City Branding

In the era of globalization and networks our world has become a highly competitive environment, where cities are striving to attract investments and people. In order to do this, governments develop city branding strategies which influence emotional perceptions and aim to increase loyalty of people who start to associate city with the brand. Every day people make their choices such as where to go for a vacation or an exchange semester, where to invest capital and so on. A successful place brand becomes a valuable asset, because it can influence perceptions and choices of people, foster competitiveness of the city and economic prosperity. It is believed that creation of a strong brand can have influence on sustainable development (Jaffe and Nebenzahl

Gertner (2011) argues that place branding (city, region, nation etc.) “is not as novel concept as some might think”, because territorial entities were always branding themselves throughout history. However, particular interest from researchers and policy-makers to the concept of city branding was noticed in the last two decades, when some of the European cities started to use various marketing techniques in their governing practices. Even though a number of cities which managed to develop successful brands, there are discussions going on if marketing techniques to brand different kinds of goods can be used to brand

In our complex world people do not have time to go into details about certain issues to form a complete picture and they are more likely to perceive short and simple messages and clichés, which become a background of their opinions (Anholt 2007). Therefore brands are useful because they are easily recognized by people and can allow a city to form a positive reputation to be competitive in the international arena. Another point to be made is that place branding is about measuring identity of a certain place, indicating its strengths and weaknesses and building winning characteristics (Anholt 2009). Anholt also claims that modern world resembles one huge market, where cities compete with each other for everything from consumers, investors, students, cultural and sport events to the attention from the media and respect (2007). This is the reason why it is relevant to study the process of city branding because it can become a starting point of the formation of new policies aimed at economic development and solving social issues as well as create a feeling of attachment to the city, binding, activating and motivating different actors (Eshuis and Klijn 2012, p. 68) and even encourage