Small City Branding Around the World

Is it Really The Greatest Place to Live, Work and Play?

We rarely conduct a brand workshop or focus group for a community when someone doesn’t say, “this is the best place to live, work and play”. Further, many advocate that it should be the city tagline.  Unfortunately, for many communities that do not use objective outsiders to assist their brand planning, they too often pat themselves on the back and agree that they’ve found the holy grail of place branding for their city - and “a great place to live, work and play” it is.

I am currently researching and writing an updated edition of “Destination Branding for Small Cities” and decided to Google the term, “a great place to live, work and play” and found over 4 million results. There are also over one hundred videos on YouTube with various spokespersons for communities using the term.

Scrolling through Google, I lost count of the number of communities that actually use the term as a tagline. So if you are considering joining the masses in building a brand based on being “a great place to live, work and play”, you have simply identified a threshold credential to play the game. There are tens of thousands of places in the USA and even more around the world that can match the claim. This is where you have to dig deeper to uncover the true essence of the place that will be valued and meaningful to target audiences. And why use the line to communicate with residents? They already live there and know it!

It’s amazing how many places pat themselves on the back and settle for this self-adulation and waste their time, on a line that is probably the most commonly used by citizens to describe the place where they live. Why bother! Even worse, they call it their brand.       

Know Any Interesting Place Branding Examples?

I am currently sourcing place branding examples for an updated and revised edition of my book, Destination Branding for Small Cities, which will be published in early 2012.

I am particularly interested in identifying small cities and regions that have handled an element of their brand planning and development process in an interesting way.  For instance, in cases where a place may have conducted its stakeholder consultation, research, strategy development, positioning, outreach, experience delivery or other actions in a noteworthy manner. Alternatively, there may be places that have approached difficult challenges in their rebranding.  I am looking for both successful and unsuccessful stories which could provide interesting lessons for other places.

In recognition of the international interest in the first book, I am seeking examples
from places around the world. If you have suggestions, I’d be delighted to receive them.  If you have any questions or ideas, please send them to me at billb@  destinationbranding.com.

Are Many British Cities Copying Their Distinctiveness?

Many of Britain’s cities are aiming to be distinctive, but too many are trying to do so by copying each other. Patrick Butler asks in The Guardian, “beyond the boutiques and public art, is there any fresh thinking?”

Cities from Newcastle to Birmingham seem to have been able to develop new retail, sporting, cultural and architectural wonders through an off-the-shelf makeover, as Butler calls it. He argues that retail, leisure and consumption have been the driving force of these ambitious visions and have resulted in streetscapes and communities that are basically replicas of each other and lack distinctiveness.

Butler also points to the New Economics Foundation’s (NEF) 2004 report, Clone Town Britain, which identified that too many English towns have "lost their sense of place and the distinctive facades of their high streets under the glass, steel and concrete blandness of chain stores that have been built for the demands of ... a string of big, clone town retailers."

Butler quotes from the NEF report, “How do you reinvent, capture and maintain distinctiveness? Not simply through eye-catching new buildings. Redevelopments must be owned (in the cultural rather than legal sense) by local people, developments must be authentic and rooted in history and communal memory. The texture of a place is as important

I first came across similar observations about the USA in The Geography of Nowhere when it was published in 1994. In it, Kunstler traces America's evolution from a nation of unique Main Streets and communities to a country where every place is like no place in particular.

Maybe the end of cheap credit (for a while) and increased consciousness regarding energy consumption and the environment will lead toward a new age in architecture and communities that are more distinctive because they are a reflection of the visions of the people living there and not of corporations and developers who only see the place from a balance sheet perspective.

BP Ads Increase Awareness of the Gulf Coast with New Audiences

 

The response of the many DMOs and Cities along the Gulf Coast to the oil spill last year and their collaboration with BP will possibly be studied in future tourism and marketing courses as a case study in crisis communications excellence. We were able to see some of the preparations and response first hand while working in Gulf Shores AL a few months ago. 

This week KATC3 reported that BP has announced a new television spot, titled "Best Season." The spot highlights 2011 as the best tourism season in years - despite a sluggish national economy - and will be part of an integrated television, online and social media campaign. The campaign will bring the Gulf Coast to the attention of many potential new visitors around the country who might not normally have considered the region – or have even been aware of its appeal.

This integrated campaign has been able to weave together the interests of several major beach destinations across three states that are usually competitors and has them focused on increasing the brand awareness and desirability of the Gulf Coast as a destination brand. Combined with the introduction of several major tourism developments, the end result may well be that the Gulf Coast becomes established in many new markets around the country.