city branding Essay

Submitted By hwakyunglee
Words: 2147
Pages: 9

Introduction
Recently, the interest in innovative development and the need for cities and countries to image position or re-position have been accelerated. The major reason is significant for various advantages domestically and internationally in economic, political, social and cultural development terms (Kotler and Gertner, 2002). According to (Boult, 2014), holistically building a place can attracts multiple and diverse stakeholders such as business, tourism, and citizens.
Trueman, Klemm and Giroud (2004) and Kavaratzis (2004) point the similarities out between place branding and corporate branding because as a corporate brand is the visual, verbal and behavioural expression of an organisation’s unique business model, place is handled similarly.
Many cities have felt a need to differentiate from other countries to attract stakeholders area
(Kavaratzis and Ashworth, 2006). It can mean that place branding with the consideration complex conditions is a challenge to shape a specifically designed place identity and promote it to identified markets. Hence, many cities have undertaken innovative strategies and initiatives via preferentially the consideration and identification such as fundamental geographical idea, and city internal and external image (Go and Govers, 2010).

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Case Study: Zaragoza
The background of branding Zaragoza
Zaragoza is located in the north-east of Spain, which is fifth Spanish City in terms of population nearly 700,000 inhabitants (Spain.info, 2014). The location of the city makes logistics and transport the most potent areas in the local economy, furthermore, there is also a relative growth of activities in the sectors of renewable energies, sustainable industries and new technologies
(Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013). In addition, Zaragoza has a new high-speed train, linking to
Madrid and Barcelona in short time, therefore, it became a place such as the EXPO 2008 and international exhibitions (Expozaragoza2008.es, 2008), which brought considerable public investments in infrastructures and the urban regeneration and became a unique feature.
Figure 1.
Zaragoza Global agency
Logo (Kavaratzis and Hatch,
2013)

Based on the conditions, the Zaragoza Global agency is founded (Kavaratzis and Hatch, 2013) to develop and do branding the city image. Their tasks were building up the international image, creating and

marketing of the Zaragoza City Brand. In addition, they needed to develop international network and the relationship with other cities, to identify and empathise with the citizens, and to attract potential residents, tourists and investors, and conveying a coherent and homogeneous image of the city (Parkerson and Saunders, 2005).
Zaragoza internal branding: it has considerable weighted on citizens
Based on the research by Kavaratzis and Hatch (2013), the
Image Audit

project started with the city image audit throughout various interviews and research. It reflected that the city has the possibility of development, however, the many citizens had no

Identify Strategy and
Positioning

interest and/or negative images about their city as a terrorist attack or an unpromising city. To minimize negative perceptions, encourage the good ones toward the residents, and promote their strengths, various values were used for design, utilized the city branding: Human, emerging, attractive, sustainable, easy, open, etc. Creative Design
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The schematic figure of a bridge was used for the logo design of the city (CityLogo, 2011). It is to express the symbol of the human being relating to others, movement and human progress, and the city’s geographic and strategic location. The slogan for the city branding: A challenge, a city, was set to unite the citizens and help the identification with their own city, and show a land of opportunities such as new technologies and investments for future. Figure 2 is the result of design.

Figure 2.
Zaragoza city brand logo
(Inpolis, 2014)

The report of Eurocities (2010) states that the