Place Branding through Phases of the Image

Balancing Image and Substance

S. Zavattaro

• Editore: Palgrave Macmillan
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137394514
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Public Relations

As places face increased competition for human and capital resources, public managers turn toward corporate-like governance strategies and branding practices to shape places and organizations. However, for better or worse, these organizations begin to resemble highly competitive, private-sector public relations and marketing firms. Place branding is taking hold within many organizations, including city governments, yet very few scholars take a public administration approach when exploring the causes and effects of branding practices.In Place Branding through Phases of the Image, Zavattaro explains how city promotional strategies can take the place of corporate governance structures through phases of the image. She examines how city government entities are undertaking place branding practices, with the realization that relying too much on image rather than a balance between image and substance has serious implications for democratic, collaborative governance. This book creates a workable framework that simultaneously serves as a cautionary tale for building a promotional campaign focused exclusively on image.

CHAPTER 1

Utilizing Philosophy in Place Branding

I view the CVB as just to bring money here, and that’s it. Sometimes that makes me the bad guy, because in many of these small towns, people want you to be the guy that cuts the check to have the party for the locals, and I don’t care about that. My brand, and this is my opinion, my budget is not big enough so that you will know what my brand is. I can’t spend enough money to break through the bubble because I don’t have a big enough budget. Honestly I don’t think about my brand [but] two times a week. I think about how we get people in here, making money, and if they notice my logo, great, and if they don’t know if the CVB is even here, I don’t care.

— Executive Director, Southern City CVB

This was one of the bluntest answers my colleagues and I heard in the summer of 2013, during our interviews with managers from Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) throughout a Southern state. Though this person’s remarks might seem extreme, several other interviewees also detailed the difficulty of creating, implementing, and measuring a distinct, strategic place brand. We began each of our 12 semi-structured interviews with a seemingly easy question: “In your own words, what is your place’s brand?” About half of the practitioners used an audible pause before responding to the query: “Our brand, um, well, it’s uh, I’ll probably jump around,” or “What is its brand or what do we want its brand [to be]?”

As researchers, we had not anticipated that this question would give CVB professionals any trouble as they spend countless hours developing, honing, refining, implementing, and evaluating place branding and marketing strategies. That the question caused some hesitation highlighted for us the challenges faced by place branding practitioners and scholars working within the field, both as managers of organizations as well as place brand identity creators, two challenging tasks in and of themselves. As place branding practices still are developing at all levels of government, the focus turned toward finding synergies between municipal place branding—the main focus of this book—and what the CVB managers, often serving as the chief branding officers for a destination, do to develop, execute, and evaluate strategic place branding campaigns. The questions, then, became: How are cities implementing place branding strategies? What are the effects of those strategies on democratic governance? This book is a step toward answering these questions from a public administration perspective.

Place promotion is happening in light of intense competition among places for the benefit of diverse stakeholders, such as residents, business owners, and tourists (Dinnie, 2011; Eshuis et al., 2013; Kavaratzis & Hatch, 2013; Kotler et al., 1993; Pike & Page, 2014; Tiebout, 1956; Zenker et al., 2013). Therefore, it is essential for scholars and practitioners alike to understand not only the development of place brand strategies but also the consequences of the strategies. To address these points, I relied on my background and training in public administration and, hence, some of the information within this book is geared toward public service scholars and practitioners, be they in urban planning, non-profit management, hospitality, education, hospital management, or government. Despite that lens of understanding, content within these pages is applicable, I believe, across disciplines, including within private corporations.

Jean Baudrillard’s philosophy, specifically his phases of the image (Baudrillard, 1994), is the overarching theoretical mechanism I have used to explore how cities are moving through or stopping within those phases based upon a combination of governance strategy, communications style, and promotional tactics. These three streams in the literature are the foundational elements that make up the analytical framework offered later, and Baudrillard’s phases tie these streams together. Phases of the image explains the progression of an object from a connection with reality to that of simulation (Baudrillard, 1994), so a city can end up in phase one, two, three, or four of the image depending upon the combination of the three foundational elements. Placement of a city in each phase of the image has different implications for democratic governance and can either positively or negatively influence overall organization-public relationships. By utilizing phases of the image as the theoretical tie for the three foundational elements, the research presented herein simultaneously addresses both research questions posed above. To address the first question, city branding and communications strategies were evaluated to determine depth and breadth of the branding strategy. Regarding the second question, the phases of the image framework and each phase’s associated consequences get at the potential effects of place branding campaigns if practitioners do not take care to balance image with substance. The main units of analysis are US cities because local governments have been instrumental in shaping public administration theory and praxis. Municipal research bureaus emerged during the Progressive Era to give credence to a field embroiled in corruption (Stivers, 1995). For better or worse, these bureaus guided public administrators toward a reliance on quantitative data to make changes, often pushing aside the socially minded, service-driven practices inherent within public administration (Lee, 2011; Stivers, 1995). Scholars and practitioners were depending upon science to find that “one best way” to ideally reduce the uncertainty and discretion that led to corrupt practices, known as the “spoils system.” Today, we still see machinations of these data-driven policies in terms of performance measurement and contracting out/privatization movements, coupled with a general drive to have government run like a business (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). Despite the best efforts of Progressive reformers and today’s market-minded counterparts, evidence of the spoils system still pepper news coverage.

More information regarding market models is included in Chapter 2, but a key takeaway is that business-minded interventions in the public sector changed values and practices of public service delivery (Box, 1999; Fox, 1996; Patterson, 1998). Government agencies began flattening hierarchies, implementing entrepreneurial practices, and encouraging risk taking. Along with these changes came an embrace of branding, marketing, and public relations (Kavaratzis, 2004), as these are common business constructs that attract (marketing) and retain (public relations) consumers, ideally to engender brand loyalty and equity. All of us can name our favorite brands of soft drink, toothpaste, laundry detergent, jeans, and more. The list is endless, and this is our personal manifestation of consumer-based brand equity (Keller, 1993). These cognitive shortcuts help us choose brands in a sea of choices, making our decisions a bit easier (de Chernatony, 2010; Lindstrom, 2011). Just as we have favorite product brands, we might also have favorite destinations. Something initially attracted us to those product and place brands, be it advertising, word-of-mouth, family use, personal experience, or something else. Eventually, place marketing evolved into fuller, more holistic place branding strategies that included marketing and public relations communications but now also involved a change in organizational culture to align internal and organizational environments (Govers, 2013). An end goal of place branding strategies is place brand equity (Jacobsen, 2010, 2012), which means having stakeholders choose one destination instead of another. But, considering that the “how” of place brand equity development and measurement still remains fuzzy, Chapter 6 begins to explore the creation and evaluation processes of brand equity from a managerial and strategic perspective. Ideally, if managers have a better idea of how to evaluate brand equity within a specific public-sector setting, then they can create not only competitive advantage for the place but also work toward building trust and mutually beneficial organization-public relations. The goal for managers is to align organizationally created brand identity with consumer-based brand equity, as “the lack of alignment between identity and image can cause confusion and weaken the brand’s equity” (Laidler-Kylander & Stenzel, 2014, p. 77).

With place branding now seemingly commonplace in public-sector and non-profit organizations (Eshuis & Edwards, 2013; Eshuis et al., 2013; Kotler et al., 1993; Laidler-Kylander & Stenzel, 2014), it is important to better understand both the inputs and outputs (effects) of these developments to both guide theory development and to improve practice. Place branding has been coming into its own as a self-aware discipline since its evolution from roots in product branding, urban policy, and marketing theory (Hankinson, 2010). As people, we enjoy places for emotional, hedonistic, and rational reasons (Kavaratzis & Hatch, 2013). As an example, in 2013 I celebrated my thirtieth birthday at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, with a close friend. I made sure to buy Minnie Mouse ears with pink sequins and pastel ribbons to feel like a princess. Disney World, and all related Disney parks and associated brands, has such powerful emotional connections for people, making the company one of the world’s strongest brands (James, 2013).

I chose Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom because, as a child growing up in Florida, going to a Disney theme park was a rite of passage. I can still remember when my parents took me for the first time; it was a big surprise and incredibly fun. My friend, who did not grow up in Florida, could not understand why I wanted to celebrate a birthday as an adult at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. I explained that the experience brought back happy memories, and being in the park helped me (and other visitors) forget everything else going on in life. My friend related that feeling to the one he gets when he goes back home to Texas and can eat his favorite meal at his favorite restaurant as many times as possible (brand loyalty). We all have connections to places and, if those places do not match our expectations, gaps emerge (Govers & Go, 2009). If my friend’s usual order of “square fish” (a fried-fish dish) did not meet expectations, he would leave disappointed. Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom exceeded all my birthday hopes; brand equity was achieved, as I went back several months later with another friend, and this trip too was equally enjoyable.

Image and Substance through Phases of the Image

While Walt Disney World’s Magic Kindgom stirs happy memories, there is also an underlying concern. I noted earlier that being inside the theme park makes people forget what is going on in their lives, forget reality. Naturally, escapism is the point of entertainment. This reality breakdown, however, could become problematic, as Baudrillard pointed out (Baudrillard, 1994). Baudrillard argued that people forget that the areas outside of Disney parks are real, thus confusing contrived experiences inside the park as reality. The two systems—areas outside the theme park and the parks themselves—become so entwined that people have difficulty separating fact from fiction. Describing Disneyland in California, Baudrillard wrote “this world wants to be childish in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the ‘real’ world, and to conceal the fact that true childishness is everywhere – that it is that of the adults themselves who come here to act the child in order to foster illusions as to their real childishness” (ibid., p. 13). This is a potentially harsh denouncement of what so many adults would consider a place of joyful memories both as children and grownups, but Baudrillard’s point is that images become more important than reality (Sementelli, 2012). (My friend and I, being consummate academics, or big nerds, had this exact discussion while waiting in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride during my birthday celebration.)

Explained further in Chapter 2, phases of the image (Baudrillard, 1994) traces how a signifier and signified become separated. The idea is that signs come to stand for the real without anything necessarily attached anymore. “The symbols betray reality, vacating it of substance, and intersecting abstraction in its place. Image is the essence, the new reality” (Miller, 2002, p. 17). Red roses signify love, green can denote envy, sustainability, and traffic flow (go on green, stop on red). Some symbols become so powerful that they lose ties to their referents. Baudrillard elucidated four phases of the image: reflecting profound reality, masking or denaturing profound reality, masking the absence of profound reality, and disconnecting from reality to become a simulacrum (Baudrillard, 1994). Movement along this quasi-continuum toward simulacrum indicates that a sign has come to represent reality instead of the real element. One colleague describes this progression as such: When someone says the word “stapler,” for example, the receiver of the message does not need an actual stapler to conjure an image in her mind. She automatically thinks of a hand-operated mechanical device to fasten papers together. Now, this image might not be the same in everyone’s mind. Someone might picture a pocket-sized stapler, while someone else might imagine the industrial-size version. The signifier (the stapler) and the signified (mechanical object for fastening papers) are not needed together anymore to develop a mental picture.

Plan of the Book

Baudrillard described the process of moving from reality to simulacrum as embedded in a culture of hyperreality whereby what is real and what is fiction blend together (Baudrillard, 1994). Consumerism and our obsession with “keeping up with the Joneses” spur and foster hyperreality (Baudrillard, 1998). We purchase goods and services not only for their quality but also for what those goods and services can do for our projected image (Goffman, 1959). Similar logic applies to why we choose to live in or visit certain places. Psychologically, for example, people perceive “broken windows” as physical and social manifestations of negative spaces (Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004). At our core, we all want a wonderful place to live, work, and play (Insch & Florek, 2008), and will do research to find the perfect place for our needs.

The blending of consumerism, sloganeering, and the dominance of a market mindset within public administration are the lines of inquiry from which this book stems. The argument put forth within this book is that cities, based on a combination of market models of governance, style of communication used, and number of place promotional tactics employed (Zavattaro, 2010, 2013a), can move through or stop within Baudrillard’s phases of the image as adapted herein. All phases have certain implications for democratic governance that could lead to positive or negative relations between internal employees and external stakeholders, thus positively or negatively influencing place brand equity. Each element within the presented framework is given more explication in Chapter 2, laying the foundation for the argument. The narrative herein asks place brand practitioners to think about ­balancing image with substance (Grunig, 1...