How a city brand strategy is set up and disclosed in the traditional and digital media: the identity, the image and the message

The fierce competition between cities has increased due to the globalization. Considering this, the importance of city branding practices, the process of turning the city and its values and culture into a brand, has become for crucial to increase awareness an attractiveness of the city. In order to understand how city branding practices are set up (identity) disclosed (message) and received (image), corporate communication theories can be utilised as a scope. (Kavaratzis, 2004; Rainisto, 2003 and Hudak, 2012). This study uses corporate communication theories to question the usage of media, traditional (print and online) and social media of two Dutch city branding organisation: Almere City Marketing and Rotterdam Partners. Media are analysed as a tool to communicate about the cities identity and influence the image of the audience. The research is divided into three parts in order to understand the underlying processes: the identities of the city, a content analysis of the media usage and finally an analysis of the perception the cities. The findings of this exploratory study show that cities' identities and images are not aligned. Secondly, established principles of corporate communication theories are not applied in both cases such as the consistency in the message, the stakeholder's attention, the environment and finally the media usage. This study shows that corporate communications are strongly recommended to be taken in consideration for city branding as it may influence positively the image and decrease its divergence with the identity for both of the cities.