Michalis Kavaratzisstudied business administration in Greece and marketing in Scotland. Since April 2003 he has been a researcher in the Urban and Regional Studies Institute (URSI) of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, focusing on the topics of place and city marketing. His particular interest is in place and city branding and he recently commenced work on a project which will investigate branding processes in major European cities.Abstract Cities all over Europe include more and more marketing techniques and methods in their administration practice and governing philosophy. The transfer of marketing knowledge, however, to the operational environment of cities proves a cause of difficulties and misalignments, mostly due to the peculiar nature of places in general and cities in particular as marketable assets.In this paper, city branding is suggested as the appropriate way to describe and implement city marketing. City marketing application is largely dependent on the construction, communication and management of the city's image, as it is accepted that encounters with the city take place through perceptions and images. Therefore the object of city marketing is the city's image, which in turn is the starting point for developing the city's brand. The most appropriate concept to understand marketing applicability within cities is the recently developed concept of corporate branding, which with the necessary modifications is applied to cities.The core of the paper is a theoretical framework to understand the city's brand and its management, which was developed through a review of the literature on both city marketing and the corporate brand. City branding provides, on the one hand, the basis for developing policy to pursue economic development and, at the same time, it serves as a conduit for city residents to identify with their city. In this sense the relevance of and need for a framework describing and clarifying the processes involved in city branding are equally strong for facing increasing competition for resources, investment and tourism on the one hand and for addressing urgent social issues like social exclusion and cultural diversity on the other. The framework focuses on the use of city branding and its potential effects on city residents and the way residents associate with and experience their city, and it is based on a combination of city marketing measures and the components of the city's brand management.

Purpose -This paper deals with the importance of residents within place branding. It examines the different roles that residents play in the formation and communication of place brands and explores the implications for place brand management.Design/methodology/approach -The paper is based on theoretical insights drawn from the combination of the distinct literatures on place branding, general marketing, tourism, human geography, and collaborative governance. To support its arguments, the paper discusses the participation of citizens in governance processes as highlighted in the urban governance literature as well as the debate among marketing scholars over participatory marketing and branding.Findings -The paper arrive at three different roles played by the residents: (1) as an integral part of the place brand through their characteristics and behavior; (2) as ambassadors for their place brand who grant credibility to any communicated message and (3) as citizens and voters who are vital for the political legitimization of place branding. These three roles make the residents a very significant target group of place branding.Originality/value -Residents are largely neglected by place branding practice and that their priorities are often misunderstood, even though they are not passive beneficiaries but are active partners and co-producers of public goods, services and policies. This paper highlights that only meaningful participation and consultation can produce a more effective and sustainable place branding strengthening the brand communication and avoiding the pitfall of developing 'artificial' place brands.

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of stakeholders in the creation, development and ultimately ownership of place brands. The paper contributes towards laying the foundations of a participatory view of place branding. It establishes an urgent need to rethink place branding towards a more participation-oriented practice. This is based on the centrality of stakeholders in the creation, development and ownership of place brands. The role of stakeholders goes well beyond that of customers/consumers as they are citizens who legitimize place brands and heavily influence their meaning. Design/methodology/approach -The paper highlights a turn towards stakeholder-oriented place branding in recent literature. This is contrasted to a critical evaluation of place branding practice where stakeholders are paid "lip service" regarding their participation, rather than being given opportunities to get more fully involved in the development of their place brand. Findings -An emerging discussion is identified on the significance of stakeholders. This is integrated with additional arguments for stakeholders' participation found in the political nature of place branding, in the concept of "participatory branding" and in the changes that on-line communication has brought about. Practical implications -The participatory approach introduced here re-evaluates the role of both stakeholders and place brand managers. It also implies a significant change in the perceived role of analysis within the place branding process. A re-direction of branding budgets is also suggested. Originality/value -The paper provides a clear description of the role of stakeholders in place branding. It brings together for the first time in an integrated manner several arguments for stakeholders' participation. These lead to the conclusion that effective place brands are rooted in the involvement of stakeholders and substantiate the call made here for participatory place branding.

Rethinking the place brand:The interactive formation of place brands and the role of participatory place branding This is a pre-publication version of Kavaratzis, M. and Kalandides, A. (2015) Rethinking the place brand: The interactional formation of place brands and the role of participatory place branding, Environment and Planning A, 47, 1368-1382. AbstractThis article attempts to 'rethink' place brands after examining in detail how people form them in their minds. The article starts with a very brief account of the place branding literature to provide the necessary background and goes on to identify what we see as a shortcoming in current understanding of the place brand: the dominant idea that brands are formed as sums of mental associations. The article attempts to take current understanding of place brands further by going beyond associations and adding a missing element: the interactions between those associations. We propose a rethinking of place brands based on two pillars: first we incorporate more geographical understanding into place branding and, second, we outline a process that allows place elements and place-based associations to combine and form the place brand. The place brand formation process starts when people use place-making elements (materiality, practices, institutions and representations) to form mental associations with the place. These associations are not static but evolve and change over time as they interact with each other on several dimensions. These interactions constitute the way in which the place brand is formed. The argumentation leads to a novel conceptualization of the role of place branding in the above processes. The practical applicability and implications of the proposed rethinking of place brands suggested here are explored in detail through the examination of the branding process followed recently in Bogotá, Colombia, where our approach to place branding has found practical application.