A brief by Elise Baudelet, junior expert in territorial marketing at CAAC
Following the overview of the dont’s in city branding, this post will focus on umbrella design.
As cities are parts of wider territories (eg: regions, states, countries) there is a major concern regarding how the stakeholders perceive a place and how to define its identity.
The differences between a place like a city and the country where it belongs have to be clearly underlined to avoid a confusion that could damage a place branding strategy by mixing messages.
In marketing, umbrella brands (or family brands) are used to empower brands through the awareness of the parent or corporate brand. Therefore, a consumer has a clue to value a brand that he may not know, since it shares characteristics with a well-known one. Yet, an umbrella strategy has to demonstrate consistency to be efficient. For marketing science, products have to be related to create a family brand. The risks posed by one or more products should be detected before they can affect the whole family.
Even if cities are not products, a parallel with family brands could be helpful in the articulation of integrated city branding as they drive to target different segments. They also increase awareness of small cities as part of a strongest brand.
Indeed, as the cultures of cities inside a region are quite similar, umbrella branding is then consistent. Cities could develop their own brand and manage their uniqueness while being part of a larger community. In a way, this strategy gathers each actor by their similarities and, at the same time, holds the differences clear. Actually, as cities compete even in the same country or region, this point is vital.
Baray, J. (1) states that the measurement of cities’ awareness shows that it is correlated with their country dynamism. Thus, managers have to integrate local as well as national elements to define place identity.
A city network like the Conference of Atlantic Arc Cities or regions’ associations like the Atlantic Arc Commission, may create a parent brand for cities. In this sense, CAAC has been working in the Atlantic Arc Brand for cities in projects like SPAA, TONETA or, lately, ATBRAND. This project offers an opportunity for small and medium-sized cities in Western Europe to reinforce their brand by beneficiating from the Atlantic awareness that highlights their culture, the great history and heritage shared in this area. For a stakeholder (eg: company, tourist…) that is not familiar with the city it will be the assurance of its value, quality and identity.
(1) Baray, J. (2008) Marketing territorial : Appréciation du rayonnement international des villes et des régions du monde par le nombre de leurs références sur les moteurs de recherche web. La Revue des Sciences de Gestion n° 234
Atlantic Arc Cities 
Stakeholder : to my point of view, a tourist can’t be a stakeholder. Stakeholders are linked to the product and have interest in his development. Even companies in your city may be not associated in the brand strategy and thereby not stakeholders.
Cher Maurice,
Merci de votre commentaire. Maybe we have to set, at first, what a stakeholder is. If we take the 1st meaning, you’re right, not everybody can be a stakeholder, as they are related to decision makers. But the concept has evolved to include a larger span.
For instance, in EU projects, we understand “stakeholder” as all the bodies and society dimensions that are affected, directly or indirectly, by the issue. Thus meaning by “stakeholders” both decision makers + interested parties. As an illustration, this is the approach taken by URBACT when building Local Support Groups. http://urbact.eu/en/about-urbact/our-organisation/local-support-groups/
Academia has also adhered to this view. Leaded by the University ‘Rovira i Virgili’, Spain, ATTREG is an ESPON project searching to define “Attractiveness” by investigating in which way policy makers can improve the attractiveness of their city or region by reconciling the interests of both, residents and visitors. http://www.espon.eu/main/Menu_Projects/Menu_AppliedResearch/attreg.html
Dear Maurice, as Tamara states, maybe I should have explained why we consider companies and tourists as stakeholders in a wider sense. For instance, academic authors such as Ashworth or Hankison include visitors and companies as places’ stakeholders, because both are targets of the place and they influence its strategy. Moreover, tourists have a role to play in place image (word of mouth, people of influence…). Regarding companies, several authors show they are a key part of the place brand identity building as well as in being ambassador of the place brand.(http://www.pps.org/blog/downtownpromotionjan2004/)
In addition, city branding, as it is encouraged by the CAAC in the ATBrand project (if you want to know more about: http://atbrand.eu/), fully involves companies or tourists in its strategy. ATBrand partners do it currently: Its Liverpool (http://www.itsliverpool.com/news/big-business-ifb-2014/), or Cardiff (http://www.investincardiff.com/top-10-reasons-to-choose-cardiff) and are two examples of the success this approach may have. Recently, Cork has also integrated tourists and companies in its brand identity definition (https://atlanticcities.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/city-branding-cork-is-in/ ).
Hi Elise & Tamara ! I understand this acception of stakeholders. It’s in the main stream … that’s what we call also ‘co-construction’ or ‘collaborative management’ … but at the end of the day only a few stay around the table … where you find my stakeholders ;-)) I really think it’s easier to build a model with them and tourist as target market even if, I agree with you, customers may take part in that construction of a brand.
I think a real city branding must be considered apart of any umbrella family strategy.
Hola Marta,
That is an interesting approach, would you mind developing it a bit further?