Place, Organization, Democracy: Three Strategies For Municipal Branding

We develop a typology for analysing branding processes in municipalities: a place, organizational and democracy branding strategy. Our main contribution is to expand the view of municipalities as places, taking the debate on the branding of cities, regions and municipalities in a more nuanced direction. Our findings show that the place branding perspective is insufficient for understanding branding efforts; in fact, organizational branding is the most prevalent strategy. However, democracy branding is also strongly present. Using logistic regression, we conclude that the place branding debate should be nuanced by what we know about municipal size, identity and perceived media influence.