Many cities and towns have dispensed with elements of their pasts. For many reasons, brands that were orienting and defining elements of urban life and lives were demolished or redesigned.

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The New York Times recently described the loss of culturally-significant brands in California. The article raises these questions:

What happens to cities and towns when landmark brands disappear? What happens when brands that defined a city or a town and created a civic zeitgeist or a shared civic engagement are eliminated? Of course, architectural wonders are no longer viewable. We miss the different eras of design. Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Neo-Gothic, Baroque, Georgian Colonial, French Second Empire, American Neon. We miss the architectural value. We miss the kitsch, the “Googie” – the space-age, gaudy, drama. We miss the powerfully evocative nature of these brands. And, what about the community identity these branded structures delivered?

We think of brands as goods and services. We recognize and are loyal to brands in our supermarkets. We know automotive brands, airline brands, clothing brands, restaurant brands, personal care brands, hotel brands, bank brands and so forth. But, we also know and love brands such as The Empire State Building, The Hollywood Bowl, The Hollywood Sign, The Seattle Space Needle, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, The Golden Gate Bridge, The Alamo, The Statue of Liberty, La Scala in Milan, The Eiffel Tower in Paris, Windsor Castle in the UK, The Sydney Opera House, The Autobahn.

A book about Seattle, Washington, showcases the home-grown brands that were demolished, burned in the great fire or lost in order to proceed with “urban renewal” over the past two Centuries. For example, O. Guy Drugs (1888), Frederick & Nelson (1890), Denny Hotel (1870s). These brands are deemed part of the Seattle Spirit. These brands harked back to the city’s provenance. These brands reflected the optimism about the future of this city.

In New York City, you once entered the city through the magnificent Pennsylvania Station (the original; not the set of tracks under the fourth iteration of Madison Square Garden). You may have met someone at The Roosevelt Hotel (with its iconic clock). You may have attended an Expo at The New York Coliseum. You may have been in awe of The Equitable Life Building, The Singer Building. And, then there are the retail brands, gone forever: B. Altman’s, Orbach’s, Lord & Taylor, Bonwit Teller, Barney’s. In Philadelphia there was Wannamaker’s (also with an iconic clock in the Chestnut Street location) and Gimbels.

These brands – whether retail or architectural – were not only wonderful places to shop and view, but also points of orientation, meet-ups and civic pride. Not only city jewels but brands that created overarching, ecumenical, cooperative, complementary civic contracts with their citizens. These brands provided community identity. These brands provided a shared cultural heritage. These brands were structures designed to excite and connect. These brands defied homogeneity. These brands exuded a sense of excitement for the future. Branded city-based World’s Fairs and Expos reflected the eagerness and anticipation that people had for the world to come. (Walt Disney was entranced by the future. In 1955, Tomorrowland opened at Disneyland. It was not until months after Mr. Disney’s death that the new Tomorrowland opened in 1967.)

Brands are contracts. Brands are bonds with customers. Brands are promises of relevant, differentiated experiences. Brand is a promise about the future. A brand lets you know what it will do for you. Buy this brand. And, you will receive this experience. Brands are promises of quality, leadership (both size and innovation) and trustworthiness. Brands contain functional, emotional and social benefits. Brands reflect the personal values of customers and embody a personality attractive – and attracting – to users. These elements are tangible and intangible.

Brands create value: without brand value there is no shareholder value. And, brands create civic value as touchstones of togetherness. Civic brands create nodes of connectivity across neighborhoods.

As we know from our vast and varied online communities, we want to belong even though we wish to have our independence and uniqueness. Civic touchstones of togetherness engage even the most disparate folks.

Business journals and marketing courses discuss brands that are long gone from memory. Before there was Pampers, there was Chux. Before there was Apple, there was MITS, which BusinessWeek dubbed “the IBM of home computers.” Before there was Sony’s video recorder, there was Ampex. RCA pioneered color TV sets. In the 1960s, people discovered Sony Trinitron TVs. And, now, we have LG and Samsung. Miller Lite was not the first low calorie beer. That designation goes to Gablinger’s. Gillette’s blades were not the first stainless steel razor blades. British brand Wilkenson Sword introduced stainless steel razor blades. The largest franchise restaurant system and highway restaurants brand was not McDonald’s: it was Howard Johnson’s.

Did we miss these brands? At first, perhaps. The outcry over the loss of White Cloud toilet paper faded away over time. The tears shed for Pontiac and Saturn vehicles have dried. These brands of yore were replaced with similar and better versions. Our choices became more focused. We moved onward. The only post-elimination pangs come from vintage car shows and retro TV ads.

But, the brands that characterize a city seem to live powerful, posthumous lives. Think about how many times you have walked in your city and said, “Here’s where we first met.” Or, “over here used to be ….” If you grew up in NYC’s upper West Side in the 1950s or 1960s, you would remember the Broadway and 81^st street Chemical Corn Exchange Bank  (decades away from being JP Morgan Chase) with its beehive logo. You would remember that across 81^st  was the old movie theater that turned into the stage for The Edge of Night soap opera. You would remember the first large NYC supermarket, Food City, on Broadway between 80^th and 79^th Streets next door to a Woolworth’s. You were well aware of a fledgling deli called Zabar’s wedged between a dry cleaners and an SRO hotel. And, what about the Loew’s movie theater a few blocks uptown? Loew’s throughout the country, across all kinds of cities, went away after being sold to AMC.

A city changes its orientation when its brands disappear.

The New York Times closes its story about lost branded structures by reminding us that it is difficult to find a sense of excitement anymore. The loss of these iconic branded buildings reflect our “pervasive sense of despair,” our belief that technology will not solve our problems and our sense that digital connectivity has actually made us lonelier. It is difficult to be excited about the architecture and optimism of another pizza joint or a Cane’s.

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In this New Year, it is critical to recognize that brands and brand management are not about advertising. Advertising is how you communicate the brand message. Message management is not brand management. Managing a brand, managing a promise takes extraordinary care and knowledge. Each city-brand loss is a loss of a relevant, differentiated, authoritative experience that helped define the place where you live. In a world that is increasingly ephemeral and digitally-based, place is even more important to our well-being.

As the great Southern writer Eudora Welty wrote, place not only defines the frame; place defines you. Ms. Welty wrote that knowing where you stand leads to your ability to judge where you are. “Place absorbs our earliest notice and attention, it bestows on us our original awareness and our critical powers spring up from the study of it and the growth experience inside it.”

When we think of cities and towns, consider the iconic tangible and intangible structures that define one’s connection not just geographically but inter-personally and extra-personally. Think of the ties that bind us to places; think of how we are bound to place which identifies us; think of what creates our civic attachments; think of the brand names – each with a provenance – a story, a history which have and continue to have a significant hold on our loyalties.

When professors decline to teach brand management and when opinion-drivers say brand is fluff, not really important, remember where you are and where you are from and how the brands of your city helped create your identity.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Joan Kiddon, Partner, The Blake Project, Author of The Paradox Planet: Creating Brand Experiences For The Age Of I

At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define or redefine and articulate what makes them competitive at critical moments of change. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.

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1. Misunderstanding of the real scope of a place branding initiative. Most of the failed initiatives focused primarily on community promotion. The goal was simply to position the community in the best light possible. Place Branding is first and foremost a strategic exercise requiring the involvement and commitment of community leaders including elected officials.

To help drive this point home, I modified my basic branding formula to describe Place Branding:

Place Branding = Place Making + Place Marketing

I wanted to ensure Economic Development professionals understood how the two concepts are coupled in any place branding effort.

If you want to successfully brand your community, you must align your place-making strategies with your brand promise. That means the choices on asset creation, infrastructure investment and public program/policies must consciously be focused on closing negative points of difference or strengthening positive points of difference vs. competition in delivering the promise of better enabling residents to achieve their American Dream.

2. Under resourcing the place brand initiative. Many of the stories I heard were from small communities with very limited budgets. My feeling is if you can’t adequately resource a branding initiative don’t start it.

Failed branding efforts poison the well for years making it exceptionally hard to convince community leaders to support investing in a second try.

I recall a branding discussion at an International Economic Development Council conference where I was on a panel with three agency representatives. An economic development professional from a small community asked what we thought the smartest use of her $10,000 marketing budget would be. All three of the Agency panelists recommended market research to better understand the community’s competitive points of difference. I recommended investing the funds in ensuring the data in their Geographic Information System was as complete and accurate as possible. My recommendation was different from the other panelists because I knew the community was woefully underfunded to even think about starting a place-branding initiative.

If you can’t get the resources to properly engage in a place branding effort, then hold off on spending until you can. A failed place branding initiative will waste significant political capital.

3. Treating Place Branding as a one-off exercise. My friend Jim Glover pointed this root cause out to me. Many economic development organizations fail to establish multi-year budgets to support their place branding efforts. Even if the initial work is excellent, these communities essentially starve success.

Place branding is a long-term commitment. It is a fundamental driver of strategy and needs both the funding and personnel to support doing it right.

P&G is successful because it understands branding and is organized around the concept. That is why P&G’s success has been sustained for nearly 200 years. If you want your community’s place branding efforts to work, you need to adopt a similar mentality as P&G. Place branding must drive your strategies and your community needs to organize around the concept to ensure it is adequately prioritized and researched. That means your elected officials must understand and embrace their role in delivering the Place Making component of Place Branding.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Ed Burghard and excerpted from his book Building Brands: What Really Matters

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Your city’s brand isn’t a building, river, museum, street, or another physical site. Your brand isn’t a physical entity. It exists only in the customer’s mind. A brand is the assembly of powerful intangible associations and thoughts stored in the minds of target audiences, and not the opinions and hopes of a committee, or the marketing department. After years of branding nations, cities, and regions we have modified the traditional definition of a brand to form the following:

A place brand is the totality of thoughts, feelings, and expectations that people hold about a location. It’s the character, reputation and the enduring essence of the place and represents its distinctive promise of value and sense of place. Most importantly, it’s a valued promise that must be grounded in truth and reality.

It’s sometimes referred to as a “community brand” because it refers to a location that engages multiple, diverse resident, business and organizational interests to form a unified and democratic approach to presenting a place.

Place branding is strategic and provides the toolkit and actions for defining, managing and communicating your city’s competitive identity to ensure that messages and experiences are as distinct, compelling, and rewarding as possible.

Sebastian Zenker, Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School, summarizes it nicely saying, “The branding implies that it is an action – we would say a planned, managed, and therefore intentional action. It is the planned management of strengthening, changing, or creating the place brand in the mind of the place consumers.”

Too often a tagline and logo trips things up and gets the lion’s share of attention. While they do have a role to play, they are only two of the elements in your brand toolkit. Taglines and logos alone will not substantially help you attain your goals.

Your city isn’t branded just because you say it is or because you stamp a logo on everything that leaves your office or paint the logo on every blank wall around the town. This is just cosmetic. It’s not even branding. It’s only a veneer with no meaning, no customer relevance, no experiences and often without a hint of a valued promise.

Sarah Essbai, urban planner, Amsterdam (Netherlands) draws on the broader, emerging relationship between city planning and place branding, “City branding is a complementary tool to strategic planning. An integrated strong city brand acts as a guideline for the city’s growth, sets its priorities in the areas of capital investment, services, and urban development, and is a vehicle for long-term success.”

How Do Places Get Their Image?

A city’s image typically evolves in three sequential stages. The first is the organic image that has developed through general awareness of the place through influences such as media coverage, books, movies, family, and friends, sports, and studies. This organic image is even more potent if the city has a long, exciting history, unique cultural fabric, outstanding natural wonders, or is a significant population, business, or political center.

The second stage is formed by the marketing induced image which as its name infers, is mainly shaped by communications, such as advertising, public relations, Websites, social media, brochures, and sales presentations. That is, it evolves through marketing messages in addition to the organically developed image and awareness of the place.

The third stage is the experiential phase where the image is defined by the firsthand interactions people have with the location. Every community that attracts visitors, new residents and investors will encounter this phenomenon.

While some destinations may skip the second stage, i.e., marketing communications, no place can avoid the third. The experiential stage is critical because, as they say, “where the rubber hits the road.” Sustaining a positive organic or marketing induced image, calls for the place to live up to its promises or expectations in the experiential phase.

All cities may not be as handsomely endowed or as distinctive as say, historic St. Augustine FL, maritime Nantucket MA, or artistic and cultural as Santa Fe. Each has a compelling organic image and has nurtured a strong and distinctive identity that has evolved over hundreds of years from their colorful origins. For them, it is somewhat easier to fulfill each phase.

Is Being Different Enough?

The rule place marketers once followed was that branding involves accentuating differences, i.e., differentiation. But then they realized this doesn’t go quite far enough. Simply because a city has attributes different to others, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will connect positively with people. This is because not all differences are meaningful, relevant, or enticing. You must ensure that your brand is both differentiated and distinctive.

Differentiation and distinctiveness are not the same. “Differentiation” means that a place may have features that are like few other competitors. Its “distinctiveness” relates to how it looks like itself, and no other. Distinctiveness makes it easy to quickly recognize and associate it with positive attributes and benefits “owned” by this place and not others. These places project magnetic reasons to think of them as being distinctive and of greater value than other choices.

While distinctiveness relates to qualities that enable a brand to be recognized. In addition to the distinctiveness of its logo, tagline, colors, and tone of voice, a city’s distinctiveness may arise from its stories, physical setting, architecture, sense of place, people, celebrities, and ambiance. San Francisco Bay makes San Francisco different, but many cities have beautiful bays and harbors. What makes The Bay distinctive is its relationships to the Golden Gate Bridge, local architecture, Alcatraz, and the eclectic neighborhoods. There’s only one SFO!

Few places can claim to have qualities that cannot be found anywhere else. Some like, Savannah GA, Bacharach (Germany) and Bath (England) have architectural, historical and cultural assets that do mark them as distinctive. Other places may be left to work harder and rely on nuance, niche markets, new developments, and design to accentuate their distinctiveness. It’s essential to keep in mind that your city’s distinctiveness is only relevant according to the markets in which it is competing, and not necessarily in a national or global context.

Branding Doesn’t Belong To The Marketing Department

If the management and advocacy for the brand are confined to the folks in the City communications department or Destination Marketing Office or DMO, it’s unlikely to reach the optimal level of potency for long-term and citywide impact. However, need to get past the notion that the brand will only bring a change to the color scheme or a snappy new slogan. They need to be open to a more holistic view of branding. If you can remove resistance and introduce the type of thinking, resources, and cooperation that will empower citywide collaboration, a more compelling and sustainable brand will emerge.

In addition to marketing staff and communications agencies, your brand team may require urban planners, architects, city managers, government officials, and others to bring the brand to life. The brand journey may also raise issues related to the organization, staff, partnerships, regulations, transportation, placemaking, government policies, and personnel.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Bill Baker. Excerpted from Place Branding For Small Cities, Regions and Downtowns, The Essentials For Successful Destinations

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Most sound good but say nothing. Some actually make you want to stay away. Others are just downright inane. Here are a sampling of municipality mottos, taglines and slogans – the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Effective (they allude to a unique quality or benefit):

• Las Vegas: “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”
• New York, N.Y.: “The City That Never Sleeps”
• Hershey, Pa.: “The Sweetest Place on Earth”
• Austin, Texas: “Keep Austin Weird”
• Eagle Pass, Texas: “Where Yee-Hah! meets Ole!”
• Cleveland, OH: “Cleveland Rocks!”
• Santa Fe, NM: “The City Different”
• Jim Thorpe, PA: “The Switzerland of America”
• Coachella, CA: “City of eternal sunshine”
• Nashville, TN: “The Music City”
• Belleview, WA: “City in a Park”
• Rockland, ME: “Lobster Capital of the World”

Believable?

• Freeland, PA: “The most happening place on Earth”
• Madisonville, KY: “The best town on Earth”
• Glendive, MT: “Where the best begins”

What does this mean (inane or vacuous)?

• “Dunedin (NZ), it’s all right here”
• Rochester, NY: “I’d Rather Be in Rochester – It’s Got It”
• Cambridge, OH: “Together for a Better Tomorrow”
• Ashburton, NZ: “Whatever it Takes”
• Rockville, MD: “Get into it”
• Richmond, MI: “With Time for You”
• Hico, TX: “Where everybody is somebody”
• Eustis, FL: “The city of bright tomorrows”
• Marshall, MN: “A Better Way to Live!”
• Auburn, WA: “More than you imagined”

So what?

• Beaman, IA: “You’re not dreamin’, you’re in Beaman”

Boring:

• “Visit Jakarta” (Indonesia)
• “Your Partner, Gwangju” (South Korea)
• “It’s Daejeon” (South Korea)
• “Aha! Suncheon” (South Korea)

Does this make me want to live or visit there?

• Forestville, CA: “Poison Oak Capital of the World”
• Washta, IA: “The coldest spot in Iowa”
• Allentown, PA: “Truck Capital of the World”
• Baxter Springs, KS: “First Cowtown In Kansas”
• Beaver, OK: “Cow Chip Capital of the World”
• Cheshire, CT: “Bedding Plant Capital of Connecticut”

Maybe (for the right target audience):

• Gilroy, CA: “Garlic capital of the world”
• Bertram, TX: “Home of the Oatmeal Festival”
• Breaux Bridge, LA: “Crayfish Capital of the World”
• Knik, AK: “Dog-Mushing Center of the World”

In fairness, some of these are official taglines, some are past advertising campaign slogans and some are phrases that have come into common usage. In any event, I hope this sampling of municipality mottos, taglines and slogans demonstrates that municipality branding can be improved significantly. You can find more on creating an effective tagline here and place branding here.

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Places are some of the most interesting things to brand. This phenomenon has been labeled “place branding,” “geo-branding” and “destination marketing” among other labels. In some respects, branding places is no different than branding anything else. Finding the most powerful and unique image for the place (“unique value proposition” or “brand position”) is the most important activity. After that, building awareness is next most important. Both of these activities assume that the requisite research has been done with the most advantageous and receptive target audiences.

Branding municipalities is an interesting and complex activity. The target audiences are myriad and disparate, including at least the following:

• Residents and potential residents
• Businesses and potential businesses
• Tourists/visitors
• Meeting and an event planners (including convention planners and major sporting event organizers)
• Transients (people passing through on their way to somewhere else)
• Corporate commercial traffic

Each of these audiences has its own distinct issues and needs. And, there are typically separate place-based organizations established to market to each of these market’s needs – visitors & convention bureaus, economic development councils, business improvement districts, etc. The stakeholder groups mushroom into a large mix of potentially competing points of view when one adds mayor’s offices and district, county, provincial, state and regional entity executives and business, cultural institution and sports team leaders. This is why carefully orchestrating a branding project and facilitating consensus across all stakeholder groups is critical to a successful place branding effort. That is also why a place branding effort often takes much longer than a comparable product or organization branding effort.

Here is what tends to be important to each major audience:

• Residents
  • Good job opportunities
  • Low crime
  • Good medical care
  • Affordable housing
  • Scenic beauty
  • Attractive neighborhoods
  • Friendly people
  • Good school systems
  • Clean highways and public spaces
  • Many places to go and things to do on the weekends
  • Abundant cultural amenities
  • Low cost of living
  • Good restaurants
  • Reasonable commutes
• Businesses
  • Competitive environment
  • Environment for future growth
  • Prevailing wages
  • Labor force quality
  • Housing, safety and quality of life
  • Labor market rigidities
  • Proximity to suppliers or final market
  • Energy and resource costs
  • Real estate costs
  • Political stability and zoning regulations
  • Innovation capacity
  • Agglomeration benefits
  • Tax costs
  • Public services
• Tourists
  • Reasonable travel distance and cost
  • A variety of interesting things to do and see
  • Affordable lodging with required amenities
  • Public toilets
  • Easy navigation/way finding
  • Aesthetically pleasing environment
  • Friendly people
  • Good restaurants
  • Shopping
  • Unique local sights and activities
• Meeting and event planners
  • Air transportation (access, costs, distance to site)
  • Hotel rooms and ground transportation access
  • Space requirements (meeting rooms, banquet halls, exhibit space, etc.)
  • Contiguous venues
  • Close proximity to quality restaurants, retail and entertainment
  • Safety of the area
  • Tours and other activities

Clearly, this is a diverse and complicated set of needs and issues. Having said that, a place ultimately becomes best known for one or two things. It is the job of branding to insure that those one or two things are unique to the place and highly compelling.

Following are some of the general classes of things that can define a place:

• A natural feature – Niagara Falls, The Grand Canyon, Mt. Everest, the Amazon rain forest, Lake Tahoe, the Matterhorn, Lake Como, Iceland’s volcanoes, hot springs and other natural features
• Distinctive architecture – Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Burj Al-Arab Hotel in Dubai, UAE, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
• Unique or preeminent museums or other cultural attractions – the Louvre in Paris, France, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art on New York, New York, Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Royal Palace in Bangkok, Thailand
• Well known events or festivals – Charleston, South Carolina’s Spoleto Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s Carnival, the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, Fez (Morocco) Festival of World Sacred Music, Mongolia’s National Naadam Festival, Milan’s fashion shows, Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival, the running of the bulls in Pamplona Spain, Tour de France, Indianapolis 500
• Unusual or distinctive histories – the Killing Fields of Cambodia, founding of the Mormon Church in Palmyra, New York, arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York
• Destination resorts or theme parks – Disney World in Orlando, Florida, casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada, country music venues in Branson, Missouri
• Distinctive outdoor recreational features – skiing in the Rocky Mountains or the Alps, scuba diving in Cozumel, Mexico or the Turks and Caicos, mountain climbing in the Himalayas
• Desirable weather, seasonal or year-round – Spain’s sunny Mediterranean coast, San Diego, California’s year-round temperate weather, Hawaii’s year-round temperate weather, the appeal of Florida or Arizona to northerners during the winter, coastal Maine’s appeal during the summer
• A unique environmental aesthetic – adobe architecture in Sante Fe, New Mexico, traditional western feel in Jackson, Wyoming, art deco in South Miami Beach, Miami, Florida, Spanish Moorish architecture in Kansas City, Missouri’s Country Club Plaza shopping and entertainment district, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana, New England shingle style architecture in Nantucket, Massachusetts, Bruge, Belgium’s Middle Age architecture, Esfahan, Iran’s Naghsh-e Jahan Square with its Iranian and Islamic architecture, Venice, Italy’s canals
• General aesthetic appeal – Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada’s neo-classical architecture and floral landscaping, Québec City (Québec, Canada) with its European flavor and French heritage
• Distinctive wildlife – orangutans and rafflesia in Borneo, koala bears and kangaroos in Australia, polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, lions, giraffes, elephants and hippos on Tanzania’s Serengeti Plain

As you might gather from the previous list, aesthetics are important. Strict zoning and codes, scenic vistas, landscaping, parks, boulevards, hanging flower baskets, statues and fountains all add to a place’s appeal as do historical sites and markers. Water features (ocean, rivers, canals, lakes and ponds) also add to the appeal, especially if they provide for recreation, scenic vistas and strolling. Festival and event banners can add to the feeling of a place. Architectural authenticity, uniqueness and environmental consistency add to a place’s appeal. General cleanliness is also desirable.

Wayfinding is important. Public maps and directional signing help tourists and residents alike. Bicycle lanes and bicycle and walking paths are always a plus. Some municipalities encourage bike rentals as a more pleasant and environmentally friendly way to experience their place. Good public transportation enhances a place’s appeal as well. Europe’s interconnected networks of trains or an increasing number of cities’ light rail systems are examples of this. Some cities use cable cars, trolleys, double-decker buses, horse drawn carriages or amphibious vehicles as tourist attractions themselves. Buildings should have pedestrian-friendly/attractive street level frontages. Strategically placed clean public restrooms are also important.

It is essential for a place to take inventory of its assets to determine which of those are unique and compelling to each of its target audiences.

Most places stand for a small number things in peoples’ minds. This is their brand position. The objective of a branding exercise is to insure that the primary associations are unique and compelling, not neutral or negative.

For instance, what is the first thing that comes to your mind associated with each of the following places?

• France – cafes, wine, cheese, berets, fashion, attitude?
• Mexico – beaches, laid back, Mayan ruins?
• Switzerland – Alps, watches, chocolates, banks, formality?
• Australia – koala bears, kangaroos, Crocodile Dundee, Sydney Opera House, Great Barrier Reef?
• Aspen – skiing, rich and famous, expensive?
• Alaska – wilderness, glaciers, whales, cruises?
• India – IT jobs, Hindu, exotic, hot, poverty?
• San Antonio — the Alamo, Riverwalk?
• Woodstock, NY – hippies, new age, tie-dye?
• Maine – cold, sailing, Bar Harbor, L.L. Bean?
• China – big, booming, manufacturing, The Great Wall, defective products?
• Las Vegas – casinos, gambling, legalized prostitution, shows, bright lights, desert, sin city?
• Orlando – theme parks, Disney World, Epcot, Universal Studios, SeaWorld?

Clearly some places are known primarily for one thing (such as Orlando and Disney/theme parks or Cooperstown and the National Baseball Hall of Fame), while others are known for multiple things. While some associations are quite positive, others are neutral or even negative. Oklahoma City would do well to try to stand for something other than the bombing. Belarus has the same problem with its Chernobyl association. Detroit’s almost exclusive association with automobiles not only creates “eggs-in-one-basket” economic problems but also “eggs-in-one-basket” brand positioning problems.

Larger cities such as New York or Chicago have the problem of being so big and diverse that it is difficult to focus on one or two things. Chicago went through a branding effort a few years ago. It decided to focus on business leaders worldwide and to position itself in the context of major metropolitan areas. Its points of difference? (a) abundant business resources, (b) incomparable quality of life and (c) great people. These are all generally true. However, I believe that Chicago is really saying that it offers everything that New York does only in a Midwest friendly way.

Chicago’s “frame of reference” is “major metropolitan areas – globally.” Each place must decide which “frame of reference” is most advantageous for it. For instance, for Rochester, New York is it competing in the context of other mid-sized cities in the entire country, the Northeast or just Upstate New York? Or should it associate itself with other Great Lakes cities (most of which are in the Midwest) or its thriving across-the-lake neighbor, Toronto (Canada)? Perhaps it should define itself through its relationship with water. If so, should it be characterized as New York’s North Coast (looking north to Lake Ontario) or as the Gateway to the increasingly popular Finger Lakes wine region (looking south)? Each “frame of reference” will have different consequences given the other places in the same context.

I would ignore the place’s weaknesses. Sometimes weaknesses can be turned into strengths, such as “snow = abundant winter recreational opportunities” or “cold in the winter means pleasant in the summer,” however, as a rule, I would focus on assets. Moscow’s dominant association isn’t “cold” even though it is colder than most major cities in the world. And, Minneapolis is known for much more than cold winters, even though it is one of the coldest cities in the U.S.A. In the other extreme, Austin, TX remains quite popular despite its 70 days of 100+ degree weather in the summer of 2011. A place will always build momentum around its strengths. That momentum will allow it to add amenities and attractions as time passes by. Orlando and Cooperstown are both examples of that.

Following are a few things that all places will need to consider when branding themselves:

• The effort must include a very broad cross-section of place stakeholders
• Employing a consensus-building process is essential
• It is important to assess the place’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
• This usually requires in-depth marketing research
• Ultimately, the place must choose the most important assets around which it will build its unique value proposition and marketing campaign
• And, it should understand to which market segments this message will most appeal
• Ideally, the unique value proposition is appealing to residents, businesses and tourists and can umbrella more tailored messages for each group
• Be careful to choose a tagline that not only sounds good, but more importantly, powerfully communicates the place’s unique value proposition
• Make sure you use the right criteria in your RFP for selecting a place branding partner

Ultimately, a place must identify the unique value proposition that will get the target audiences excited about living, visiting and conducting business in its geography. The unique value proposition needs to be compelling enough to cause those people to choose it over all of the other options that residents, tourists, businesses and meeting planners have. And, most importantly, the unique value proposition needs to be authentic and believable. Crafting the unique value proposition is much easier said than done and requires rigorous research among the target audiences and the right partners for the initiative.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop and The Brand Storytelling Workshop