Abstract
AbstractThanks to its conceptual character the paper ‘City Branding: An Effective Assertion of Identity or a Transitory Marketing Trick?' by Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2005) is a classic piece in the area of place branding. The paper has been much cited in the literature, but did it really steer the further development of the field? Nearly fifteen years later, there is still a lot of debate in place branding circles. Taking the paper as a starting point I briefly discuss four controversies in city branding: (1) branding versus marketing; (2) places versus products; (3) policy versus politics; and (4) theory versus practice. I conclude that the complexities surrounding places and their stakeholders asks for more realism, modesty and dialogue in the place branding community.
Highlights
It is no surprise that the TESG paper ‘City Branding: An Effective Assertion of Identity or a Transitory Marketing Trick?’ by Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2005) has been cited so much in place branding, geography and urban studies
Kavaratzis and Ashworth describe the transition from city marketing to city branding, a development they attribute to the popularity of product and corporate branding at the start of the twentyfirst century
Based on the frequent complaints in the place branding literature on the gap between research and practice, one might conclude that in reality city branding often has been ‘a transitory marketing trick’
Summary
It is no surprise that the TESG paper ‘City Branding: An Effective Assertion of Identity or a Transitory Marketing Trick?’ by Kavaratzis and Ashworth (2005) has been cited so much in place branding, geography and urban studies. Kavaratzis and Ashworth do not give definitive answers, but conclude in any case that place branding needs to treat places as distinctive products. The remainder of this article is structured along four of those controversies, namely (1) branding versus marketing, (2) places versus products, (3) policy versus politics and (4) theory versus practice.
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