A Case Study Of Copenhagen City Marketing Essay

Over the time researchers have focused on two fields of thought – one of those is the emerging notion of place or country, nation, city branding and another field of thought is ‘country-of-origin’ image (Papadopoulos, 2004). Due to intense global shift in resources, capital and people (Zhang & Zhao, 2009), places have considered a need to identify themselves distinctively to achieve any economic, political or socio-psychological objective (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005) with an intention to enhance place’s export, protect domestic business, motivate factors of development and also to position the place advantageously in both domestic and international market (Papadopoulos, 2004). Thus to compete and survive in the new open market economy, various communities , cities, nations, states and regions have understood the importance of developing and promoting their unique features as competitive advantage through strategic marketing and brand management concept (Gertner, 2007).

Cities are competing within fiercely competitive arena for money, attention, talent, innovation and creativity both within and across national boundaries (Konijnendijk, 2010) and as a consequence cities across the world use several channels to promote their unique features toward relevant audiences such as investors, visitors and residents through striking city logo, appealing slogan and advertising campaigns in national and international media, as an integral part of city management (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2009). Like product’s brand, the city’s brand has become valuable asset for urban development and also is considered as an effective tool to express distinctive position of the city; which have motivated the city administrators to accept branding as a development strategy for their cities as well as the only way to confront fierce global competition (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2009). Cities are branded based on the types of activities they are good at; for example – New York and London city branding concept focus business activities; Vancouver, Vienna and Melbourne cities are well branded for high ranked in ‘liveability index’ or Cannes is promoted for hosting big event like Cannes film festival (Ooi, 2010). Each city is branded based on a story or message which is expressed through city brand’s slogan or catchy phrase (Ooi, 2010); for example- ‘I amsterdam’, ‘I ♥ NY’ and ‘Uniquely Singapore’, ‘Stockholm- The Capital of Scandinavia’, ‘Johannesburg- a world class African city’, ‘Hong Kong – Asia’s world city’ (Ooi, 2010; König, 2011). As a part of building city brand, cities need to define the strategy for the brand comprising core brand message, objectives and the target audience and thus a city’s brand can be of several types such as – the fully architectured brand, a propositional brand with the positioning of the city or the naked brand where city itself is the brand and brand management team influence people’s perception of the brand (Eurocities, 2010). City authorities throughout Europe are increasingly utilizing the concept and techniques of product branding to fit in city marketing within urban development management as well as within European integration process (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005). During economic crisis across Europe, metropolitan cities are taking challenging ambitious lead to the economic recovery; where innovation, talent and trade have been considered assets of these European cities to promote them and to face the global challenge set the urbanization of China, Asia and Latin America (Eurocities, 2012). City branding is an ongoing exercise in which process city’s branding position can be negative; but can pull highlight on it for further growth within the context of societal change (Ooi, 2010). The 2009 UN Climate Summit (COP15) was hosted by Copenhagen city and was considered by the local authorities as a branding scoop for the Danish capital city; who dubbed the city as ‘Hopenhagen’ (Ooi, 2010). Though the outcome of summit disappointed authorities and international media dubbed the city as ‘Borkenhagen’ or ‘Nopenhagen’ (Ooi, 2010), the city got the exciting positive publicity in The Times (UK), the New York Times and BBC for being a modern green city beyond its historical prospects and social openness (Astrup 2009 as cited in Ooi, 2010). Then, the city branding process continues.

‘OPEN Copenhagen’ is the official city brand of Danish capital city – Copenhagen; which is the only open source city branding and also a value based brand (Nicholls,… ;Copenhagen’s new brand,..). The concept of brand openness in place of brand ownership (Nicholls) has been chosen to brand the city with a tagline – ‘OPEN Copenhagen, Open for you’ which is flexible for all stakeholders to get access in brand building process. The idea behind this open source branding is to build bridge between marketing and communications for both Copenhagen and for the individual user of the logo. In 2009, the non-profit organization – OPEN Copenhagen was established jointly by two other regional organizations – Wonderful Copenhagen (tourism organization) and Copenhagen Capacity (investment agency) with a motto to launch Copenhagen’s new brand identity to combat rising competition with other European capitals and also to attract people from all target groups – for example, locals, businesses, organizations, foreigner visitors, and educational and cultural institutions through its unique open source branding concept. Though open source branding strategy encourages stakeholders’ spontaneous participation, it is very challenging in terms of managing stakeholders to promote positive features of the city. Here in this proposal, this unusual concept of city branding works as the main motivation to choose ‘open source’ city branding as research area as well as Copenhagen city as a promising case of city branding.

Research objectives and questions:

In view of the discussion above, the objective of this research is twofold – one is to assess the challenges of open source city branding strategy and to evaluate the success factor of this strategy as a source of competitive advantage for the city of Copenhagen. Then in light of this analysis, the second objective is to develop a comprehensive model comprising brand building and management mechanism in collaboration with stakeholders to execute the city branding strategy.

Following research questions have been developed targeting the research objective:

Question 1: What are the challenging dimensions of open source city branding strategy? And how does this strategy work as a source of competitive advantage for the city’s brand?

Question 2: How does ‘OPEN Copenhagen’ involve stakeholders to promote the city positively?

Question 3: What is the target groups’ perception about ‘OPEN Copenhagen’ branding strategy? Does it comply with city’s authentic identity?

Question 4: How is the success of Copenhagen city branding measured/evaluated for further growth?

Question 5: How does ‘OPEN Copenhagen’ branding work within the context of societal changes?

Theoretical framework:

City branding refers to the strategic action to promote a city’s competitive advantages based on its history, quality of living and culture for opportunities, reputation or power in capital accumulation within a global competitive environment (langer, 2001; Morgan et al., 2002; Berci et al., 2002; Evans, 2003 as cited in Zhang & Zhao, 2009); which is driven by three economic factors – talent, innovation and creativity (Florida, 2008). From the beginning of 1990s, researchers have taken several attempts to figure out a distinctive approach for place marketing (Ashworth & Voogd, 1990; Berg et al., 1990; Kotler et al., 1993 as cited in Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005) and as a consequence, the theoretical development in marketing discipline has facilitated place marketing to understand the implication of marketing theory in urban development and management (Ashworth & Voogd, 1990 as cited in Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005). The transition from city marketing to city branding is aided by the extensive use of product branding concept as well as continuous development in corporate branding theory (Balmer, 2001; Balmer & Greyser, 2003 as cited in Kavaraztis & Ashworth, 2005); but a special type of marketing needs to be devised to get an equal success from the application of terminology, techniques and philosophies of marketing in city marketing (Ashworth, 1994). Strategies and theories of product branding are not always applicable in case of city branding since city branding is more complex considering the dimensions of brand ownership and stakeholder involvement (Kavaratzis, 2009). Mapping the image of a city in the mind of target audience is much more complex than that of a product or service (Hankinson, 2005) which reinforces the capture of all attributes possessed by the city to provide stakeholders with strong and favorable associations (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2005). The success of city branding resides in matching the expectation and perception of target group with their experience in the city (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2007). The starting point of city brand building is the communication of city’s image which is better understood from a theoretical framework consisting of city marketing mix (Kotler at el., 1999 as cited in Kavaratzis, 2004) and other elements of city brand management (Kavaratzis, 2004).

According to American Urban Development scholar, Joel Kotkin (2005 as cited in Konijnendijk, 2010), the success of the city depends on three key roles of the city such as – historical role, role model of high quality living, role as the busy centre of commerce and culture. Besides success of the city branding relies on the strong involvement of stakeholders such as representatives from private sector, civil society and tourism through partnership, leadership, continuity, shared vision and action oriented implementation (Eurocities, 2010). Anholt’s (2007) hexagon ‘City Brand Index’ model and Kavaratzis’s (2004, 2008) 3-level communication framework, both work to evaluate city branding strategy.

From this theoretical point of view, the entire research work will give more emphasis on the previous research works on branding, corporate brand management, city brand building and evaluation process, city branding strategies coupled with existing ‘open source’ brand strategy in Copenhagen city branding practice; which will shape the final empirical findings.

Research design and methodology:

Since the aim of this research work is explorative in nature, qualitative approach will be chosen as the research design framework. According to Strauss and Corbin (1998), a qualitative research approach is mainly adequate for explorative aims and this research work will develop knowledge on complex city branding process of Copenhagen city based on ‘open source’ branding strategy in collaboration with different stakeholders; which implies that a qualitative approach is favorable.

The goal of an exploratory research is to gain insights as new information emerges which in turn favors researchers to follow the case study methodology involving intensive study of selected cases of the phenomenon under investigation (Churchill & Lacobucci, 2005, p. 80). Eisenhardt (1989) states that “the case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics within single settings”. Thus, case study methodology will be applied to be guided by multiple-case studies logic. According to Eisenhardt (1991), the main argument for choosing multiple-case studies as a potential way to create theory is that “they permit replication and extension between individual cases”. Under this multiple-case studies method, each member organization of ‘OPEN Copenhagen’ will be considered as a single case to understand ‘open source’ city branding process.

As an integral part of this research work, both primary and secondary data will be analyzed. For secondary data analysis, information will be collected from different books, relevant literatures and reports published by researchers, industry analyzers, research institutes. Then, primary data will be collected through ethnographic observation (Angrosino, 2007, p.4 & p.8) and in-depth interviews (open-response format) with influential stakeholders from different private and public organizations.

Work plan:

A probable work plan for this research work has been proposed in the following flow-diagram where time plan at each step will be decided on the basis of nature and depth of this research project.

Conclusion:

During economic fluctuation, while Europe is facing image crisis in the world economy, European cities have emphasized city branding process to overcome this crisis through promoting unique features of the cities to attract foreign investors and visitors. The case of Copenhagen city branding is a very interesting and a potential area to be explored due to its challenging and differentiating ‘open source’ branding strategy. This research work will put highlight on this quite untapped field of research within city branding and will also show path for future development in city branding theory.