Branding is about creating positive emotions, about directing the way people think about something so that they are more likely to help you meet your goals. This is especially important for cities, because, from increasing shopping to improving people's life satisfaction, many of the goals a city has involve improving emotions.
Before you begin to try to brand you city it's important to understand that brands are what people think about a place so every place already has a brand, either good or bad. Brands happen organically, neither Paris nor Detroit planned their brand, but must deal with the image people now have of them. In order to be effective, you need to steer your existing brand by encouraging and building on its positive aspects while trying to mitigate any negative aspects your city or region might have by:
1-Deciding who you want to reach out to, and the purposes of your brand. No single brand can reach all people, which may mean that you have to run a portfolio of different brands related to your city. Even so, you have to determine whom you are trying to reach with each of these brands, so that you can understand how to reach them effectively.
Disney is likely the best company running a portfolio of brands connected to a place. With everything from princesses and weddings, to Jedi, superheroes, and innovative rides they have a lot of brands related to their theme parks. Part of what allows them to have so many brands is that they are all based on a single set of concepts – happiness, through fun, memories and dreams.
2-Research how people already view the region you're trying to brand, and what they're most likely to respond positively to, then come up with a desirable brand based on this.
3-Create and execute a plan to move people's opinions closer to your desired brand. Remember, branding isn't just about advertising, it can be about attracting certain types of businesses, hosting certain types of events, etc. For example, Kansas City wants to be thought of as an innovative place so they now host one of the largest Maker Faires in the world, where citizen scientists can come and show off everything from homemade robots to newly created plants.
Case Study
When I was in charge of growing the economy for Philadelphia's largest commercial corridor (Girard Avenue) I had a serious problem. People thought of the community as crime ridden, dirty, and weird.
Rather than fight this image, however, I played off of it with the "Surprise Its Girard" campaign.
Aimed at focusing on the positive individual businesses in the region, I ran a buy local campaign and a team made up of different organizations put together events targeted towards people who loved interesting urban environments.
The result, we build some of the largest events in Philadelphia, including "The Fishtown Shad Fest" which was voted the best festival in Philadelphia. We also saw thousands of additional shoppers coming to Girard.
A Short Guide to Creating a Brand
Overarching Benefits
The best brands are centered on easy to understand emotional benefits. In general I've found three of the most effective emotional benefits on which some of the most successful brands center are:
Brands which bring easy happiness
Coke, McCafe, and Disney have all managed to effectively positioned their products this way, while Hawaii has effectively positioned itself this way as a location. Happiness brands are focused on helping people experience perfect moments, to escape the ordinariness of their daily lives, allowing them to get away. After all, people who are searching for happiness and struggling with life often want something simple. In essence happiness brands offer people a cookie and a hug to make them feel better.
Brands which seek to help people make life better
Wal-Mart managed to become the largest company by making people feel that the store makes their life better by allowing them to save money and by being a family company; while Whole Foods positioned itself as making life better by helping people stay healthy and supporting the community, as well as the environment.
Empowering people
Empowering people is about creating something that will help people achieve their goals, for example, Nike empowers people to do better at sports. The people these brands reach out to, aren't the ones looking to be handed victory, they just want a little help making it for themselves, which is why Nike often shows people doing a lot of hard work in their ads. This is similar in many ways to Silicon Valley's primary brand, which is more than just creative, it's empowering. Like Nike's slogan “Just Do It” Silicon Valley challenges people to succeed, to strive to be creative, and like a great sporting event the energy is intoxicating.
Multiple brands
Any city can have multiple associations tied to it. New York has the empowerment brand, “If you can make it there you can make it anywhere.” Yet, it's also a place of energy and quick happiness, of high fashion that “never sleeps” because there is always something to do. Paris too can be empowering to artists, chefs, and dreamers. At the same time it also creates happiness through a sense of romance and beauty. Rio has an energy too, an energy and excitement of fun, of parties, of dances, and now as it grows, of hopeful empowerment. As you can see it's okay to have more than one theme if they fit together in a way that resonates and is simple.
Function
There are some brands which are functional, though they still use their function to show some emotion if they want to be effective. Michelin Tires did this by showing babies riding around in stormy weather on tires, tying the fact that your family’s life is connected to your tires. In the context of locations, functional communities might be a community with the great schools; after all, great schools are opportunities for children to have a better life, which will make parents happy. Thus the function of the location may be school but school isn't a benefit per say, it’s the better life which comes from better schools that's the benefit.
Sub-benefits
Sub-benefits support and expand on the primary benefit, yet this is also where differences really shine forth. For example, both a small town with good schools and Silicon Valley could take the approach of empowering people; yet how they do this, the emotions behind this are different. One is a warm, calm place of barbeques while the other is a high energy place of constant inspiration.
Personality
The best brands are almost viewed like people, they have emotions, and they have personality. As previously mentioned, Paris is romantic, while Philadelphia is verbose and honest, and Seattle is relaxed. Each of these preconceived personalities can be positive if put in the right light and given the right spin.
Support
Support is the way you prove your brand is what you say it is, the way you direct people's feelings about it. For Silicon Valley, this is easy as it has more successful tech companies than anywhere else. For others, this can be more difficult, more subtle. In Philadelphia, gritty neighborhoods such as the one I worked for, were able to show that they were eclectic by showing off great restaurants and top rated art galleries.
Values
What a brand does, how it acts, tells people what they should feel about it. The laws cities pass and the things they build say a lot more about a city than any scripted speech they give. Thus when government officials talk about entrepreneurship, but continue to allow their city to be rated among the worst places to start a business, people know where their priorities are, no matter what they say.
Branding to create happier people
To some extent, happiness is a state of mind. This is why research has shown that pictures of cute animals increase concentration during test taking and pictures of nature reduce stress – at least to a limited extent. Branding can be used as a means of helping improve the way people feel. This is because branding is much more than just advertising; in fact, companies like Starbucks built a valuable brand without traditional advertising. What you have to understand is that a brand is largely based on what's happening in your city. This means you must not only pitch your desired brand you must work to make it a reality. Keep in mind, however, to be unique you have to do something unique, or frame what you've done in a unique way, as Apple has become so good at doing. Thus a museum doesn't make a city artistic as museums have been done by nearly every major city. Further, it's important to keep in mind that all cities have positive and negative aspects. The trick in marketing, both traditional and nontraditional, is to take people's positive feelings and expand on them, so they feel so deeply they can't resist your city’s lure.
Think for example, about Philadelphia, it has a reputation as a grungy gritty place. Yet oddly enough it's now the 7th happiest place for young professionals. In 2009 it was rated as the 20th, while in 2012 it was 14th (Smith, 2011 and 2013) (CareerBliss). This is a massive improvement in people's feelings. This may have happened, in part, because of a number of non-profits including Innovation Philadelphia (as well as my organization at the time (the Girard Coalition), universities, and companies have been engaged in many small branding campaigns. Putting together dozens of events targeted at young professionals, giving free concerts, networking parties, an increasing number of gallery openings, good restaurants and more. All these things may have helped to decrease loneliness which is one of the biggest sources of depression and sadness in the modern world. So Philadelphia's population is finally increasing, which is interesting because jobs haven't really been increasing nearly as much and wages have barely ticked up. This doesn't necessarily translate to real economic growth in the future, but if happiness is what Philadelphia is trying to achieve it’s succeeding in some areas, both naturally and through the concerted effort of many organizations there.
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