Branding Ideas for the Tokyo Olympics 2020

Tokyo successfully won the bid for the 2020 Olympic Games. When planning for mega event tourism such as the Olympics, cities reorder public spaces and arenas often with a long term vision, a legacy. This vision expresses the role of the event in achieving the desired future and goals of the hosting city. The planning process involves not only animating the city for staged spectacles; but also rebranding the city and managing how tourism is consumed - the planned and unplanned experience of consumption. Leisure motivated event tourists are seeking unique, personal and socially rewarding experiences (Getz, 2010). These experiences may be managed through the context in which people act. By altering the context, people's experience of the event changes; hence the perception of the host city and the Olympics' brand may also change. The author is therefore proposing branding directions to enhance these experiences.

The Role of Local Governments in City Branding

Local governments provide a range of local services, preserve the life and liberty of residents, creating space for democratic participation and civic dialogue, supporting market-led and environmentally sustainable local development. City branding supplies the principles for the city developing policy to sustain the local development. In other words, city branding means being powerful to face the increasing wild competition for resources, investment and tourism facilities, both for addressing crucial social issues and cultural variation. The main objective of this study is to highlight the role of local governments and to emphasize the various destinations “bodies” used in the branding process in different administration systems. Although there are many different destination branding strategies over the world, the city branding success cannot be performed without the strong participation of the local governments.

The Intended Image of a Place Brand

This chapter studies the counterproductive impact of a place image on the entrepreneurial activities in a rural Danish municipality. Nationally, the municipality is rated ‘very good' in terms of traditional business environment measurements. However, this stands in stark contrast to the historically embedded image of the municipality. In this chapter the intended image of the municipality is compared to the image as it is perceived by newcomers. The study shows that historically embedded images of places are hard to manage and change when they involve elements with negative appeal towards a specific target audience e.g. entrepreneurs. The branding problem for the municipality is shown to be the conflict between the brands of history, entrepreneurial spirit, family friendly town, and tourism etc. To manage a place brand so diverse is almost impossible and it is clearly demonstrated that the solution has been to brand the place as everything for everybody.

Whose City Is It Anyway?

The purpose of this chapter is describe why and how a multiplicity of especially diverging forces, ‘voices' and rationalities can work against effective place branding. Specifically, it aims to demonstrate by the case of Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, that economic hardships are the major place shaper rather than the wishes and marketing strategies that may be put in place by the state. An ailing economy will naturally see the terrain and fabric of a place, in this case, a city deteriorating both in terms of its service performance and in terms of outlook. This is in contrast with the main urban planning philosophies of order, amenity, functionality, aesthetics and convenience. The post-colonial Harare has suffered major blows of trying to retain its vividness and functionality due to a number of forces including state control and interference, the consistently perturbed political economy that explains rising retrenchments, unemployment and underemployment, which has seen the ushering in of rampant informality. Both the state and the non-state actors, including politicians and households have laid claim on the affairs of the city without approaching the same with a sense of place stewardship. Proper city branding presupposes shared visioning and moving on an agreed path and trajectory. However, characteristic of Harare is disparate and fragmented efforts, most of which work against the cause of city branding. Street vending, of late, is the major cancer haemorrhaging the city fabric and outlook. Even the politicians, who have assumed a major seat in the decision-making of the affairs of the city, seem not to agree on the way forward. Although, the city is under the leadership of the opposition – MDC-T councilors, their role has not been subsumed, within the council chambers as one that matters. The councilors have largely been silenced, if not technically, co-opted. The role of physical planning, on the other side of the story, has become increasingly nullified. Some real estate investors are considering reducing their portfolios. The dramatis personæ and the effects it is inflicting on the ground needs adequate scholarly interrogation hence the line of the argument in this paper: Whose city is it anyway? Unless, the city is seen as a collective responsibility), efforts to brand will simply prove futile and a waste of time. Overall, there is an economy that needs first to be fixed and players that need aligning their inspirations, aspirations and actions for achieving a branded city. Planning has to be given its place because it provides a solid foundation upon which actions are built.

Touring Pittsburgh's Glocal Narratives

The term “glocal” indicates a co-existence of local characteristics and global conditions that can lead to a co-dependency and counter-relationship between capitalism and culture. The hybridization of these spaces offers opportunities for glocal voices to become meaningful parts of the city brand, yet their inclusion within city branding techniques occurs primarily on the external level, i.e., within tourism or Destination Marketing Organizations' (DMOs) advertisements. This chapter explores how post-industrial cities can leverage the glocal in their city brand communications via narrative. It is argued that narratives reveal authentic perceptions of the city, while highlighting the complexities of a city's glocal identity. This study “tours” Pittsburgh's glocal narratives emerging from face-to-face, print, and online modalities to unearth the vitality of Pittsburgh's city brand for global and local audiences.

Challenges in Promoting Cities through Culture within the New Global Economy

The deindustrialization period observed in the cities of North America, United Kingdom and Europe has led to changes in city economies. Urban industry was replaced by service sectors like marketing, finance and communication in this period. The new circumstances not only have changed the urban economy, but also images of the cities. The new image has raised the urban regeneration projects in partnership with municipalities and private organizations. The local governments and the private sectors have handled culture as a power to regenerate the images of cities. City branding based on culture is encouraged mostly by tourism. In this chapter, the role of culture in the city promoting strategies is evaluated through the analysis of cases. The stakeholders' approaches to the culture in the context of city branding strategies are handled and the challenges that the stakeholders have to overcome are listed.

Sustainable City Branding

As marketing strategies are utilized for city management, entrepreneurial modes of urban governance started to be applied. In this chapter, an emerging city branding trend, Slow City branding will be analyzed in the light of sustainability. As the cities start to resemble each other, the identity of the cities which is defined by the local authenticity diminishes. The philosophy of slowness inspired other social and economic movements like slow food, slow tourism and slow city. Slow movement first in the form of Slow Food then Slow City/Cittaslow enables sustainable urban development. “Cittaslow” empowers cities to differentiate from other cities and form their identity by supporting local crafts, tastes, producers and promoting healthy and sustainable life. In this study, a comprehensive literature review about slow city movement is covered. Moreover, Seferihisar, the first slow city in Turkey is analyzed in terms of Cittaslow principles. At the last part of the study, a model is proposed summarizing the principles of slow city branding.

Using Social Media for Participatory City Branding

With the rapid explosion of Internet, social media has emerged as a new communication venue for city branding initiative. The aim of this chapter is to provide a deeper understanding of today's communication environment, and in particular, to focus the greater interactivity, engagement and responsiveness of resources in relation to city branding. Thus, this chapter firstly outlines the participatory city branding, which can be considered as an appropriate approach for involving wide range of stakeholders in promoting cities as brands. Secondly, the role of social media and its influential users are scrutinized to better present their importance for city branding. Following this, the examined Instagram campaign to promote the city of Izmir intends to allow greater insight into how to utilize online platforms in order to communicate a city both to its citizens and to global arena. And finally, the chapter leads to practical implications regarding how to benefit from social media for effective participatory city branding.

Promoting America

The purpose of this study is to illustrate how college student perspectives with regard to promoting the United States as an international tourism destination can be fruitful for destination communication managers. This chapter presents the results of a survey of 691 foreign and domestic college students and identifies categories of terms to describe America that these students reported. The term categories are also examined to see if the respondents' year in school, gender or foreign/domestic student status impacts their identification of terms. The findings offer suggestions for campaign themes that support or run contrary to images currently held by the respondents.

Leveraging Sport to Build City Brands

This chapter sets out strategic implications for emerging city brand stakeholders wishing to leverage sport. Sport is already acknowledged as having a significant impact for city brands, particularly through the hosting of sport events, as a means of creating global awareness, improved image and differentiation. However, there has been little examination of the contribution of sport more broadly and especially within an emerging African city context. This chapter identifies the major challenges facing city brands and proposes how sport may provide solutions. It reveals the findings of an empirical study that assessed the strategic value of sport to the Cape Town city brand. The qualitative study featured semi-structured, in-depth interviews (n=12), conducted with definitive stakeholders. The chapter identifies the contribution of sport as a competitive differentiator for a city brand. It further reveals the contribution of the different sport elements to this brand benefit, namely: sport events and facilities (that can be used to showcase a city brand); teams/ franchises and personalities (that act as brand ambassadors for a city and contribute to the city brand identity); and sponsors and sport brands (that can be viewed as brand partners as they play a crucial role of supporting and enabling sport through their investment).