

• Zaragoza “A challenge, a city”
• Manchester “A mature city”
• Lyon “Only Lyon”
• Ghent “So much city”

With slogans like these, I seriously doubt whether place branding in Europe is really a decade ahead of the practice in the USA. Afterall, we have plenty of similar slogans in the USA founded on generic, parity or irrelevant propositions. I think that we’ve all still got a long way to go.

I was hoping that the report would serve as a building block to advance on the existing publications on place and destination branding. One of the most recent being the excellent Handbook on Tourism Destination Branding produced by the World Tourism Organization and the European Travel Commission which had a strong foundation in the branding of European cities. Unfortunately, the European Cities report produced by a working group comprising representatives of forty European cities, fell way short of the mark.

Comments

[Ed Burghard]

Your observation reminds me that bad place branding can happen anywhere in the world. It also makes me optimistic the Strengthening Brand America Project may help the United States catch up to the EU is application of place branding. It is easier to catch the leader if the leader is standing still (or my guess is you might argue - walking backwards).