Editorial

Citation

Parker, C., Roberts, G., Quin, S. and Byrom, J. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 5 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpmd.2012.35505caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Place Management and Development, Volume 5, Issue 3

Welcome to Volume 5 Issue 3 of the Journal of Place Management and Development. The theme of marketing and branding continues to attract a large amount of submissions and interest, and this issue is no exception.

Despite our title being the Journal of Place Management and Development (from our work with practitioners which demonstrates their understanding of the work they do as place managers and developers), there is no doubt the theoretical underpinnings for their work are coming from the burgeoning place marketing and branding literature. What we need to do now is bridge the gap between academic theory building and practical place improvement, and we hope our conference in February 2013 will be a major step forwards in achieving this. You can find more details at: www.business.mmu.ac.uk/place and we would hope many of our authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members and readers can attend. It would be great to put some faces to so many of these names!

Anyway, we digress; on to the content of this particular issue. Our first paper by I. Torres, from Housing and Urban Development of the Federal District Government in Brazil, is entitled “Branding slums: a community-driven strategy for urban inclusion in Rio de Janeiro”. Whilst readers may find the term “slum” rather outdated, as the paper is about the perceptions people living in the area hold, the author uses the same term that her respondents use (rather than the less derogatory “informal settlements”). The case-study is fascinating as rebranding, in terms of presenting an authentic image of the area, is an activity local residents are very keen to engage in. Far from a branding exercise that further alienates and excludes existing residents, this case shows what can be accomplished, when local people are at the heart of the activity:

The recognition and promotion of their cultural heritage make slum residents proud of belonging to their place of residence, attract visitors and investors, raise visibility to infrastructure and services inadequacies, encourage the maintenance of the physical improvements generated by upgrading works and facilitates multilevel partnerships.

The next paper by Staci Zavattaro, from University of Texas at Brownsville is very interesting as it draws on the philosopher Baudrillard’s (1994) “phases of the image”. Whilst offering a conceptual framework and practical advice, in terms of the relationship between image, brand, reality and governance, it also offers “a cautionary tale about place brands”. In our view, the paper’s most important contribution is the philosophical underpinning which exposes and explains the potential dangers of place marketing that focuses more on image-based rather than mutually beneficial organization-public relationships. The four phases of the city image are presented – with the “profound reality” being phase 1 and the image not necessarily being related to reality as phase 4. This is correlated (conceptually) with the increase of selling tactics, but further empirical testing of the proposed conceptual model would help clarify whether these tactics are “meaningful and purposeful” and the meaning of “meaningful”. Nevertheless, the paper demonstrates the truly interdisciplinary area this subject has become.

In contrast, Thomas Niedomysl and Mikael Jonasson (Lund University), also offer a conceptual framework, “Towards a theory of place marketing”, but one that is clearly grounded in various facets of geography. Taking the three main factors of hierarchy (i.e. where a place is situated in the place hierarchy), the level of place marketing and a spatial dimension (how far away a place is from other places), it locates individual places in a multi-faceted place marketing context. Again, this is useful as it explains why some places, but not others, are in competition with each other. It concludes with a number of testable propositions based on this framework, which we sincerely hope scholars will utilise. Then we truly are on the way to the type of theory of place marketing that will engage a wider audience, including economists.

Our fourth paper by Andrea Lucarelli at Stockholm University is “Unraveling the complexity of ‘city brand equity’: a three dimensional framework”. Like the Niedomysl and Jonasson paper, this is another framework with three factors, but one that is built from reviewing the extant place branding literature – in particular those studies that actually measure something. The paper establishes the concept of city brand equity, i.e. the capital or “added value” that comes from branding as a function of a city’s elements (its assets), the impact of branding activities (social, economic, image, etc.) and the type of measurement employed (quantitative, qualitative, etc.). As a review paper it makes a very useful contribution – and again offers a good basis for further empirical research.

Continuing in a similar vein, and a piece of work that will certainly appeal to economists; Björn Jacobsen’s (University of Dundee) paper, “Place brand equity: a model for establishing the effectiveness of place brands”, looks at how places can develop brands which best appeal to inward investors through the employment of the “investor-based place brand equity model”. Using the example of North European creative industries investment in Germany, with a focus on the city of Lubeck, Jacobsen illustrates that the effectiveness of a place brand in influencing the behaviour of inward investors can be established by identifying and applying suitable “place brand attributes,” which assist operational place brand management, and “place brand benefits,” which support strategic decisions. This empirical approach to establishing what factors contribute to place branding achieving its intended effect is very interesting, and we hope to see more papers of this nature in the future.

Our final paper is from Greg Kerr, Kate Dombkins and Sarah Jelley “ ‘We love the Gong’: a marketing perspective” provides an insight for practitioners into a marketing initiative undertaken in the city of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Like many industrial cities, Wollongong had a poor place image which began to be addressed in 1999. A decade on, the “We love the Gong” campaign was initiated to address a range of negative external and local perceptions that resulted from extensive media coverage of local corruption. Although not an original idea, this paper shows how the “we love” concept was given a local authenticity and how this resulted in a sense of local ownership. It provides a series of useful lessons and recommendations for practitioners in cities around the world.

As usual we hope you enjoy reading this issue of the Journal of Place Management and Development and hope to see you at our conference in Manchester in February 2013. This will be followed by a Special Issue of the Journal with a selection of the best papers from the conference.

Cathy Parker, Gareth Roberts, Simon Quin, John Byrom