Place branding brings together a range of existing specialisms, in particular those of brand management and development policy, to create a new discipline with equal emphasis on visionary strategy and hands-on implementation.1 Furthermore, Place branding ensures that the place gets due credit for its real strengths and positive behaviour, and that the place brand gains appropriate equity from the recognition,

which that behaviour deserves

Maheshwari, V

English

Leeds Beckett Repository 

119 
PLACE BRANDING AND THE‘LIVERPOOL’08’ BRAND CAMPAIGN 
IN ‘CITY OF LIVERPOOL’ 
VISHWAS MAHESHWARI, IAN VANDEWALLE, DAVID BAMBER -  
LIVERPOOL HOPE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOL 
1. Introduction 
Place branding brings together a range of existing specialisms, in 
particular those of brand management and development policy, to 
create a new discipline with equal emphasis on visionary strategy and 
hands-on implementation.1 Furthermore, Place branding ensures that 
the place gets due credit for its real strengths and positive behaviour, 
and that the place brand gains appropriate equity from the recognition, 
which that behaviour deserves.  
1.1. Background  
Arguably, the debate relating to place branding and its inception is 
extremely active and intriguing. Brands have been used as marks of 
identification at some time in almost all countries and civilisations. 
McNeill and McNeill (2003) believe that branding was developed as a 
result of “humans [being] drawn together in patterns of interaction and 
exchange, cooperation and competition since earliest times.”2 
Destination and place branding is considered to be a relatively new field 
of study.3 Blain et al (2005) believe that branding within the context of 
tourism destinations started to gain visibility in 1998 “with destination 
branding [as] the focal topic at that year’s Travel and Tourism Research 
Association’s Annual Conference.”4 
Places using events such as arts or sports led initiatives to regenerate 
and rebrand themselves has been well documented5, and include for 
example, the Football World Cup, Olympic Games, European Capital of 
Culture and American Capital of Culture. Mooney believes that “culture 
has become central to urban regeneration programmes throughout 
Europe”6, whilst Garcia states that “the principle of ‘arts-led’ 
regeneration was explored in US cities in the 1970s and consequently 
developed with a wider cultural remit, in European cities.”7  
                                   
1 Placebrands, 2006. 
2 McNeill and McNeill 2003:23. 
3 Hankinson 2001; Kavaratzis, 2004. 
4 Blain et al 2005:334. 
5 Rowe and McGuirk 1999; Garcia 2004. 
6 Mooney 2004:329. 
7 Garcia 2004:314. 
120 
However, whilst destination event branding has been well documented, 
Caldwell and Freire (2004) believe that there is a lack of empirical 
research in the field of place branding, and Anholt (2004) notes that 
there is little clarity or agreement about terminology or definitions in 
this discipline. 
2. Place as ‘Brands’ 
There are numerous definitions of brands in the literature8 and the 
consensus of opinion suggests that a brand is associated with a 
consistent group of characteristics, images, or emotions that consumers 
recall or experience when they think of a specific symbol, product, 
service, organization or location. A Brand does not suddenly emerge, 
but evolves through a developmental process that has a number of 
distinct phases9 from an unbranded commodity to a cultural brand icon. 
The process starts with brand recognition10 and occurs when consumers 
generally know brand qualities. If a brand has accumulated widespread 
positive sentiment among consumers, marketeers say that its owner has 
acquired brand equity - the ability to retain current customers and 
attract new ones.11 Consequently, over time, brands can create 
significant value for their holder.12  
A place brand strategy should determine the most realistic, most 
competitive and most compelling strategic vision for the city, region, or 
country, and ensures that this vision is supported, reinforced and 
enriched by every act of investment and communication between that 
place and the rest of the world.13 However, ‘Place branding’ is not the 
same as product or service branding, and whilst it is grounded in both 
corporate branding and general marketing theories, these have had to 
be adapted to suit the purpose.14 This is largely because place brands 
are multi-dimensional constructs. They lack a single ownership but 
instead have a multiplicity of stakeholder groups and influencers. These 
include, for instance: local residents, local authorities, businesses and 
commercial entities, Chambers of Commerce, public bodies, the media – 
and so on. At the same time the place brand has multiple consumers: 
this largely comprises the groups above, but in addition, there are 
business tourists, leisure tourists, commuters, inward investors, and 
                                   
8 Kotler and Keller 2006:274; Brassington and Pettitt 2006:301; de Chernatony 2006:13. 
9 de Chernatony 1993; Goodyear 1993. 
10 Keller 2003. 
11 NetMBA 2006. 
12 Kotler and Gertner 2002. 
13 Placebrands, 2006. 
14 Kavaratzis 2004. 
121 
event organisers15 as well as the through traffic (that takes with it, a 
particular brand perception). 
Without a single ownership to direct the brand, and with the disparate 
user groups who impose contrary demands, then there is no consistent 
message to underpin and unify a place brand. Nevertheless, according 
to Ward (1998), place branding, as a strategic marketing activity, has 
increased significantly over the last quarter century. Its application now 
extends beyond the traditional areas of inward investment and leisure 
tourism to include a wider role in attracting new residents, new 
employees and business tourists to a location. Place branding includes 
both short-term campaigns such as those associated with bids to host 
specific events – for example, Sidney’s successful bid to host the 
Olympic Games – as well as longer-term repositioning strategies as 
exemplified in the recent nomination of Liverpool as the ‘European 
Capital of Culture’ for 2008.  
Place branding not only applies to cities, regions and countries, but also 
applies lower down the spatial scale16, to places such as shopping 
destinations and leisure parks. It thus covers a wide area of activities 
and locations and involves a wide range of stakeholders from both the 
public and private sectors. As a consequence, the study of place 
branding also extends across a wide area of academic interest.17 
2.1. Difficulties in place branding campaigns 
There have been uncertainties and complexities observed in carrying out 
place branding programmes due to the limited public sector budgets, 
influencing raising awareness or creating differentiation through 
propagation of logos, symbols and strap-lines.18 Cities with larger 
budgets have however, succeeded in developing positive brand images 
linked, for example, to attributes such as heritage and history, the 
character of the local people, associations with famous people, ‘capital’ 
city status and international city status. In particular, the development 
of positive brand images such as these has led to the successful 
transformation of several post-industrial cities, such as New York and 
Glasgow, into vibrant leisure and business tourism destinations.19 
2.2. Liverpool’s approach to re-branding 
Liverpool’08 is a longitudinal brand campaign carried out over a five-
year period, in order to regenerate and re-brand the ‘City of Liverpool’ 
                                   
15 Aaker 1996. 
16 Ashworth and Voogt 1994. 
17 Hankinson 2001. 
18 Ibid. 
19 Ward 1998. 
122 
and create a lively and vibrant city for the future, long after 2008, its 
designated year of ‘European Capital of Culture’.20 According to the 
North-West Development Agency21 and the North England Inward 
Investment Agency22, Liverpool is a fast developing city. They suggest 
that Liverpool is one of Britain’s most vibrant, energetic and innovative 
cities and has been enjoying a remarkable economic renaissance in 
recent years as one of the nation’s fastest growing sub-regional 
economies. Moreover, policy makers have recognized the benefits of 
place branding that can attract inward investments for the destination 
economical progress in terms not only of job creation, but also capital, 
technology, production and management techniques.23 
However, the link between place and its impact on the local and regional 
economy has received little attention. Indeed, as noted by Jevons “the 
bottom line question that is often unasked is whether our understanding 
of what brands are, and what branding does, is much clearer as a result 
of all the research that has been published.”24 In the case of place 
brands, and particularly from other cities who have gained ‘European 
Capital of Culture’ status, there is a dearth of research and very little 
evidence that the place brand drives inward investment or promotes the 
local (or regional) economy.25  
3. Analysing Place Brands 
A wide range of analytical methods have been applied to place branding, 
for example, the use of case studies26, convergent interviewing 
techniques27, focus groups28, open-ended questions and Likert scale 
questionnaires29 as well as the Brands Box method of de Chernatony 
and McWilliam (1989).30 However, the real issue is what is actually 
being measured and how this reflects that holistic nature and complexity 
of a place brand. 
The authors propose to survey the various place brand creators and 
influencers, together with the different brand user groups which will be 
set against both current and historic indicators of economic 
performance. Focus groups and interviews with the various stakeholders 
will provide information relating to perceptions of the Liverpool Brand 
                                   
20 Liverpool08 2006. 
21 NWDA 2006. 
22 North England 2006. 
23 Audrey et. al 2003. 
24 Jevons 2005:35. 
25 The Mersey Economic Review 2006. 
26 Prideaux and Cooper 2002. 
27 Hanlan and Kelly 2005. 
28 Curtis 2000. 
29 O’Leary and Deegan 2002. 
30 See for instance Clarke 2000; Hankinson 2001, 2004; Caldwell and Freire 2004. 
123 
and how this might influence and impact on the economy over time. 
Questions will focus on company strategy, production factors, ancillary 
trades and industrial clusters, place-specific incentives as well as local 
and regional product/service demand. Other components such as those 
proposed by Anholt (2005) and modified by de Chernatony (2006), for 
instance, tourism, culture & heritage, people, exports and immigration 
and governance may also be influencing factors and will be accounted 
for within this research.  
The research will be categorized into primary and secondary influencing 
economic indicators as shown in figure 1 below: 
Secondary Economic Indicators 
Demand 
Industrial 
Clusters 
Ancillary 
Trades 
Company 
Strategies 
Place 
Specific 
Incentives 
Product 
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ 
Economic Pull of Place Brand 
↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ 
Imports 
Inward 
Investment Tourism 
Culture & 
Heritage People 
Local 
Governance 
Primary Economic Indicators 
4. Anticipated Outcomes 
This research will fill a gap in our current understanding of the influence 
of place branding on the economic performance of that city and its 
region. It will attempt to identify those particular elements within the 
cocktail of factors that are critical for enhancing the strength of the 
place. This might would be useful to the brand developers for creating 
strong and reliable brands which would have a long-term future. 
 
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Place branding and the Liverpool ’08 brand campaign in 'City of Liverpool'

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