Tag Archives: branding

by | 15/11/2012 · 14:00

The Brand and the Real Thing: Kenya – Shining for Some

by Renard Teipelke

An amazing landscape, wild animals, beautiful sunsets, white beaches, traditional tribe villages, mountains and valleys…one could easily continue the list of things for which Kenya is famous for. This country in East Africa is one of the prime tourist destinations in Africa and equally depends on the revenues from this large economic sector (678 mio. Euro revenue earnings in 2010). The country is well branded internationally and has established very clear pictures as images of Kenya in many people’s minds (see another article on this blog here). Continue reading →

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by | 21/06/2012 · 07:53

Rejuvenating the social housing brand | Housing network | Guardian Professional

A lack of tenant participation in social housing must be addressed if image and reality are to come together.

“For those of us who care that social housing retains a non-commercial aim, we must actively contribute to developing the sector’s brand. There needs to be a better alignment between the sector’s image and its social and cultural identity.”

Read the full article by Dawn Prentice on The Guardian:

Rejuvenating the social housing brand | Housing network | Guardian Professional.

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by | 15/05/2012 · 13:26

Marketing of High-tech Regions (1): Karlsruhe “HighTech meets the Good Life”

Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

By Hans Pul

Regional marketing booms. Small (and big) cities team up in regional cooperations, in order to get noticed in the international arena. Together, regional actors aim to attract investors, potential employees and tourists. Career opportunities and quality of life play an important role in this respect. Richard Florida’s well-known book The Rise of the Creative Class, Cities and the Creative Class (2002) proves to be influential once again. Continue reading →

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by | 12/04/2012 · 09:00

Exonyms: enemy of uniform place brands abroad?

Finland Suomi Tshirt

An Exonym (Finland) and Endonym (Suomi) on a tourist T-shirt

by Hans Pul
For building and maintaining brands, uniformity in communication is crucial and confusion needs to be avoided. However, many places have different names in different languages. München is Munich in English, London is Londra in Italian, while Mailand is German for Milano. More extremely, some place names look and sound completely different in other languages, some of the most prominent examples being Suomi* (Finland), Hellas (Greece) and Nippon (Japan). In short, there are more exonyms (foreign language names for geographical features) than places out there. How does this affect place branding efforts abroad?

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by | 02/04/2012 · 09:00

Mission (im)possible: Branding a city built from scratch?

by Valentin Schipfer

Building a city from scratch is not an easy task, but branding a city which still has to be built from scratch is even harder. Will the invented brand really accord to reality? Is it possible to regulate urban atmosphere through a images designed by a marketing agency? Let’s look at an example from hometown Vienna where high sums are being invested in such venturesome ideas. The area’s new name: aspern Vienna’s Urban Lakeside. Continue reading →

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by | 23/03/2012 · 09:30

Barclays’ “Boris Bikes” and London mayoral elections

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, on a Barclays sponsored cycle

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, on a Barclays sponsored cycle

by Hans Pul

As a passionate cyclist, I regret not being a Londoner: I won’t be able to vote on May 3th this year. On that day, Londoners will elect their mayor for the 2012-2016 period. Current mayor Boris Johnson (Conservatives) will run for his second term, while Ken Livingstone (Labour), London’s mayor between 2000 and 2008, is his main challenger. With the London mayoral elections campaign on its way, the Guardian launched a “Manifesto for a model mayor”, in which ideas for the city and requirements for its mayor are collected. This sympathetic initiative is an interesting form of “open journalism” (although it might be less spectacular than Iceland crowd-sourcing its constitution).

In this blog entry I will talk about “Boris Bikes”, Barclays’ involvement in London cycling and Guardian reader’s suggestions for cycling improvements in London.  Continue reading →

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by | 02/03/2012 · 07:00

Cultural Flagship Projects – Part III

By Renard Teipelke

In my last article of this series on cultural flagship projects, I will present my conclusions of the research I conducted during a field trip in February in Cairo and Alexandria*. I will specifically focus on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Both, my first article with a conceptualization of the topic as well as my second article with a focus on the Middle Eastern North African (MENA) region, can be understood as the foundation of the following explanations.

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by | 09/02/2012 · 07:00

Cultural Flagship Projects – Part II

by Renard Teipelke

In my first article on cultural flagship projects*, I tried to conceptualize the topic. Now, I will connect the flagship idea ‘Western style’ with the Middle Eastern North African (MENA) region. My last article will deal with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt based on a case study conducted during a field trip this month (tbc due to the currently unstable and tense situation).

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by | 25/01/2012 · 10:12

Cultural Flagship Projects – Part I

by Renard Teipelke

In the next weeks, I will contribute a series of articles on cultural flagship projects to this blog.* Since Kenneth Wardrop and other authors have already written about British and Scottish cities reinventing themselves through branding their cultural/creative potential (UNESCO creative cities articles 1, 2, 3), my first article will rather deal with a conceptualization of this topic (Part I). Then, I will focus on a region which does not often play a prominent role with respect to this blog’s range of topics: the Middle Eastern North African (MENA) region. I will discuss the export of cultural flagship projects from Europe into the MENA region (Part II), with particular focus on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt (Part III) which I will study on a field trip in February. Continue reading →

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by | 02/01/2012 · 21:27

Copenhagen: cycling and place branding

Velo-city

by Hans Pul

Copenhagen is well-known as a bicycle-friendly city internationally. The city is known for the high share of cycling in commuter traffic (36%), its wide cycling lanes (in Copenhagen 2,5-2,8 metre wide cycling lanes are the new standard, in order to fit 3 cyclists next to each other), as well as for its bicycle friendly public transport. Cycling seems to help establish Copenhagen as a green and friendly place. Copenhagen has become a reference city for policy makers and urban planners. Photos of Copenhagen city scenes appear in planning documents of local governments around the world.

Cycling in Copenhagen has gained new interest in blogosphere and media. The city of Copenhagen gains a lot of exposure with its cycling infrastructure and cycling culture, especially internationally. Recently, for example, Al Jazeera dedicated a 5-minute documentary to cycling in Copenhagen. The video ‘Cycle city’ gives an overview of cycling as an urban transport mode (see video after the break).

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