city branding

investment, capital, respect and attention.Cities, the economic and culturalpowerhouses of nations, are increasinglythe focus of this internationalcompetition for funds, talent and fame.

Yet the international brand of a city isnot always accurate or up to date especially when one is looking at it fromthe other side of the planet. Some citiesdo not attract much investment or theright kind of talent because their brand isnot as strong or as positive as it deservesto be, while other cities still benefit froma positive brand which today they dolittle to deserve.

It is crucial for the political andbusiness leaders of cities to understandtheir brand, and to see how they areviewed by potential visitors, investors,customers and future citizens around theworld. And if the image does not matchup to the reality, they need to decidewhat to do in order to close the gapbetween the two.

HOW CITY BRANDSARE MEASUREDReaders who are familiar with theAnholt-GMI Nation Brands Indexquarterly survey know that nation brandsare a complex mixture of globalperceptions of a countrys people,

INTRODUCTIONCities have always been brands, in thetruest sense of the word.

Unless one has lived in a particularcity or has a good reason to know a lotabout it, the chances are that one thinksabout it in terms of a handful of qualitiesor attributes, a promise, some kind ofstory. That simple brand narrative canhave a major impact on ones decision tovisit the city, to buy its products orservices, to do business there or even torelocate there.

All of peoples decisions, whether theyare as trivial as buying an everydayproduct or as important as relocating acompany, are partly rational and partlyemotional. No human activity is exemptfrom this rule, and the brand images ofcities and countries underpin theemotional part of every decision andstrongly affect the rational part too.

Paris is romance, Milan is style, NewYork is energy, Washington is power,Tokyo is modernity, Lagos is corruption,Barcelona is culture, Rio is fun. Theseare the brands of cities, and they areinextricably tied to the histories anddestinies of all these places.

In todays globalised, networked worldevery place has to compete with everyother place for its share of the worldsconsumers, tourists, businesses,

18 Place Branding Vol. 2, 1, 1831 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1744070X/06 $30.00

The Anholt-GMI CityBrands Index

How the world seesthe worlds cities

Simon Anholtis Managing Editor, Place Branding, and a Government adviser and author.

Simon Anholt

e-mail:[email protected]

For these and many other reasons, theCity Brands Index is based on a differenthexagon from the one used for theNation Brands Index (Figure 1). The sixcomponents of the city brand hexagonare detailed below.

The presenceThis point of the city brand hexagon isall about a citys international status andstanding. People are asked how familiarthey are with each of the 30 cities in thesurvey, whether they have actually visitedthem or not and what the cities arefamous for. They are also asked whethereach city has made an importantcontribution to the world in culture,science or in the way cities are governedduring the last 30 years.

The placeThis section explores peoples perceptionsabout the physical aspects of each city:how pleasant or unpleasant they imagineit is to be outdoors and to travel aroundthe city, how beautiful it is and what theclimate is like.

policies, products, culture, businessclimate and tourist attractions. These sixaspects of the nation brand are summedup in the nation brand hexagon, whichforms the basic structure of the NationBrands Index.

Cities are rather different: they are notusually famous for producing particularproducts or services, the tourismemphasis is often as much onconventions as on leisure visitors, theapparatus of government is usually moretechnocratic than political, and the citysculture is not always easy to distinguishfrom the culture of the country as awhole.

It is always hard to generalise about awhole country, since there can be widediscrepancies in climate, culture, peopleand infrastructure from one region toanother, but cities are simpler, smallerand easier to envisage as a single entity.When people consider cities, they oftenthink in quite detailed and practicalterms, concentrating on issues likeclimate, pollution, transport and traffic,the cost of living, leisure and sportsfacilities, law and order and the culturallife of the city.

Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1744070X/06 $30.00 Vol. 2, 1, 1831 Place Branding 19

The Anholt-GMI City Brands Index: How the world sees the worlds cities

Figure 1: The city brand hexagon

Theplace

Thepresence

Thepeople

Thepulse

Theprerequisites

Thepotential

is like schools, hospitals, publictransport, sports facilities and so on.

THE 30 CITIESChoosing 30 cities for the initial CityBrands Index was quite a challenge, andthe aim was to create an interesting mixof the most powerful city brands (likeNew York, Paris and Tokyo) with somepromising emerging players (like Prague,Mumbai and Johannesburg). A few othercities which are particularly interestingbecause they have mixed or poorreputations, or a brand image which lagsbehind the economic, cultural and socialprogress which the city is making, werealso added.

About half of the cities on the listare capitals, and half are second cities,biggest cities and principal commercialcities. In some cases more than onecity from the same country wasincluded if each had a very differentbut equally prominent global reputation(such as New York, Los Angeles, SanFrancisco and Washington, DC; Milanand Rome; or Beijing and HongKong).

It is planned to continue extendingthe list of cities in subsequent surveys, asthere are many other cities which areconspicuous by their absence.

The survey was conducted onlineamong 17,502 men and women aged1864 from a wide range of incomegroups in the following countries:Australia, Brazil, Canada, China,Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy,Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, theNetherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, theUK and the USA.

London: To know it is to love it?London is the top-ranking city in thefirst City Brands Index, and its verypositive brand image is in line with the

The potentialThis point of the city brand hexagonconsiders the economic and educationalopportunities that each city is believed tooffer visitors, businesses and immigrants.The panellists are asked how easy theythink it would be to find a job in thecity, and, if they had a business, howgood a place they think it would be todo business in. Finally, they are askedwhether each city would be a goodplace for them or other family membersto get a higher educational qualification.

The pulseThe appeal of a vibrant urban lifestyle isan important part of each citys brandimage. This section explores howexciting people think the cities are, andhow easy they think it would be to findinteresting things to do, both as ashort-term visitor and as a long-termresident.

The peopleThe people make the city, and in thispoint of the hexagon respondents areasked if they think the inhabitants wouldbe warm and friendly, or cold andprejudiced against outsiders. They areasked whether they think it would beeasy for them to find and fit into acommunity which shares their languageand culture. Finally, and very importantly,panellists are asked how safe they thinkthey would feel in the city.

The prerequisitesThis section asks people about how theyperceive the basic qualities of the city:what they think it would be like to livethere, how easy they think it would beto find satisfactory, affordableaccommodation and what they believethe general standard of public amenities


Anholt

ease of finding a job; for doing businessin; for obtaining a valuable educationalqualification; for ease in finding acommunity of people where one can fitin; in second place after Geneva for thegeneral standard of its public amenitiessuch as schools, hospitals and publictransport; and in second place after Parisfor overall lifestyle, and for its widerange of interesting things to do both forshort-term visitors and long-termresidents. The difficulty of findingaffordable accommodation, the climateand the friendliness of the people are theonly categories where London scorespoorly.

So positive, in fact, are perceptions ofLondon that people imagine it as cleanerthan it really is: it comes 13th in theCity Brands Index for the perceivedquality of its environment but wasranked 102nd out of 215 cities for actualcleanliness in a global survey of citiescarried out by Mercer, a consulting firm,in 2005.

People also appear to underestimatethe cost of living in London. Accordingto a recent survey conducted by UBS(2005), London ranked as the worldssecond most expensive city, but it iseffectively ranked seventh in the CityBrands Index.

It is arguably a symptom of a strongbrand that people attribute greaterqualities to it than it actually possesses.

Amsterdam: Cliches, outrages andthe city brandThe nation brand of the Netherlands isgenerally a rather dull performer, andtends to hover around the lower end ofthe rich Western democracies in theNation Brands Index, but the city ofAmsterdam is an altogether differentproposition. Its profile is noticeablyhigher than that of the Netherlands,especially among European and North

overall image of the UK as reported inthe Nation Brands Index.

Surprisingly, considering theprominence of the City of London as aglobal financial centre, almost none ofthe respondents made a spontaneousassociation between London and financeor banking, but fully 14 per centmention Queen Elizabeth and 9 per centPrime Minister Tony Blair (who mightbe encouraged to learn that less than 2per cent mention his equally high-profilepredecessor, Margaret Thatcher).

Although Londoners are often heardto complain about the reality of living inEuropes richest and most populous city,Londons appeal seems to survive quiteclose familiarity; it is also rated by awide margin as the city the panellists feelthey know most about among the 30 inthe City Brands Index. It is the citymost visited by respondents, too, afraction ahead of Paris: 30 per cent ofthem have been there on holiday and 10per cent on business (in the case of Paris,the ratio of leisure to business visits isslightly higher).

As a general pattern, thehighest-ranking cities in the City BrandsIndex are also the ones respondentsknow best, but there are some interestingexceptions: more than a third of thisglobal sample claim to know verymuch, much or a fair amount aboutNew York, Los Angeles, Berlin,Washington and Tokyo, but far fewerpeople rate them highly as brands; Tokyois the 12th best known city in the indexbut ranks 19th overall. In these cases,familiarity clearly does not lead torespect. (A handful of cities work theother way round: they are perceivedvery positively despite the fact that thepanellists admit to knowing relativelylittle about them. Sydney and Barcelona,for example, are both better admiredthan they are known.)

London is ranked top of the list for



Netherlands and Amsterdam, Swedenand Stockholm, like most mature andsuccessful place brands, have achieved akind of critical mass, to the extent thatpeople simply reject anything negativewhich threatens to contradict theoverwhelmingly positive brand storythat they carry in their minds. It is toomuch trouble for most people to revisethe things they have always believedabout cities and countries just becausesomething shocking or out of theordinary has happened there.

Problems in places with powerful andpositive reputations even graveproblems like politically or raciallymotivated murders in broad daylight seem to be received by the world as theexception that proves the rule. Thereaction tends to be A murder in broaddaylight: how shocking andHolland/Amsterdam/Sweden/Stockholmis such a safe place!. Obviously this willnot last forever, and if bad news fromHolland or Sweden starts to become aregular event it will eventually spoil thebrand image. But for the time being, thepositive reputation effectively outweighsthe negative events, and Stockholm andAmsterdam are still rated, respectively,second and seventh safest of the 30 citiesin the index.

This points to a key observation: abrand is not a message, but the context inwhich messages are received. If the contextis positive, even negative messages willoften be interpreted in a favourable light.This is one of the reasons why apowerful and positive city or nationbrand is such a valuable asset: it makesthe reputation of the place exceptionallyresilient to negative influences, and is akind of insurance policy.

For the time being, the murder ofTheo van Gogh is associated withAmsterdam by only 1.1 per cent of thisglobal panel (unprompted awareness ishighest in Denmark and Italy, and close

American respondents, and it has acharacter which people in othercountries seem to find much moredistinctive and easier to define.

This character is not altogetherpositive, it has to be said: in somecountries where this research wasconducted 7 per cent of respondentsspontaneously associate Amsterdam withprostitution and 30 per cent with drugs,but it is hard to say whether theseassociations affect their overall liking ofthe city one way or the other. Most ofthe other immediate associations arevisual cliches of the simplest kind (tulips,windmills, cheese and clogs) and aretransferred from the general stock ofDutch national imagery rather than beingtruly specific to Amsterdam. Amsterdamsassociation with tulips is remarkablystrong (fully a third of Japaneserespondents make this association, forexample). A flower may be less potent asa proxy for the character of a city thanits vices, but at least, in the case of theDutch tulip, it is a very much strongerassociation.

Amsterdam is perceived as being veryeconomical (it ranks fourth in the CityBrands Index for ease of findingaffordable accommodation) but in realityit is rather expensive (the 13th mostexpensive city in the world, according tothe UBS (2005) survey.

After the Nation Brands Index waspublished many Dutch people expressedsurprise at the relative health of theirnational brand, and asked whether theworld knew nothing of the assassinationsof the film-maker Theo van Gogh andthe politician Pim Fortuyn. (Interestingly,there was a similar reaction in Sweden,where people were just as surprised thatthe murders of Prime Minister OlofPalme and more recently ForeignMinister Anna Lindh had not utterlydestroyed the brand image of Sweden.)

The fact is that the brands of the


Anholt

print, television and even products (forexample, in the way Seattle has beenbranded by Microsoft, Boeing andStarbucks) that they are simply morefamous than other cities, whether or notpeople have visited them. The GoldenGate Bridge is one of only twolandmarks in the study which isspontaneously associated with its city bymore than three-quarters of the globalpanellists, and other icons like the WhiteHouse and the Statue of Liberty arenamed by well over half.

As has been seen, high levels offamiliarity do not necessarily translateinto brand appeal, but the sense of statusand importance of some US cities is sopervasive that it distorts peoples sense ofvalue: Washington, for example, actuallyoffers good value for accommodation,and ranks a very low 78th place in theUBS (2005) survey; yet it was ranked inthe City Brands Index as the fifth mostexpensive city in the list.

Of course, New York and Washingtonreceived an unusual amount of mediacoverage even by the standards ofAmerican cities when they becametargets of international terrorism in 2001.It was mentioned earlier that althoughevents such as assassinations are shockingto people within the city and thecountry where they take place, theyseldom create high long-term awarenessin other countries unless they passinto history like the assassinations ofJulius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, John F.Kennedy or the Archduke FranzFerdinand.

Terrorist attacks, which do temporarilycreate very high awareness because theyare more widely and more intenselyreported in the global media, appear tohave relatively little impact on the brandimage of the city as a whole, even in theshort term. The recent attacks in Cairo,Madrid, London and of course NewYork and Washington may be

to zero in most other countries,including Holland itself).

New York, Washington, Los Angelesand San Francisco: The impactof terrorLike Amsterdam and the Netherlands,New York and Los Angeles seem tohave better brands than the USA itself.This might be because the cities are sowell known and powerful, and have suchunique and distinctive characters, thattheir cultural identity is not seen asmerely subsidiary to the cultural identityof the USA; they are almost nationbrands in their own right. The otherreason is undoubtedly because thecurrent low esteem for Brand America isconnected with international views of thepresent administration, and there is afirewall in peoples perceptions betweenthe nation and the cities; there is thesame distinction, up to a point, betweenthe government and the people although, as the author has argued in arecent book (Anholt and Hildreth, 2005),this point may now have been reached.

This is true of San Francisco and LosAngeles because people know that theyare a long way from Washington, DC,and because their cultural and politicalimage is more liberal (one event whichthe global panel most strongly associateswith San Francisco is the Gay Pridemarches). Los Angeles is primarilyassociated in peoples minds withHollywood and the cultural brand ofAmerica, as the Nation Brands Indexshows, is in much better health than thepolitical brand.

Looking at the results of the CityBrands Index, it is striking how wellbranded the US cities are compared tomost other major cities and manycapitals, around the world. Their lookand their lifestyle have been so wellestablished through American cinema,



later is still associated with the city byover a fifth of the global panellists)appear to break the mould, and in somesmall way reach into distant countriesand actually change peoples lives (Table1).

New York and Los Angeles do wellin the City Brands Index, ranked atseventh and eighth overall, mainlybecause they are seen as important,high-profile cities which offer manyopportunities (they rank second andfourth overall in the potential pointof the city brand hexagon). Therespondents do not generally rate themas safe, clean, beautiful, affordable orfriendly cities, but the business andeducational opportunities are seen asvery high and both are recognised asmulticultural cities where foreigners canfind a niche, even though they are notexpecting a warm welcome. NewYork, in particular, is seen as a placewith a good lifestyle where there isalways plenty to do, although there isan interesting contrast between thevery strong association betweenRudolph Giuliani and New York (ashigh as 16 per cent in Italy, where heis something of an adopted herobecause of his Italian ancestry) and thecitys rather low rankings for safety:perhaps the man is more celebratedthan his achievements.

San Francisco is perceived to offer a

spontaneously associated with those citiesby as many as 60 per cent of respondentsworldwide, but London, New York andMadrid are still ranked among the topten city brands overall; London andMadrid are even rated 11th and 12thsafest cities by this panel, well abovecertain cities where no serious attackshave occurred or are expected (such asMilan, Prague and Hong Kong).

It seems that people are better able toweigh up probabilities than psychologistssometimes give them credit for: the citieswhich are ranked lowest for safety in theCity Brands Index tend to be the oneswhere everyday crime and lawlessness arehighest, not the ones where an outragehas recently been perpetrated. New Yorklanguishes at 23rd place for safety andWashington at 19th, but this is moreprobably because both cities have areputation for high levels of street crimethan because of 9/11.

As mentioned in an earlier report onthe Nation Brands Index (Anholt, 2005),people do not fundamentally changetheir minds about places because ofsomething that happens in that place orto that place: the brand usually onlychanges for them if they are personallyaffected by the place in some way, or else ifthe place changes its behaviour in aconsistent way and over quite a longperiod. Events like 9/11 and the SanFrancisco earthquake (which 99 years


Anholt

Table 1: The top ten events most strongly associated with particular cities

Average spontaneousCity Event association (%)

Berlin Breaking down the Berlin Wall 57.75New York 11 September 2001 terrorist attack 56.97Rome Election of new pope 45.43London 7 July 2005 terrorist attack 34.30Madrid Bomb blast 29.74Cairo Terrorist attacks 27.11Johannesburg End of apartheid 25.94Rome Death of pope 21.62San Francisco Earthquake 21.40Washington 11 September 2001 terrorist attack 17.46

Tower. This originally temporarystructure is one of the few truly globalmegabrands in the City Brands Index, alandmark of iconic status which isspontaneously associated with Paris bynearly 80 per cent of all respondentsworldwide (Table 2). The presence ofsuch a prominent and distinctive visualsymbol is certainly one reason why Parisdoes so well in the rankings.

Rome and Milan: Stile italiano finallybeats chic franaisThe two Italian cities, Rome and Milan,both produce positive results in the CityBrands Index which match up well withItalys scores in the Nation Brands Index.As with Italy, most of the valuesassociated with these cities are on thesoft side, relating to fashion, climate,culture, design, shopping and lifestylerather than infrastructure, politics or highfinance. Rome is ranked second in theworld for beauty, after Paris, and there isvery high awareness (and knowledge) ofits antiquities and other touristattractions, as well as its contemporarylifestyle.

The perception that things are notwell organised in Italy is reflected inthe low rankings given to both citiesin the prerequisites section: Romeranks 18th and Milan 19th for publicamenities, and while there is obviouslysome basis in fact for these perceptions,they do lag behind the reality of thecities, especially Milan. Both cities arealso believed to be rather polluted,ranking 16th and 17th for air qualityand cleanliness; neither is perceived tobe a good place to do business, butthe people are believed to be warmand friendly (markedly more so inRome than in Milan, a view whichmany non-Milanese Italians wouldshare).

What is particularly noticeable in the

warmer welcome, a better climate andlower prices, and carries more positiveassociations; although its status as a brandis lower and its overall appeal somewhatweaker, it still ranks very creditably at11th place overall.

Paris: The value of an iconParis comes second overall in the CityBrands Index, and is another verystriking example of a city whichoutperforms its own country in brandpower. France was ranked in overallninth position in the second quarter ofthe Nation Brands Index, and in thethird-quarter study its esteem around theworld is shown to be very patchy; Paris,on the other hand, has a near legendaryand universal appeal. It is ranked top forlifestyle, and near the top of the indexon most other categories. Its only poorscores are for affordable, easy-to-findaccommodation (28th out of 30),employment opportunities (14th) and thefriendliness of the people, where it ranks25th. Like New York, Paris has anunfortunate reputation for hostile natives,a commonplace which is faithfullyreflected in the City Brands Index, andwhich drags down its otherwise excellentratings.

People strongly associate Paris withfashion and perfume (and all of thefamous couture brands are named by atleast some of the respondents), althoughnot, surprisingly, with good food: nomore than 2 per cent of panellistsspontaneously link Paris with food orrestaurants. There appears to be verylittle international agreement about thecontribution of any city to cuisine, infact: Mexico City and Paris are held tohave made a contribution to food byaround 1 per cent of this worldwidesample, and no other city comes close.

Paris has one brand asset, however,which is uniquely valuable: the Eiffel



Berlin: The slow escape from historyBerlin performs reasonably well in theCity Brands Index, beating San Franciscointo tenth place overall. The generalperception is that this is a safe, moderncity with good infrastructure, a ratherpoor climate and unfriendly people butan otherwise pleasant environment,offering affordable accommodation, not agreat deal to do, a moderately goodbusiness environment and above-averageeducational potential; a city that hasmade a significant contribution to theworld during the last 30 years, mainly asa result of reunification.

As has been seen, Berlin also has therare distinction of being stronglyassociated with two world-famousmonuments: the Brandenburg Gate(which registers with a higher percentageof respondents than the Vatican or LaScala) and the Berlin Wall (which ismore strongly associated with its citythan Red Square, Big Ben, Hollywood,Lake Geneva or the Colosseum).

detailed data from the City Brands Indexis the tremendous power of Brand Milanin the area of fashion, design, shoppingand designer lifestyle in general, andhere it clearly outranks Paris in a waythat, 30 or 40 years ago, would haveseemed inconceivable. As Table 3 shows,Milans contribution of fashion to theworld is considered by an enormousmargin to be the greatest contribution ofany city in any field.

Rome, on the other hand, draws themajority of its brand power not from itscultural, architectural or archaeologicalwealth but from the presence of theVatican City (which, needless to say, isnot seen by respondents as a separatecity, let alone a separate sovereign state).The importance of the pope to thebrand image of Rome is huge andalthough the rankings from thepredominantly Catholic countries in thissurvey are somewhat higher, the positiveperceptions appear to be as much secularand touristic as they are religious.


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Table 2: Famous city landmarks

Rank City Attraction Awareness (%)

1 Paris Eiffel Tower 78.962 San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge 74.473 Washington White House 66.474 Sydney Opera House 62.955 Cairo Pyramids 61.466 New York Statue of Liberty 54.237 Edinburgh Edinburgh Castle 53.308 Berlin* Berlin Wall 51.839 Moscow* Red Square 51.73

10 Rio de Janeiro Cristo Redentor 50.5911 London Big Ben 46.0812 Rome* Colosseum 44.4913 Toronto CN Tower 35.5314 Moscow* Kremlin 35.0215 Los Angeles Hollywood 31.6916 Beijing Tiananmen Square 30.9717 Geneva Lake Geneva 30.3918 Berlin* Brandenburg Gate 24.4019 Milan La Scala 23.8720 Brussels Manneken Pis 23.8421 Rome* The Vatican 23.2122 Prague Charles Bridge 23.2023 Mumbai Gate of India 21.9424 Barcelona Sagrada Familia 21.93

*Denotes a city with more than one high-ranking monument.

weaker ones, instead of its thirdstrongest.

Whatever the prognosis, the remedyfor Berlin must be the same for any cityor country whose brand image is taintedby associations with a past it is anxiousto leave behind, whether it is Beijingsnear 15 per cent association withTiananmen Square (in the significantevents section, not as a touristattraction), or Moscows 18 per centassociation with alcohol: to earn anddeserve an even stronger reputation forsomething more wholesome.

Sydney: The branding phenomenonof the Olympic GamesThe massive global awareness of theOlympic Games and their very closeassociation with their host cities are asignificant factor in the City Brands Index.

Berlin has only one other significantscore in the City Brands Index: aremarkably strong and globally consistentassociation with Adolf Hitler. Theassociation of Hitler with Berlin isstronger than that of London with TonyBlair or even Johannesburg with NelsonMandela; in Mexico, Spain and China,Hitler was spontaneously mentioned bybetween a quarter and a third of allrespondents. Sixty years after his death,Hitler is still one of the few associationswith the city that people around theworld all seem to share. One wonderswhat the half-life of such a memory canbe: if it has taken 60 years for theassociation to decline from what musthave been close to 100 per cent in 1945to its current level of 13 per cent,perhaps there is reason for Berlin tohope that in another generation theassociation will be one of the citys



Table 3: Cities contributions to the world

Rank City Contribution to world (last 30 years) Average %

1 Milan Fashion 52.782 Washington Politics 39.823 Paris Fashion 32.244 Brussels EU 30.865 Moscow Politics 29.486 Madrid Culture 25.447 Tokyo Technology 23.448 Prague Culture 23.359 Rio de Janeiro Culture 22.00

10 Rome Culture 18.5111 Paris Culture 17.8712 Los Angeles Film/movies 17.5913 Rome Religion 17.4814 Cairo Culture 17.2415 Barcelona Culture 17.0016 Berlin Fall of the Berlin Wall 16.1117 Edinburgh Culture 16.0218 San Francisco Culture 15.5119 Barcelona Olympic Games 15.3320 Mexico City Culture 15.2621 Singapore Economy 15.1722 Sydney Culture 14.4823 Brussels Politics 14.3724 Johannesburg Apartheid 13.8725 Tokyo Economy 13.1426 Los Angeles Culture 13.0727 Berlin Unification of East and West Germany 12.6228 Mumbai Cinema 12.5929 Stockholm Science 12.5230 Rio Carnival 11.96

Figure 2 shows, there is a gradual declinein popular association between theOlympic Games and host cities over aperiod of about 80100 years, but, as thestill very high awareness of the 1964Tokyo Olympics shows, the decline is byno means inevitable.

Next to the Olympics, other sportingevents pale into insignificance: thefootball World Cup (which is surely oneof the biggest events after the Olympics)barely registers in the City Brands Index the highest score is an average of 18per cent for the 1998 World Cup inParis. Obviously this low score is partlybecause the World Cup is hosted by acountry rather than by a city, so thebranding effect is more diffuse yetnone of the American host cities of theprevious World Cup in 1994 is stillassociated with the event by more than 1per cent of panellists.

The only other sporting eventsmentioned by substantial numbers ofpanellists are the Tour de France, alsoassociated with Paris, and the New York

Nowhere is this more evident than inthe case of the 2000 Sydney Olympics,an event which produces an averageinternational awareness of 87 per cent,dwarfing all other associations of any sortwith any other city. In most of thecountry panels the spontaneousassociation of Sydney with the OlympicGames is virtually 100 per cent. It isprobably no exaggeration to say that themodern brand of Sydney was built onthe Opera House and the OlympicGames, and in consequence much of thevery high equity of Brand Australia (thenumber one nation brand in the secondquarter of the Nation Brands Index).

The other remarkable factor about thebrand salience given by the Olympics ishow slowly it decays. A not insignificantnumber of panellists still spontaneouslymake associations between Paris and theOlympic Games, even though the lastGames held there were in 1924. Evenfuture host cities like Beijing and Londongain brand awareness purely throughpopular anticipation of the Olympics. As


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Figure 2: Association of host city with the Olympic Games

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conjectures deriving from a generallypositive feeling about the place. LikeAustralia in the Nation Brands Index, thegeneral level of goodwill towards theplace is so high that people seemprepared to give Sydney the benefit ofthe doubt on a great many issues.

LagosLagos is the biggest and richest city ofAfricas biggest and most populouscountry, and although no longer thecapital of Nigeria is still by any measurethe countrys first city. It would thereforeseem to be a good candidate for findingout whether any sub-Saharan city apartfrom Johannesburg has any brand valuesthat register with the global panel, arepresentative cross-section of ordinarypeople from a range of both rich anddeveloping countries.

The significance of brand value forplaces like Lagos and Nigeria is nottrivial. If their reputation is entirelycomposed of negative elements suchas crime, war, poverty, disease orcorruption then it is highly unlikelythat the city or the country will be ableto attract many tourists, foreign investors,trading partners or even consumers forlocally produced products.

Lagos ranks at or near the bottom ofmost of the categories in the City BrandsIndex, but this is hardly surprising sinceit is the least well known and leastvisited of the 30 cities in the index, and

Marathon, which comes fairly closebehind with an average association levelof around 14 per cent.

Some non-sporting events andespecially high-profile cultural events cancreate high levels of awareness, but noneappears to match the Olympics grip onthe public imagination (Table 4).

Neither Sydney nor Australia,although they are indisputably popularand powerful global brands, appears tohave the same range, depth and richnessof associations which panellists ascribe tothe more mature place brands like Italy,London, New York or Paris. These citiesand countries have built up their positiveglobal brand equity through countlessdifferent channels over several centuries,and arguably have deeper roots. Nationand city brands like Sydney and Australiacan indeed be built on a small numberof high-profile and impeccablyimplemented projects but theinteresting question is how robust theyare, and how resilient to negativepublicity should their luck or their goodmanagement turn.

No matter how quick Sydneys rise toprominence has been, its scores areconsistently high throughout the index.Since relatively few respondents havevisited the city (it comes 18th in the listof cities actually visited by panellists),one must assume that many of the highrankings which Sydney receives for issueslike infrastructure, services, communityand so forth are simply extrapolations or



Table 4: Awareness of events

City Event Awareness (%)

Rio de Janeiro Carnival 71.17Milan Fashion shows 48.58Edinburgh Fringe Festival 27.94Los Angeles Academy Awards 27.72Stockholm Nobel Awards 27.63Madrid Bull run/bull fighting 20.24San Francisco Gay Day 19.71Paris Fashion shows 18.36

entry into the global marketplace, andwithout this it is difficult to see howplaces like Lagos can begin to build theirown economies and break theirdependence on foreign aid.

CONCLUSIONSCities have brand images which rise andfall very slowly, and this is adouble-edged sword. On the one hand itmeans that cities in developing countriesfind that their new prosperity andopportunities can take an age to pass intowidespread international awareness but on the other hand it does mean thatcities with positive brands are surprisinglyimmune even to catastrophic events. Andonce or twice in a generation a city likeSydney or Dubai (not featured in thisedition of the Index) manages to provethat a meteoric rise to celebrity andpopularity can occasionally occur.

These brand images, just like thebrand images of products, of companiesand of countries, influence and underpincountless decisions some of themwith very important consequences made every day by millions of peoplearound the world.

Some cities have brands which are sopowerful they even eclipse the reputationof their country, and this can createproblems while it lasts: the wealthcreated by investment, trade and tourismin a famous city does not always trickledown very efficiently to needier but lesswell-branded cities and regions (as theCzech Republic is finding to its cost).

The better people understand how thereputations of places work, the soonerthey will learn what is involved inearning and deserving a powerful brandimage, and how their own behaviour orthat of the competition threatens thatmost valuable of assets.

But it is important to appreciate onevery important difference between

has no world-famous landmarks,personalities, events or achievements.This creates a kind of perceptual vacuuminto which a wide range of generalisedAfrican imagery tends to flow. By far theleading association with Lagos is war,mentioned by 11 per cent ofrespondents, an unusually highpercentage by any standards the samepercentage, in fact, that mentioned theassociation of the United Nations withGeneva. But the Biafran war ended in1970.

Lagos, like Nigeria itself, and likemost cities and most countries in Africa,suffers from continent branding effect:none of these places has been able tocreate a separate, unique internationalreputation, and so they are obliged toshare a generic continent brand calledAfrica. And Brand Africa, with its simplemessage of ongoing catastrophe, ispromoted with skill, dedication,creativity and vast financial and mediaresources by aid agencies, internationalorganisations, donor governments and,most prominently, by aid celebrities likeBob Geldof and Bono. Every time sucha celebrity appears before tens of millionsof TV viewers around the world tomake another impassioned plea on behalfof the continent (usually represented by ablack logo in the shape of Africa), he isbuilding the brand of Africa not as 53countries in various stages ofdevelopment and struggle forindependent existence and identity, but asa uniform, hopeless basket-case. Andwith each additional promotion of thisbrand, it becomes harder for thousands ofplaces like Lagos, their companies andentrepreneurs, to break free of thesenegative associations and start to build abrand of their own.

It is no accident that all the successfulcity brands and nation brands are alsorich. Having a powerful and positiveinternational reputation is the cost of


Anholt

and a little more fully than perhaps theywould have done otherwise.

And that is a useful task to haveperformed, even if the costs of achievingit effectively and sustainably are too highfor many cities to justify. Whatadvertising and marketing cannot ever dois to make a bad city look good: that ispropaganda, not brand management, andit is as wasteful as it is ineffectual.

ReferencesAnholt, S. (2005) Editorial, Place Branding, Vol. 1,

No. 4, pp. 333346.Anholt, S. and Hildreth, J. (2005) Brand America,

Cyan Books, London, UK.Mercer Consulting (2005) Quality of Living Survey,

available at:www.mercerhr.com/summary.jhtml/dynamic/idContent/1173370.

UBS (2005) Price and Earnings Survey, available at:www.ubs.com/1/e/media_overview/media_global/mediareleases?newsld=74357.

product brands and place brands. Peopleare, to some extent, willing to changetheir minds about product brands as aresult of good advertising and goodmarketing. That is a pact whichconsumers generally accept aboutproducts: they are prepared to pay a littleattention to commercial messages, andreceive some of their information aboutproducts through paid-for media. Nosuch pact exists about cities or countries.

When the brand image of a heavilypromoted city does change for thebetter, a closer look reveals that theadvertising and marketing did notachieve the change: what they did wasto reflect a real change that was takingplace in the conditions, the people, thepolicies and the opportunities of the city,and help the world to realise andunderstand those changes a little faster



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