The ROCK seminars on city branding
We have designed and facilitated an advanced seminar on innovative city branding that toured Europe, including Bologna, Athens, Torino, Vilnius, Lisbon, Skopje and Cluj-Napoca. The aim was to provide a sound approach to this field, while stressing cultural heritage as a driver to brand and market the contemporary city. The ROCK seminars covered city narrative, imagery, audience segmentation and mix of communications, and mobilized over 200 participants from around one hundred stakeholder entities, -e.g. destination management organisations, investment promotion agencies, Mayor´s cabinets, City units in charge of culture and heritage management, dirComs from major cultural entities and events and professionals involved in design and visual arts. The seminars proved to be rather useful:
- To provide a sound approach to place branding, closer to integrated urban development than just conventional marketing.
- As an opportunity to discuss about what´s going on in the host city and confront with other practices and trends at international level.
- To raise awareness on the instrumental role of place branding in urban regeneration.
- To organize a discussion on cultural heritage as a driver to brand & market the contemporary city.
Addionally, a specific toolkit on storytelling was created, to help promote stories connecting heritage to future-oriented issues, from entrepreneurship and innovation spaces to social innovation and technology.
