If you’re following us, this is the third in a series of four on the future viability of local governments. We led off with some dire predictions based on long-term trends we see – it wasn’t a pretty picture. Based on feedback from that, we next jumped into a discussion of civic well-being as a potential mitigating force. Now we turn to branding your city. If you have the civic well-being angle covered, how do you communicate that? That’s where branding comes in.

What is a brand?

A brand is a living, breathing relationship that is forever changing between your stakeholders and the focus of that relationship: your civic brand, which is a clearly defined and identified entity with an associated promise of value, purpose and values. In other words, a brand is what “they,” your stakeholders, say it is – NOT what you say it is. A brand is the sum of all that you do and don’t do as experienced and interpreted by others. In your case, it is the shared experience of the place you are stewards of and the people who congregate there.