Packaging Cities

American Demographics, Jan 1, 2002

Last year, Milwaukee's chamber of commerce, visitors bureau, economic development office and a variety of other local institutions pooled their resources to try to sell their city to the rest of the world in a cohesive way. Rather than continue individual marketing strategies, with separate advertising themes, they hired Development Counsellors International (DCI), a Manhattan-based consulting firm specializing in regional marketing, to help them create the city's first integrated campaign. It is expected to be launched this May.

In the past, city tourism departments, economic development groups and other government and civic organizations - each with different priorities and separate budgets - rarely combined their marketing efforts. Today, many municipal leaders, like those in Milwaukee, are sharing resources to come up with sharper, more professional strategies to sell their cities to diverse consumer audiences, among them business decision makers, conventioneers and professionals. Whether making their market debuts, retooling their images, or repositioning themselves to reach new demographics, cities are beginning to regard themselves as the new brands, and everyone as their customer.

Choices of where to live, where to visit and where to do business have expanded over the past decade, as advances in communications technology increasingly enable individuals and companies to operate efficiently pretty much anywhere, almost regardless of geography. Sensing the opportunity, some local leaders were beginning to take an integrated marketing approach even before Sept. 11, promoting their communities as alternatives to big cities. But following the attacks, the apparent stability and quality of life offered by smaller and lesser known cities well away from the national capitals of commerce and business have become even bigger selling points.

Mark Zandi, chief economist for Economy.com, an online provider of economic and financial research and analysis, says that now might be the perfect time for some oft-overlooked cities and regions to advertise. "Things that were considered weights on some economies two years ago are now assets, like the fact that they are more removed from the hustle and bustle of urban areas," he says. "Now that big urban areas are having major problems financially, and people are more wary about being there in general, it's probably a good time for many of these places to be aggressive in marketing and positioning themselves as alternative places to visit, do business and live."

That's because smaller and lesser known cities are expected to be less affected economically by the tragedies than are the larger, flashier ones. For example, according to Economy.com's forecast of economic growth by metro area, prior to Sept. 11, Milwaukee's annual gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to grow 2.29 percent through the second quarter of 2002. After the attacks, the company reduced the city's growth projections by 2.6 percentage points. Meanwhile, Chicago, Milwaukee's bigger and better known competitor, was expected to grow 2.86 percent through the second quarter of 2002, and after the attacks, its projected GDP was lowered by 3.13 percentage points.

As American Demographics found in our December 2001 special report, Americans are undergoing a subtle reality shift in almost every fundamental aspect of their lives. As a result, quality of life attributes such as better commute times, access to public parks and clean air may play bigger roles in where people choose to live, says Steve Higdon, president of Greater Louisville Inc., an organization created to promote Louisville, Ky. and its surrounding regions. "What has happened to this country has really underscored the importance of Middle America," he says. "Of course we will never take advantage of this tragedy in our marketing directly, but I do think our target audiences will look at our product differently."

If it worked for Crest toothpaste, why not Milwaukee, Indianapolis or Philadelphia? The concept of branding - the idea that one product is made more valuable, has more "equity," than an alternative because it is attached to a recognizable name and promise of authenticity - began about 200 years ago, when Josiah Wedgwood realized that stamping his name on his pottery and naming his dinnerware after English nobility made it more desirable. Fast-forward to the 1930s when Procter & Gamble's Neil McElroy, the company's promotion department manager, developed the "P & G brand management system," an organizational structure that assigned groups of people to handle specific marketing strategies for competing brands.

By the 1970s and '80s, "brand manager" was a coveted job title for the typical business school graduate, and by the mid-1990s, branding began to be applied not just to products but to the retailers that sell them, with names like Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works. "What has happened since the turn of the millennium is that everyone else is discovering branding," says Roger Blackwell, a marketing professor at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. "It was inevitable that the people who market cities would turn to a concept that has been so productive and successful for others."