The Influence of Marathon Races on Building a City's Brand and Cultural Identity

In today's fierce urban competition, shaping city brand culture has become one of the important ways to enhance the city's soft power. In this background, marathon events, as a globally popular urban cultural activity, have become an important platform for city brand building with their strong economic benefits, media communication power and cultural influence. This study mainly analyzes how marathon races can achieve in-depth construction of city brands from three aspects: event communication, cultural interaction and universal participation. It also uses literature analysis to search and read relevant materials and documents. At present, academic research on marathon events focuses more on the economic and tourism effects, but there is still a gap in the deeper impact on urban cultural identity and brand communication. Therefore, based on the city brand theory and social identity theory, this paper systematically sorts out the communication mechanism, cultural interaction path and social identity effect of marathon events in affecting the shaping of city brand culture, providing theoretical reference and practical inspiration for city brand shaping.