The ECM Autumn Meeting in Uppsala – showcasing city marketing

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.

 

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.

 

 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.

 

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.

 

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!