The ECM Autumn Meeting in Uppsala – showcasing city marketing
![The ECM Autumn Meeting in Uppsala – showcasing city marketing The ECM Autumn Meeting will be held in the city of Uppsala, Sweden, from 4th to 6th October 2010. The seminar “City marketing – refreshing the parts that city tourist offices and convention bureaux cannot reach” promises to be insightful. Its focus will be on how ECM members – whether tourist office or convention bureau - can benefit from ‘umbrella’ marketing activities designed to promote the destination as a fine place in which to live, work, study and invest and as a first choice tourist destination.](https://citydestinationsalliance.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Uppsala_square.jpg)
The ECM Autumn Meeting will be held in the city of Uppsala, Sweden, from 4th to 6th October 2010.
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The seminar “City marketing – refreshing the parts that city tourist offices and convention bureaux cannot reach” promises to be insightful. Its focus will be on how ECM members – whether tourist office or convention bureau – can benefit from ‘umbrella’ marketing activities designed to promote the destination as a fine place in which to live, work, study and invest and as a first choice tourist destination. Typically such activities are being spearheaded by agencies other than the city tourist office and convention bureau, posing important relationships and co-ordination issues. The seminar taps different perspectives – that of the academic and consultant, that of the city marketing agencies themselves, and last but not least that of our own members as important end-users and beneficiaries of city marketing campaigns and brands. Best practice will be highlighted from Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and other European cities.
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The former City Marketing Director of Brussels International, André Vrydagh, who will be acting as Seminar Chairperson, shares a few thoughts about the seminar content with us.
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“City marketing – refreshing the parts that city tourist offices and convention bureaux cannot reach”….what seminar content can we expect from this title?
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The content should tell us more about the real difference between the “city image” and “city branding”. How to make the city suffer less from political influences and how to try to direct our attention and efforts towards what we wish to show from the destination to make it desirable.
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Almost the entire seminar programme is composed of case studies – why have you chosen this approach?
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Because in this field, there is no theory that works. It is often a matter of feelings and emotions and these can be very different from one city to another. It is impossible to take the branding theory of one destination and apply it directly to another city, you must use the ideas with very clever marketing know-how.
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Which part of the seminar are you personally looking forward to the most?
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I am looking forward to the seminar as a whole and I hope and believe that we will manage to have presentations that will not be only about advertising a destination…because city branding goes much deeper than advertising!
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