City and Des­tin­a­tion Brand­ing (on­line course)

Course content

Today cities and destinations are in strong competition for talents (residents), companies and investments, as well as tourists. Therefore, places are more and more run like ‘businesses’ and for ‘businesses’. In order to differentiate one place from another, city marketers increasingly focus on establishing the city as a brand and adopt other marketing techniques in order to better promote and ‘sell’ their place to its existing and potential target groups. Unfortunately, city marketers and consultants often underestimate the complexity and potential ethical dilemmas – due to the fact that places are complex products themselves and that the needs and wants of the different customer groups regarding a place vary widely.

City marketing therefore needs a more holistic and complex approach. It must include the understanding of all target groups and stakeholders needs. It deals with all types of place communication (not only advertisement), but even the physical communication of city planning and architecture – and it must follow a more democratic and participatory approach then ‘normal’ marketing activities.   

In the course we will explore the impact of city marketing activities for companies – talking in particular about talent attraction and tourism – and on other business fields. At the same time we will also discuss the social problems we create by making a place ‘too much’ of a business. By this means, students should not only be able understand and use strategies from city and destination branding, but also see the benefits for companies and citizens in using marketing for places.

This master course is a cross-disciplinary and research-based course, integrating findings from marketing, branding, urban planning and management, public administration and the field of tourism. The aim is to introduce the service-dominant logic of marketing to cities and translate carefully different marketing and branding concepts. Furthermore, the differences between city branding (general marketing activities for all place target groups) and destination branding (tourism oriented city marketing) will be elaborated and the idea of an integrated approach will be presented.