4. The Description: How City Brands are Created

The fundamental challenges in developing city brands are of diverse nature. Brand creators must, firstly, have the willingness and ability to align general knowledge about brand development and implementation with the specific requirements to apply in the urban case. The responsible city politicians must, secondly, have a nominal understanding that the development of a city brand can be a sensible or even necessary part of successful city politics. In addition, there must be a willingness to make the necessary effort—financially, temporally, and politically. Finally, thirdly, both actors—city politicians and brand creators—must engage in a fruitful and purposeful exchange with each other, which exceeds the complexity of the ‘classic’ relationship between client and contractor in brand development—at least gradually. None of the three conditions for success is banal, trivial, or can be ‘automatically’ assumed as given. On the contrary. Under what conditions city brands can nevertheless be successfully developed is discussed in this chapter.