INTRODUCTION

The question 'can a place be a brand?' is no longer as enigmatic as it was in past decades, since today most branding researchers and practitioners tend to market countries, cities and regions as if they were products (Kotler and Gertner, 2002; Morgan et al., 2004; Papadopoulos, 2004). This marketing approach is derived from the marketing realm of the Country-of-Origin Effect (national image), which presents very profound evidence that products bearing 'Made in Japan' (cars, cameras and consumer electronics), 'Made in France' (wines, perfume and clothing) or 'Made in Italy' (furniture, shoes and sports cars) labels are commonly regarded as high quality, due to the reputation of these countries as top world manufacturers and exporters ( Jaffe and Nebenzahl, 2001). Marketers define the concept of a 'place image' as the sum of the beliefs and impressions that people hold about a place (Kotler et al., 1993). A place image results from the place's geography, history, art and music, famous citizens and other features (Kotler and Gertner, 2002). Governments and councils spend huge sums of money and invest tremendous efforts in creating a real, competitive advantage over other nations and cities (Porter, 1989; Kotler et al., 1997) in order to attract tourists, factories, companies and talented people and to find markets for their exports (Gilmore, 2001). In recent years, countries such as Thailand (Nuttavuthisit, 2007), Costa Rica, Moldova (Florek and Conejo, 2007), Ireland (O'Leary and Deegan, 2003; Gould and Skinner, 2007), Turkey (Kemming and Sandikci, 2007), Spain (Gilmore, 2001), Britain (Gilmore, 2001; Hall, 2004), Yugoslavia (Hall, 2002), Australia (Morgan and Pritchard, 1999) and New Zealand (Morgan et al., 2003) underwent processes to position themselves and promote a positive image. Other nations that are also exhibiting pending efforts in marketing areas include Wales (Pritchard and Morgan, 1998), Western Australia (Crockett and Wood, 2000) and Florida (Brayshaw, 1995). Furthermore, cities such as Glasgow (Daskou et al., 2004), Manchester (Ward, 2000), Bradford (Trueman et al., 2004) and London (Hopper, 2003; Anholt, 2006a, 2006b) have already completed the design of their new images. According to Caldwell and Freire (2004), there are differences in the way in which people perceive countries, regions and cities. Countries are so functionally diverse that they are perceived in terms of the representational parts of their brand identity, whereas regions and cities, being smaller in scale, are perceived more from a functional point of view. Despite these differences, marketing a place (country, region or city) depends mostly on an understanding of how people perceive one another. In addition, it appears that branding a city is a much more complex process than branding other places such as countries or regions (Hankinson, 2001), since it lacks the capabilities of identifying itself with well-known core competencies, mainly human assets such as politicians, mayors, artists and celebrities (Gilmore, 2001). This major problem is even more difficult for marketers who deal with small cities and with cities that are not perceived as especially attractive.

The idea behind the relevence of city marketing philosophy is derived from the fact that city marketing enables a new level of quality within local development policy in terms of comprehensiveness, creativity and flexability. New resources in the form of ideas, capital and local knowledge are mobilised for local policy. In this way, city marketing enables a strategic approach to public planning in collaboration with the private sector (Helbrecht, 1994: 528). In order to impliment city marketing philosophy, researchers made vast efforts to come up with the most applicapble combination of city marketing measures to achieve the desired strategy (city marketing mix). It appears that the actual determination, however, of what the marketing mix should include in the context of city marketing is problematical, due to the peculiarities of cities and places generally as marketable assets and with the relevance of the elements of the traditional marketing mix to city marketing (Kavaratzis, 2004). Ashworth and Voggd (1990) for example, suggest what they term a geographical marketing mix includes four sets of instruments: Promotional measures, spatial-functional measures, organisational measures and financial measures. According to them, the scope and effectiveness of city marketing is largely determined by the selection and application of the appropriate combination of these measures. Hubbard and Hall (1998) suggested six city governance policies, which include advertising and promotion, large-scale physical redevelopment, public art and civic statuary, mega-events, cultural regeneration and public–private partnership. Kotler et al. (1999) distinguish between four distinct strategies for place improvement that are the foundations for building a competetive advantage. These are: design (place as character), infrastructure (place as fixed environment), basic services (place as service provider) and attractions (places as entertainment and recreation). Another way to market a city can be seen in the six components of the City Brand Hexagon (Anholt, 2006a, 2006b): Presence (the contribution of the city to the state/region), Place (the physical aspect of the city), Potential (the economic and educational opportunities that the city is believed to offer), Pulse (the excitement that the city can offer), People (the behaviour of the inhabitants of the city) and Prerequisities (the basic qualities of the city such scools, hospitals, public transport, sports facilities and so on). Whereas in the past marketers used to market cities in terms of a marketing philosophy, today it is much more common to regard cities in terms of city branding. Branding a city (city branding) is understood as the means both for achieving competetive advantage in order to increase inward investment and tourism, and also for achieving community development, reinforcing local identity and identification of the citizens with their city and activating all social forces to avoid social exclusion and unrest (Kavaratzis, 2004).

Most of the research work on city branding focuses on large cities such as London, Manchester and Glasgow (Hankinson, 2001), and only little research has been done on the way in which smaller cities succeeded in building, designing and maintaining their image. This paper aims to explore the challenge of the Israeli city of Holon, which, after being associated with crime and violence for almost two decades, succeeded in adopting a successful branding strategy to change its image to be known today as the 'Children's City'. Analysis of the previous poor image of the city is illustrated, followed by the place-branding process, which succeeded in correcting the negative image and transforming it into a very positive image from the point of view of the city's citizens as well as that of other citizens throughout Israel.

FROM NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE — A CITY'S IMAGE

Over the years, the city of Holon, which lies on the Mediterranean coastal plain, in the centre of the State of Israel, not far from the city of Tel Aviv, has become the eighth largest city in the country, with a population of some 190,000 people. From the time of its founding in 1950 until the 1970s, the city's image was positive and it was perceived as elitist due to the fact that it attracted many East European immigrants who were economically well off and who brought with them positive values of culture and education. During this period, the city's elementary and high schools were considered among the leading in the country. For many years, however, Holon's mayors misplanned the city and failed to build new neighbourhoods that would offer larger apartments and more spacious houses. As a result, about 45 per cent of the city's inhabitants of high socio-economic status moved to other cities in the area that offered townhouses and more spacious homes at attractive prices. They were replaced by families of low socio-economic status, a move that was detrimental to the city's image all the more so due to the fact that the name of a neighbouring city, Bat-Yam, characterised by a high level of violence and crime, became associated with that of Holon.

In the early 1990s, a new mayor was elected, who immediately began combating the city's negative image with the aim of reinstating the city's pride and leading it towards a new and positive future. With the objective of achieving this goal, the mayor replaced the senior, politically appointed municipal officers with professional employees who were experts in their fields. Upon completion of this initial and essential process, it was decided to act in an orderly manner in order to re-brand the city, based on the following five stages: diagnosis, creating a vision, designing a new image, assimilation of the image among citizens of the city and control (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Re-branding of a city

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DIAGNOSIS STAGE

The purpose of this stage was to identify the way in which the city is perceived by its inhabitants and by others. To this end, a special public committee was established, headed by the city's director general, that included local citizens, academics, journalists and celebrities and that functioned in full cooperation with the mayor. In order to make an accurate diagnosis, the committee carried out a telephone survey among a representative sample of 1,000 city inhabitants aged 18 and above. The study was performed in September 1994 by a computerised survey institute and was closely supervised by the institute researchers. In addition, another study was carried out during November 1994 in the form of a telephone omnibus survey among 500 respondents, aged 18 and above, who constituted a nationwide representative sample of the population in other Israeli cities.

The findings from the first survey indicated that 31 per cent of the city's population (most of which are defined as being of high socio-economic status) support the statement that the city's image had deteriorated significantly, a fact that was manifested mainly in various aspects of culture and education. The findings from the second survey, which examined the perceptions of inhabitants of other cities, were even more severe and the city ranked next to last in terms of image among all cities in the Holon area. The survey also indicated that the main reasons people gave for living in the city were proximity to other family members (28 per cent) and proximity to the work place (16 per cent). The professional committee drew two main conclusions from these findings. First, that the significant gap between the city's past image during its initial years and its 1994 image stemmed from a significant deterioration in all that pertains to the city's cultural and educational aspects. The second conclusion was that citizens of high socio-economic status who believe that the city does not currently provide the same education and culture services as it did in the past regard this component as essential in reinforcing the city's image and as an anchor that would prevent future generations of city inhabitants from leaving, seeing as they are satisfied with other central aspects, such as proximity to the work place. In addition, the professional committee was interested in learning about the associations of the city of Holon versus other cities in the metropolitan area. Therefore, during these telephone surveys, Holon inhabitants and those from six cities in the metropolitan area were asked by means of an open-ended question to point out the most meaningful associations regarding cities such as Bat-Yam, Herzelia, Holon, Mode'in, Petach-Tikva, Rishon-Lezion and Tel Aviv. In addition, they were asked to rank them from 1 to 10 in terms of physical and population dimensions. The physical dimension includes aspects such as the city's appearance, facilities, parking lots, transportation, shopping malls and playgrounds. The population dimension includes aspects such as education level, type of population and employment rate. The results of this question revealed that the three most meaningful associations of Holon are 'grey', 'crowded' and 'criminal negligence' (see Table 1 and Figure 2). Compared to the other six cities in the metropolitan area, Holon is ranked next to last.

Figure 2.

Perceptual map of cities in the Metropolitan Area of Holon (1994)

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Table 1 - Major associations of Holon and other cities in the Metropolitan area (1994).

Full table

VISION-CREATING STAGE

During the second stage, the professional committee was required to formulate the vision from which the city's desired image would later on be derived. The vision, which constitutes the definition of a new conceptual direction that will enable the organisation to achieve improved performance in the long run (Collins and Porras, 1996), required a brave decision that warranted the full support of all persons and entities involved. Ultimately, a complete turn-around in the city's image was decided upon — from 'grey', 'dormant' and 'dull' to a 'leading', 'vigorous' and 'progressive' city that was headed into the 21st century. In light of this vision definition, the professional committee began drafting the central objectives of the city's re-branding process. In effect, two main objectives were set: first, to address the city's self-image and enhance municipal pride and, second, to address the city's external image. The operative meaning of these objectives was to create a positive image for the city both among its own inhabitants and among inhabitants of other Israeli cities, with the goal of retaining the city's existing high socio-economic population and attracting back those who had left Holon. Another objective was to encourage young, academic people to come live in the city. In view of these objectives, a decision was made to create a city image that would reinforce its status as a central hub that has an educated, economically sound and young population.

IMAGE-DESIGNING STAGE

During this stage, the committee began cooperating with a team of expert marketing people in order to create a new city image that would be based on the examination of three central elements: the city's prominent physical and human assets, the main target audience of the city and a focus on competing cities. An examination of these three elements indicated that in terms of physical and human assets, the city cannot boast any extraordinary history, archaeological sites or environmental assets, such as a seaside, nor were any names of famous figures indicated as being associated with the city. Nevertheless, the city contained a large number of structures that had served educational and cultural purposes and had, as a result of long years of neglect, become deserted or completely disused. The main target audience the city wished to address were young couples, young families and students. In terms of competing cities, it was clear that Tel Aviv constituted the primary competitor and served as an alternative for recreational and cultural activities for the inhabitants of Holon. An examination of these three elements indicated more than anything else the desire for educational and cultural services. The vision definition indicated a need to create a city that would be perceived as 'leading', 'vigorous' and 'progressive'. This led the committee to create centres of attraction that were related to educational and cultural services that were unavailable in any of the other competing cities. This process led to the idea of imparting onto the city an image of a 'children's city'. The municipality realised the potential of the many structures that were located throughout the city to be transformed into modern educational and cultural centres. Such centres were unavailable in other nearby cities and would also attract inhabitants of nearby cities. The main idea was to enhance the city's future image among its own inhabitants through the inrush of people from outside the city. In order to put this image in practice, the municipality began acting simultaneously on two levels. First, the city began producing national-level events that were oriented towards children and youth, such as children's festivals on various themes (fairy tales, music from children's musicals etc), holiday parades with a multitude of costumes and exhibitions that were staged by seven different galleries spread throughout the city. Second, the municipality developed and erected several unique cultural institutions for children, either in existing or in new structures that were built, including an art centre for young children, the Israeli Children's Museum, sixteen story gardens that constitute a unique environmental project, in which some of Israel's best artists erected environmental sculptures inspired by beloved and well-known children's stories. All this activity was accompanied by the establishment of open-air museums, modern libraries, a new water park, playgrounds and a puppetry arts museum.

IMAGE ASSIMILATION STAGE

Assimilating the new image was undertaken more intensely among the city's own population than among the inhabitants of other cities. To ensure the efficacy of the assimilation process, it was decided to act on three levels of communication: primary, secondary and tertiary communication (Kavaratzis, 2004). On the primary level of communication, dedicated to the communication of the city's external appearance, emphasis was placed on the grooming of the various entrances to the city, its urban design, architecture and green spaces. On the secondary level of communication, a slogan was formulated —'Holon— Great for kids'— which was accompanied by a logo depicting a happy child. This slogan and logo combination were publicised throughout the city and a decision was made that all inauguration ceremonies of children-related buildings would be accompanied by large, public happenings, which would be given significant exposure in the local press, the municipality's website and on billboards throughout the city, particularly those adjacent to schools and kindergartens. In addition to addressing the city's inhabitants, the municipality also hired the services of a public relations agency that continuously fed the national press with official announcements reviewing the extensive and important activities carried out by the city in areas of culture, in general and children-oriented activities in particular. All such events were mentioned in the overall context of the city as a Children's City and as a national cultural centre. In addition, before every holiday, the municipality began airing broadcasts on national radio inviting all Israeli citizens to participate in the various children's events held in the city. Each broadcast naturally ended with the city's slogan. On the tertiary level of communications, the city's younger citizens began getting together, mainly in the afternoons, at the various community culture and sports centres, where they would interact socially and update each other on new recreational places worth visiting in the city, while their children participated in the various enrichment classes held. Word-of-mouth communication played a very important role in promoting the city, both among its own inhabitants and among out-of-town citizens.

CONTROL STAGE

The objective of this stage was to examine the rate at which the city's image changed from its current image to the desired image. During the branding process, economic, social, political, technological and cultural changes may take place that affect the city itself, and adjustments are, therefore, required in view of such changes. In 2004, a considerable increase was seen in the number of children and babies in the city, which reached 43,309 children, increasing 20 per cent compared with 2001. This baby-boom necessitated the opening of new kindergartens and day care centres and a marketing plan was launched for 2010 with the objective of establishing the city's image as a city of babies and toddlers as well as being a city of children. The city's future plan for the next 2–3 years is to erect several new education centres for infants and toddlers.

RESULTS

Owing to the fact that the Holon Municipality believed that the re-branding process of the city is a prolonged process requiring supervision and control, a study was carried out in 2006 that was similar to the 1994 survey. One thousand of the city inhabitants and 500 people from other cities were surveyed, in order to study whether the branding process of the city was successful. The findings of the first study among city inhabitants indicated that 50 per cent agreed with the statement that the city's education system is one of the best in the country, 65 per cent agreed with the statement that Holon is the Children's City and 82 per cent agreed with the statement that Holon is a city with many parks and green areas. The findings of the study performed among the general Israeli population indicated that 69 per cent of the public had heard, on average, about two children-oriented events or facilities that exist in the city. Over 80 per cent of the inhabitants of other nearby cities had heard, on average, about two children-oriented events or facilities that exist in the city. The general level of satisfaction of the citizens with their city was also examined. In 2001, satisfaction was 69 per cent and has currently increased to 77 per cent. Twenty-three per cent of the people surveyed indicated a very high level of satisfaction. Another aspect that was examined was the level of the inhabitants' loyalty to the city. This was done using a loyalty measure based on four questions: What is your level of satisfaction with your life in the city? Are you proud to be an inhabitant of the city? Do you recommend living in the city to others? And, is life better in the city nowadays? Survey findings indicated that 68 per cent of the respondents are loyal to the city, whereby 23 per cent of them are defined as very loyal and regard themselves as ambassadors of the city. In addition, a telephone survey similar to the 1994 research was carried out (November 2006). In contrast to the previous survey, the results revealed that the three most meaningful associations of Holon were positive: 'parks', 'children' and 'activities' (see Table 2 and Figure 3). Compared to the other six cities in its metropolitan area, Holon is ranked fourth.

Figure 3.

Perceptual map of cities in the Metropolitan Area of Holon (2006)

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Table 2 - Major associations of Holon and other cities in the Metropolitan area (2006).

Full table

CONCLUSIONS

The case presented here, the branding of the city of Holon, is an example that a city's negative image can indeed be converted into a positive one. Such a process is not short term, but rather a meticulously planned, long-term process that includes five stages: Diagnosis, vision, image, assimilation and control. The process of diagnosing the current image must be undertaken in cooperation with the city inhabitants so as to recruit them and their support to the complex task. At this stage, the city's positive aspects must be identified and related to the inhabitants' true wishes with respect to their city. During the next stage, the vision of the branding process must be defined, specifying the process' objectives with respect to all interested stakeholders (local inhabitants and citizens of other cities). While designing the city image, a concept must be formulated that unifies the city's unique physical and human assets, the principal target audience of the city, the competing cities and the positive aspects, desires and vision. During the vision assimilation stage, primary, secondary and tertiary communication must be employed.

Finally, city marketers should bear in mind that the branding process of cities is one that requires control and continuous adaptations due to new internal (local) and external (global) trends that affect the city both directly and indirectly.

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