3. - Amsterdam City Branding

Cities, Vol. 24, No. 1, p. 16–25, 2007

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd.

*CorrespoFaculty ofNetherlanm.kavarat

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doi:10.1016/j.cities.2006.08.007

Partners in coffeeshops, canals andcommerce: Marketing the cityof AmsterdamMihalis Kavaratzis a,* and G.J. Ashworth b

a Urban and Regional Studies Institute, University of Groningen, The Netherlandsb Department of Planning, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Received 5 April 2006; received in revised form 8 August 2006; accepted for publication 10 August 2006

Available online 4 October 2006

The position of Amsterdam as an international centre of business, culture and tourism hasrecently been threatened by increasingly fierce inter-urban competition. The desire to improveAmsterdam’s attractiveness to local and international audiences, and to retune the city’s inter-national image, has led to a fundamental strategic marketing exercise involving a far-reachingexamination of stakeholders, goals and competitive positioning. This article discusses this newapproach towards marketing in the city, critically evaluating the marketing effort of Amster-dam in an attempt to further understanding of the application of marketing to cities. The arti-cle includes an assessment of the reasoning behind the various actions and a comparison withtheoretical suggestions.� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: City marketing, city branding, place marketing, Amsterdam

1 The qualitative approach and the interviews in particular wereconsidered the only appropriate methodology for the researchbecause first, it allowed respondents to identify significant issues

Introduction

City marketing has been employed in most cases as aresponse to certain economic, political and socialchanges in cities and their operational environment(Ashworth and Voogd, 1990). Its use has been accel-erated in an attempt by cities to position themselvesstrongly in the fierce competitive arena for finite andincreasingly mobile resources, whether investmentcapital, relocation of companies, visitors and resi-dents. The concept and methods of branding are alsoemployed by cities as an instrument of place market-ing in order to associate the place with wider desir-able qualities in the perceptions held by relevanttarget audiences (Kavaratzis and Ashworth, 2005).

This article describes the process followed in thecity of Amsterdam to create and implement the ci-ty’s new marketing strategy, based on a series of ex-pert-interviews undertaken in the city. The choice ofrespondents was based on the conceptualisation of

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nding author. Present address: University of Groningen,Spatial Sciences, P.O. Box 800, 9700AV, Groningen, The

ds. Tel.: +31 503638289; fax: +31 503633901. E-mails:[email protected], [email protected].

city marketing as an ‘action net’, because ‘‘. . . citymanagement consists of many collective and inter-connected actions, which can be conceptualised asan action net and engage many and varied organisa-tions. . .’’ (Czarniawska, 2002, 4). The effort was toidentify the organisations involved in marketingwith additional importance attributed to the oneswith coordinating roles.1 A second part of the re-search involved the examination of various policydocuments published by the authorities in Amster-dam. The various projects and undertakings in thecity are critically evaluated and contrasted to thetheory of city marketing and city branding, in orderto extract valuable lessons from the experience ofAmsterdam.

and ideas themselves and attribute importance appropriately,secondly, it gave the researcher the opportunity to deal successfullywith different respondents in different organizations and, thirdly, itcatered for necessary explanations and clarifications in a topic that,admittedly, suffers from a lack of clear and unanimous definitionsof its components.

mailto:&!emailxl1;[email protected], &!emailxl2;

mailto:[email protected]

Partners in coffeeshops, canals and commerce: Marketing the city of Amsterdam: M Kavaratzis and G J Ashworth

City marketing is a complex endeavour that de-mands a wide view on its goals, effects and generalapproach. This article adopts a view clearly orientedtowards city branding, which is suggested as aneffective strategy in order to create the commonground necessary for the whole marketing endeav-our. Branding is a process by which attempts aremade to influence how consumers interpret and de-velop their own sense of what a brand is (Chandlerand Owen, 2002). Furthermore, ‘‘. . . looked at interms of effects rather than intent, marketing com-prises everything which can potentially communi-cate about a brand and which can in some way becontrolled by the brand owner or its agencies’’(Chandler and Owen, 2002, 45). Anholt (2006)makes the key observation that ‘‘. . . a brand is nota message, but the context in which messages are re-ceived’’ (2006:22), which means that branding is bestunderstood as an attempt to influence the context inwhich messages are communicated. Kavaratzis(2004) suggests a framework (Figure 1) which de-scribes the communication of the place brandthrough the appropriate treatment of different vari-ables with both functional and symbolic meaningin two distinct types of controlled communication.In the light of this simple framework, we now turnto the description and evaluation of marketingAmsterdam.

Landscape Strategies • Urban design • Architecture • Public Spaces • Public Art

Organisational Structure • Community networks • PPPs • Citizens’ participation

Primary Comm

Advertising, PR, Graphic D

City’s Bra

Secondary Comm

Figure 1 Communication of the city’s brand. Source: Kavaratz

Why market Amsterdam?

Amsterdam is a city with a long trade tradition and astrong reputation for culture and innovation. How-ever, the position of Amsterdam as a major nationaland international cultural centre has for some timebeen threatened by a sharpening of competitionfrom other cities both within and outside The Neth-erlands. Research undertaken by the city’s organisa-tions indicates that Amsterdam’s position isdropping in various international rankings, forexample as a city of conferences (City of Amster-dam, 2004) and while over the past decades Amster-dam has scored well as a business location,competition is also rising in this area.

As a tourism destination, the city has been underthreat by several European cities. The image ofAmsterdam as a tourism destination is based ontwo major themes (Ashworth and Tunbridge,1990). The first is dominated by the urban designof the early modern period. It is an image of Ver-meer townscapes composed of tightly packed ca-nal-side buildings; a wealthy ‘Golden Age’ tradingcity. The second is the current popular image ofthe city which was formed in the late 60s and isbased upon a youth culture of sexual liberalismand narcotic indulgence; a radical hippie-Mecca.The problem with this composite image was its verysuccess at becoming established and recognisedwhich has made change difficult and has largely fos-

Behaviour • Vision for the city • Quality of Services • Events• Financial incentives

Infrastructure • Accessibility• Cultural Facilities • Tourism Facilities

unication

esign, Slogans etc

nd

unication

is (2004).

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silised Amsterdam within a changing world, a condi-tion evident by the 1970s as Amsterdam’s tourismbecame ever more associated with cheap drink, com-mercial sex and available drugs.

The city’s position might have dropped in variousrankings but Amsterdam remains a significant playerin international competition. In the European CitiesMonitor of 2005 for instance, Amsterdam is ranked6th best city to locate a business, but takes onlythe 18th place in the list of cities that do the mostto improve themselves (European Cities Monitor,2005). Although the accuracy of such rankings couldbe doubted and the importance attributed to themby city residents or tourists has not been examined,the fact is that officials in most cities, includingclearly Amsterdam, take them very seriously (Ash-worth and Voogd, 1990).

Widespread in the city is the notion that increas-ing competition among European cities has requiredever more emphasis to be placed on each city’sstrengths in order to attract desired visitors and res-idents. It should be remembered that Amsterdamhas not undisputed primacy within The Netherlandsbut faces strong competition from The Hague, thede facto political centre, Rotterdam, which poses astrong commercial challenge and even smaller citieswhich compete with a distinctive historical, culturalor educational image. The general belief is that amore efficient use of marketing will lead to an in-crease of the number of visitors and the use of prod-ucts and services in Amsterdam. The major goalsstated are to attract more attention to the city frominternational audiences and maintain or increase theposition of the city in various international rankings(City of Amsterdam, 2004).

The goal of improving Amsterdam’s position inthese rankings is a clear example of a common viewwhich looks at city marketing as a response toincreasing interurban competition (e.g. Kotleret al., 1999; Berg and Braun, 1999). Cox (1995)examines a distinction between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’competition. As Jessop (1998, p. 79) summarises,‘‘. . .whereas strong competition refers to potentiallypositive-sum attempts to improve the overall (struc-tural) competitiveness of a locality through innova-tion, weak competition refers to essentially zero-sum attempts to secure the reallocation of existingresources at the expense of other localities’’. Weakcompetition is socially disembedding, whereasstrong competition involves the territorialisation ofeconomic activity (Cox, 1995). Weaker forms ofcompetition are usually more concerned with modi-fications in formal and substantive regulatory, facili-tative or supportive measures aimed at capturingmobile investment as well as simple image-buildingmeasures with the same purpose (Jessop, 1998).The same argument can be raised for city marketing,which is a major feature of the entrepreneurial city(Hall and Hubbard, 1998) and again for city brand-ing, which is not about designing logos and devising

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slogans, but needs to have deep routes in the city’sidentity and local circumstances. This is meant tohighlight the necessity of various goals set for citybranding (Mommaas, 2002) and to reiterate that anintrinsic and easily misunderstood characteristic ofbrands is that they refer to mental associations ofdiffering nature and level of consciousness.

However, facing increased competition is not theonly motive for Amsterdam’s marketing venture.Another motive is the appreciation that one of themain elements of the city’s international image asso-ciated with the liberal attitude towards soft drugsand prostitution is now seen as inappropriate, as itovershadows other more desirable aspects of the ci-ty’s aspirations. Indeed the idea is that Amsterdamshould be attracting more types of visitors and notjust young tourists arriving in hoards to legallysmoke marihuana in the many coffeeshops and visitthe famous windows of the Red-Light-District. Thisis a clear example of city marketing being used tochange the image of cities and this is the reasonfor the acceleration of the use of city branding; theincreasingly popular concept of re-imaging or re-branding cities.

A final, equally important, motive is the wide-spread view that the city can only gain from a sys-tematic and structured use of city marketing; thatcity marketing is a powerful tool in the hands of citymanagement and, if used appropriately, it can pro-mote all aspects of urban development. As onemember of the city’s council put it, ‘‘city marketingis about loving your city and showing to other peo-ple why you love it’’. This motive, explicitly demon-strates the implementation of city marketing as aplace management philosophy (Kavaratzis and Ash-worth, 2005). In this case city marketing is not calledupon as a crisis-solving mechanism to provide imme-diate solutions to urgent problems. It is used as aproactive strategy, as a crisis-prevention mechanismand for it to be effective it needs long term orienta-tion and consistency. Thankfully, this motive is ahopeful sign that Amsterdam might avoid the com-mon short-sighted view of weak competition.

Research and vision development

The importance of research and auditing as the firststep of the marketing process has been highlightedin all city marketing literature (e.g. Ashworth andVoogd, 1990; Kotler et al., 1999). Knowledge ofexisting demand, existing images and associationsand the problems which city marketing is settingout to solve or mitigate is necessary and, for the cityof Amsterdam, signified in the extensive effort de-scribed in this section.

The first step in the new approach of marketingAmsterdam was a benchmark study that comparedthe practice of city marketing in four cities (Barce-lona, Berlin, Dublin, Rotterdam) undertaken by acommunications agency (Gemeente Amsterdam,


2003). The choice of the specific cities was based onthe agency’s estimation of those cities as major com-petitors of Amsterdam; an estimation that, althoughnot explicitly explained, is obviously based on the re-cent improvement of the position of the three for-eign cities in relevant rankings and the traditionalDutch ‘rivalry’ between Amsterdam and Rotterdam.The general conclusion of this study was thatAmsterdam needed to intensify its marketing ef-forts. More specifically it was shown that Amster-dam had not pointed out its advantages as clearlyas the rest of the cities, it had not done enough toshowcase improvements in the city to internationalaudiences and that it did not emphatically opt forkey values that would capture the city’s essence(Gemeente Amsterdam, 2003). Furthermore, the re-search identified a lack of responsibility for theAmsterdam brand, something upon which other cit-ies were seen to place more significance. The mostimportant lessons learnt by Amsterdam from thisstudy were that there is a need to chose specific sec-tors and prioritise actions, the chosen profile must fitthe reality of the city, roles allocated to the publicand private sector must be balanced and that brand-ing can be a powerful tool (Gemeente Amsterdam,2003). Although these lessons might seem trite, thebenchmark study was valuable for officials in

Figure 2 The dimensions of Amsterdam, Source: City of Ams

Amsterdam, as it gave a clearer idea of how othercities apply marketing. Based on this analysis thecity decided to proceed with developing a main vi-sion for its future, the creation of a new brand andthe establishment of a public/private platform thatwould develop and manage them.

A consultancy took over the task of suggestingspecific methods, goals and processes for the mar-keting effort and proposing an appropriate andeffective organizational structure. Numerous inter-views were conducted with selected people with asignificant role in the city, aiming to identify therespondents’ view on the unique distinguishing ele-ments of Amsterdam so as to establish the main val-ues on which to base the marketing and brandingeffort. The results were combined with othersources, namely specialist literature on city market-ing and statements on Amsterdam from varioussources, including policy documents and travelguides (City of Amsterdam, 2003).

Based on the analysis of the data collected, theydeduced a selection of 16 dimensions of the city(Figure 2), which were considered to adequately rep-resent the versatility of Amsterdam and what itmeans for its audiences (City of Amsterdam,2003). The selection of these dimensions should betreated with caution for two reasons. First, all cities

terdam 2003, pp. 53–54.

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Table 1 Target groups of marketing Amsterdam

Business decision makers (of international enterprises with theirhead offices in the Amsterdam area)Logistics service providersCreative sector (design companies, media, content producers, ICT,fashion, usually existing smaller enterprises)Knowledge workers (talented, young, creative people and scientistswho feel attracted to the knowledge and business climate in thecity and to the quality of life)Active city dwellers (residents attracted by the atmosphere of big-city Amsterdam)International visitors (foreign tourists and congress participantswho feel attracted to the facilities of Amsterdam andsurroundings)Current Inhabitants of Amsterdam and surroundings asambassadors of the city

Source: City of Amsterdam (2004, pp. 21–22).


are obviously versatile and diverse and most of thechosen dimensions are by no means unique toAmsterdam. Second, the process of deciding onthe specific dimensions shows clear signs of a top-down approach.

Aware of these problems, the consultancy, in anattempt to deal with the issue in a more bottom-upway, extended their research on residents of the cityusing questionnaires, in which the respondents hadto attribute points assessing how the city performedaccording to them in the 16 dimensions. Afterwards,they established a picture of priorities and opportu-nities for the current image and for what the city isaiming at, representing the 16 dimensions in theform of a spider’s-web (Figure 2). This web provideda guide as to what the city needs to work on. It be-came clear, for example, that living conditions inthe city (Liveable City–Residential City) need con-siderable improvement or that policies of culturalproduction need refocusing as the evaluation ofthe Artistic City and City of Events show. It also be-came clear that the strong association of the citywith Sex and Drugs is not desirable.

Based on the presentation of the spider’s-web, andin an attempt to gain clearer focus for later activities,they proceeded to choose six of the above dimen-sions of Amsterdam as ‘priority dimensions’. Thetruth is that prioritising dimensions can, almost bydefinition, not be faultless and it continues to showa top-down mentality, as much as the people respon-sible for this selection justify it by the research on theresidents. These ‘priority dimensions’ are: City ofculture, City of canals, City of meetings, City ofknowledge, Business city and Residential city. Thefirst three are regarded as ‘strong’ in that they wererecognised by respondents as significant assets (de-spite the fact that three of the dimensions obviouslyassociated with a city of culture, namely artistic city,city of events and city of knowledge, need strongerefforts), while the second three are relatively ‘weak’being not recognised and thus needing attention. Theexplicit goal of the whole marketing effort is to main-tain the city’s strong position in the first three andstrengthen the position of Amsterdam in the rest.

Furthermore, Amsterdam chose to distinguish it-self through the combination of three core values,namely creativity, innovation and the spirit of com-merce on which the brand of the city should bebased. It is a general belief that these values expressthe ‘real’ meaning of the city and that these havebeen the city’s strengths for centuries. Of course, itremains unclear in what way these values are thecore values of the city; what makes Amsterdammore creative than any other city, for instance? Itis also doubtful if, in general, a city can be ade-quately represented by three values or that a city’sexcellence can be based on such values. However,the fact is that in city marketing there is indeed aneed to choose certain characteristics to work withand this choice inevitably involves rejections. The

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officials in Amsterdam followed their own way tomake the necessary selections and, in a matter ascomplex as the characteristics of a city, any selectionwould be vulnerable to criticism.

This early stage of the marketing process inAmsterdam contains decisions that are dubious.The choice of the 16 dimensions of the city and theirtransformation first into three core values and then,as will be discussed later, into one slogan is suspi-cious. Officials in the city seem to accept that thesesteps were smooth and valid, but there is no evi-dence for this. The selection of the 16 dimensionsthat are thought to express all aspects of the city isbased on the previous research but, as valid as thisresearch has been, it is not clear exactly whosechoice these dimensions are. One could easily arguefor the inclusion of others or against some chosenones or attribute less importance to others. This isalso (or especially) the case for the six dimensionsthat achieved a ‘priority’ status. Furthermore, theexact way of deducing the three core values from apossible list of many more values that could alsobe used, is not clear and the final core values seemto have been chosen by the consultancy, which doesnot mean that they are necessarily wrong or neces-sarily right.

A very important point to be raised at this point isthe fact that the choices of the dimensions and val-ues seem to have gained the support of all partici-pants in marketing Amsterdam. Although it cannotbe appreciated if the support comes from a genuineagreement or a convenient silence, this supportmight prove to be the crucial factor in the effective-ness of the whole effort.

Target groups

Seven primary target groups for the city marketing ofAmsterdam were selected (Table 1). There are ques-tions raised about this selection. The popularity, forinstance, of the creative industries, as well as their ex-act nature, has not gone without certain wondering(e.g. Hall, 2000). What exactly is the big-city atmo-


sphere that Amsterdam can offer, considering that itis not a big city by international standards, and whatdo ‘active’ residents seek to do? What is the knowl-edge climate and how does Amsterdam competewithin and outside The Netherlands as a knowledgecentre? There is an obvious effort to be all-inclusive;an effort that might lead to problems of ill-definedor over-ambitious target groups, and therefore a lackof precision and even confusion in the actions andmessages addressed to them.

It should be pointed out that city marketing doeshave the intrinsic characteristic that it is very diffi-cult to distinguish between the various groups of cityusers. Unlike commercial companies, a city is not ina position to exclude groups of users, for reasons ofsocial justice, political balance or future security andsustainability. There is, though, a comforting agree-ment that the first desired result of Amsterdam’smarketing effort and a necessary condition for thenext phases is to make its residents believe in thecore values of the city, ‘feel’ the city’s brand andbe proud of their city.

Organising for marketing

According to the literature (e.g. Ashworth andVoogd, 1990; Berg and Braun, 1999), organisingfor city marketing is a major consideration. Organi-sational measures are not only a significant compo-nent of the city marketing mix but are alsoimportant elements of the development of a city’sbrand (Kavaratzis, 2004).

The main coordinator of the marketing effort ofAmsterdam is a newly established Public–PrivatePartnership called Amsterdam Partners (seeTable 2).

The organization of Marketing Amsterdam couldbe briefly summarized as follows. There are twosources of funding and responsibility, the ACCU(an internal council of coordination) which coordi-nates the activities undertaken by the variousdepartments of the municipality and AmsterdamPartners which is responsible for securing and man-aging funds from the private parties. Some projectsare undertaken by the Municipality, other projectsby the private sector and some are common. Final

Table 2 Partners in Amsterdam partners

Seven departments of the municipality (e.g. Department ofCommunication, Department of Economic Affairs, etc.)Amsterdam area (eight neighbouring municipalities and theProvince of North Holland)The Business Community (the regional Chamber of Commerce andseveral private companies from large multinationals to smalllocal companies)Covenant partners (eight organisations that were already involvedin marketing the city and have an active role in supporting andadvising on strategies and practical issues)

Source: City of Amsterdam (2004, p. 31).

responsibility for all projects and the wider strategylies with Amsterdam Partners.

The importance of coordination in city marketingis clear, especially when examining the everydayactivities of city managers (Czarniawska, 2002).The majority of people involved in the marketing ef-fort of Amsterdam, and all the written reports on it,attribute critical importance to the cooperation be-tween involved parties and largely describe city mar-keting as a coordinating activity. City marketing, ofcourse, may integrate different policy areas and in-clude measures to promote inter-organisationalcooperation, but it is not a synonym for coordination.

Two different processes take place on a day today level. First, one of the municipality’s depart-ments or another organisation approach the maincoordinators with the suggestion of a project thatpresents advantages for the whole marketing effortor needs certain support. Then the advantages areevaluated before a decision is reached to includethe specific project in the wider strategy or not.Alternatively, the coordinators identify certain po-tential in a current project or they think of a projectthat would complement existing ones and they sug-gest relevant actions. The main criteria for inclusionare the degree to which the activities in hand ad-dress the selected target groups and their suitabilityfor promoting the chosen core values of the city andfostering the pre-set general goals.

The organisational structure the city has chosen isone of the strongest points of the whole marketingeffort. A significant advantage in marketing Amster-dam is that there is a wide consensus and support onthe strategy and the organisation. There is also awide agreement that city marketing and brandingare long-term activities, which need time to establishroutes within the city and then be able to communi-cate to the outside world. Under these conditionsthe achievement of consistency seems viable.

Marketing implementation

After Amsterdam Partners was set up and the mainstrategy was decided upon, the decision was made toproceed with six main city marketing projects:

Cultural events

Cultural events and festivals play a very importantrole in marketing Amsterdam, stemming obviouslyfrom the tradition of the city as a cultural centre.This is exemplified, for instance, in the fact thatEvents and Festivals Manager is one the three mainpositions within Amsterdam Partners or the effortcity officials put into gaining the organisation ofthe 2005 Bollywood Oscars. Events are consideredthe strongest tool of marketing and ideal carriersto strengthen Amsterdam’s profile, because theyare ‘‘big moments of visibility’’, where the city canattract significant international attention at one

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time. Organising events around theme-years is afavourite tactic, with 2005 the ‘Year of Water’ and2006 the ‘Year of Rembrandt’.

The problem with the approach towards events inAmsterdam is that it is still product-oriented (Dah-les, 1998). For the people responsible, the interestingand useful aspect of culture is, understandably, theconsumption of cultural goods. In order to under-stand this consumption, however, it is necessary tolook beyond the range of cultural events the city isor can be offering and into the experience of theconsumers of such events, whether local residentsor foreign tourists. The objective of cultural eventsand festivals should not just be to attract attention,regardless of the type of attention, but to createand strengthen associations with specific qualities.Although there is certain mention of events de-signed to promote understanding of the varioussub-cultures that exist in Amsterdam, events areused in a rather unselective manner.

Hospitality

This project aims to make the city more hospitableto visitors (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2005). The taskis to identify where and how visitors feel that the cityis hospitable or not and determine which actions andmeasures can be taken to make visitors feel that theyare welcome. The project is organized around fourgroups of activities (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2005):(a) The Red Carpet: this part of the project strivesto make information to visitors widely accessible inand around the city. It also strives to stimulateattractive and recognizable routes to all interestingplaces in the city, while attempting to make the vis-itors feel well-treated, (b) Cooperation: Hospitalityis seen as a collective matter and Amsterdam strivesfor the cooperation of many parties and partners andespecially for communal input through workshopsand discussions with interested actors and consulta-tions with local entrepreneurs. Training of groupsof people highly influential for the image of the city,like taxi drivers, is also considered, (c) Communica-tion: the belief is that hospitality should be visible toeveryone; therefore actions will be taken in order togain more publicity in local media, but also to getnew ideas and suggestions from local people, (d)Milestones: this part of the project concerns theuse of various existing events and activities thatare seen as opportunities for common action to-wards the goals of the hospitality project, in thatthey create a momentum for wider communalparticipation.

The Hospitality project as part of the city’s mar-keting effort is indeed interesting and could promisesignificant potential, in that it does begin with theright question, namely where and how do the usersof the city feel the city’s brand and what can be doneto strengthen this feeling? The mentality shown indealing with this question is indeed a sign of hope

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as it approaches the city from the point of view ofthe users. It is, however, doubtful if the project willmanage to provide the right answers, as it seems toconcentrate on issues and actions that should be con-fined to a secondary role. Adequate information, forinstance, provided to the visitors through street signsetc., might play a role in the visitor’s experience ofthe city, but it is definitely not the main problemof the image of Amsterdam as a tourist destination.The intention of using the milestone events as gener-ators of communal input, surely does not qualify as asystematic and structured approach. While in thecity the belief is that the hospitality project concernswhat in marketing terms is called product develop-ment, in essence the project is a collection of promo-tional activities with no deeper route in thecollective life in the city. On the other hand, the pro-ject is worth taking further, especially by redirectingit towards the essential problems of Amsterdam’simage.

International press policy – new internet portal

Previous policies to attract international press wereconsidered inadequate and passive. The aim of theseprojects is for the city itself to initiate press atten-tion, to upgrade the content of the information of-fered and to create one contact point and advicecentre for international journalists. The website ofthe city has been upgraded, so that it is easier to findin one site all the information visitors and potentialvisitors need. In accordance with most recent theo-retical suggestions (e.g. Urban, 2002), presence inthe internet is considered a major tool of developingthe city’s image and a strong means of communica-tion and experience of the city. Part of the portal willbe a section addressed to companies, in cooperationwith the Amsterdam Foreign Investment Office,which strives to provide a single contact point tohelp companies establish and maintain operationsin the Amsterdam area.

The ‘pearl’ projects

Some of the ongoing infrastructure or other regularprojects, for example the Zuidas building project(www.zuidas.nl) and the Uitmarkt festival (www.uit-markt.nl), were selected to be directly linked withthe city’s marketing in an effort to take full advan-tage of the strong effect that these projects haveon the city’s image. The selection means that theseprojects will have priority in the policy of theresponsible departments, they will be communicatedto interested parties in accordance with the city’sbrand communication and they will have priorityin the various communication platforms. This is aninteresting point that considers the necessary linkbetween the city’s marketing strategy and the regu-lar policy programme of the city’s authorities. Thisintegration of city marketing into the normal policy

http://www.iamsterdam.com

http://www.uitmarkt.nl

http://www.uitmarkt.nl


and vice versa is indeed on the right lines for moreeffective city marketing.

The branding campaign

The project that completes the main city marketingactivities in Amsterdam is the development of anew branding campaign, launched in September2004. The main idea behind the campaign is thatover recent years Amsterdam has had too manybrand carriers, for example ‘Amsterdam Has It’,‘Small City, Big Business’ and ‘Cool City’. Thenew approach is that branding needs continuity, slo-gans need time to be recognized and become effec-tive. Past slogans were not thought to provide an‘umbrella’ for Amsterdam’s key values and benefits;they tended, instead, to cover a single dimension orfocus on a single target group, something that wasdeemed a wrong approach. It was also consideredthat the Amsterdam brand has been badly managedwith no agreement on brand usage and uniformity ofstyle. A ‘tangible’ new positioning both for the cityand the region was perceived as necessary, a newbrand that would typify the city’s benefits and values(City of Amsterdam, 2004).

An agency was chosen to develop a new logo forthe city and to suggest and develop a branding cam-paign. In the new approach, ‘‘Amsterdam Partnershas opted for a slogan that will serve as an umbrellain both a practical and intrinsic sense, will beversatile without being implicit and will stand forAmsterdam’s main benefits and values’’ (City ofAmsterdam, 2004, p. 45). They did not want tochoose one or two dimensions and thereby excludeothers. Amsterdam’s strengths are thought to lie inthe combination of associations, the versatile cityand the effort was to profile the entire range ofdimensions as strongly as possible. Doubtful as it isthat this is even possible, the city has chosen ‘Iamsterdam’ (Figure 3) as the new slogan and it willbe the ‘flag’ on city marketing plans. It will be oneof the instruments used to establish Amsterdam’sname in the world; it is the ‘‘motto that creates thebrand for the city and the people of Amsterdam’’(www.iamsterdam.com). The choice of the specificslogan was based on the assessment that it is clear,short and powerful. ‘I amsterdam’ is considered easyto remember and with great potential for people toidentify with it. All the above qualities are of coursesubject to doubt, especially as the slogan relies soheavily on a linguistic association in a language for-eign to the city’s residents.

The goal is for many organisations, companies andevents to be able to benefit from the new brand,

Figure 3 The new logo Source: http://www.iamsterdam.com.

however not in an unrestricted manner. Brand usageis coordinated under the supervision of AmsterdamPartners. Especially in the beginning, when thebrand is still vulnerable, Amsterdam Partners iscarefully considering how it is used and by whom.A striking example is the request of the municipal-ity’s tax department to use the new slogan in all theircommunication with tax-payers; a request that wasrejected in an effort not to associate the slogan withanything that might have a negative effect on itsaudiences. The city is hoping to gain significant ben-efits from the new brand. According to their expec-tations, investing in Amsterdam’s brand mustproduce results in the areas of income, visitornumbers, investments and market position in theworld.

City branding is an approach that centres aroundthe conceptualization of the city as a brand; and abrand is a ‘‘multidimensional construct, consistingof functional, emotional, relational and strategic ele-ments that collectively generate a unique set of asso-ciations in the public mind’’ (Aaker, 1996, p. 68).This construct is what should provide guidance forall marketing efforts, in order to achieve consistencyin the messages sent and in such a way that the ‘sto-ries’ told about the city by the brand are built in thecity (Kavaratzis, 2004). There is no evidence inAmsterdam that the brand provides such guidance,a problem that, in our view, arises from the inabilityof the slogan to convey the chosen core values of thecity, which is discussed below. As Hankinson (2004)suggests, the brand lies at the centre of marketingactivities and the focus of branding activities extends‘‘beyond communications to include behaviour; a fo-cus of considerable relevance to place branding’’(Hankinson, 2004, p. 111).

Branding in Amsterdam is used as another promo-tional tool, something exemplified in the dispropor-tionate significance attributed to the merchandisingthat bears the logo and is sold in various locationsin the city. Furthermore, there is a confusion ofthe terms image, brand and logo. As to the firsttwo it might not come as a surprise, considering thatthis confusion extends to the literature of city mar-keting. However, it is certain that the brand shouldnot be confused with the logo. An evident distinc-tion in the marketing and branding effort in the cityof Amsterdam is between the content of policies,projects and actions and the ‘visibility of the brand’.This distinction in itself leads to the confusion of thebrand and the logo chosen to ‘carry’ the brand. Thecity brand should not be distinguished from the con-tent of the policies just as the product brand cannotbe distinguished from the products (Hankinson,2004). There is, however, evidence among the cityofficials of a tendency towards a better understand-ing, expressed in the idea that the ‘visibility of thebrand’ has to do with communicating the characterand content of the actions taken and should not beconsidered a separate goal.

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Concerning the slogan itself, one can appreciatethe effort not to opt for a slogan of the commontype: ‘‘the city of. . .’’ which would only exclude audi-ences and possibilities. It is, however, important toask how does the slogan address all the selected tar-get groups? What is also not clear is the nature ofthe connection of the slogan with the chosen prioritydimensions or the core values. The way the sloganexpresses the values of creativity, innovation or spir-it of commerce is not evident. The selection of thespecific slogan seems more like gambling on an ideathat was thought catchy, especially because it resem-bles the ‘I ' New York’ slogan that officials inAmsterdam so much admire. A positive aspect ofthe ‘I amsterdam’ slogan is that it seems to havebeen developed having in mind the residents andthe existing base of the city. Only the existing resi-dents could arguably feel that they ‘are’ Amsterdamand this could be very important for the whole mar-keting effort. The extent to which people will iden-tify with it remains to be seen over time.2

Conclusions

This article has presented the new approach towardscity marketing that was adopted in the city ofAmsterdam. It identified the various stages followedas the city formulated its marketing strategy aimingto evaluate critically its marketing effort, in an at-tempt to further understanding of marketing appli-cation in cities and to assist in bridging the gapbetween the theory and practice of city marketing.To that aim, the description of the various actionsundertaken by the city included an assessment oftheir reasoning and a comparison with theoreticalsuggestions.

It is clear that Amsterdam has avoided two com-mon but serious pitfalls of city marketing. First, theydid not start and end all marketing efforts with anadvertising campaign. Second, they have chosen astrategy that addresses, or intends to address, theneeds not only of the tourism sector, but a widerbase of economic activities and target groups. It isapparent that city marketing in Amsterdam hasnow reached a stage of more refined implementa-tion, in comparison with the past and shows signsof a demand-oriented approach, which is, of course,one of the major characteristics of marketing as a

2 A monitoring model is being created, so that in the future thecontribution of all city marketing activities can be measured andmeasurable objectives were linked to the seven target groups (for adescription of these see City of Amsterdam, 2004, p. 24). The abovementioned spider’s-web will be updated every four years, in orderto track changes in familiarity and preferences for characteristics ofthe city (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2004). The municipality’s depart-ment for Research and Statistics will be undertaking regularresearch on the results of city marketing and the brandingcampaign and changes of the position of Amsterdam in relevantinternational lists compared to its most important competitors will,of course, be followed.

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city-management philosophy. This new approachhas managed to gain agreement and consensusfrom many parties and cooperation is carefullyencouraged.

Of course in a subject as complex as city market-ing and in a city as varied as Amsterdam, it would beimpossible not to find negative aspects of the mar-keting effort. The main criticisms that are high-lighted in this article revolve around three majorpoints. First, the selection of 16 dimensions thoughtto represent the city and their translation first intosix priority dimensions, then to three core valuesand, finally, to one slogan is unclear and demandsa more thorough examination. Second, the selectionof target groups is rather vague and might lead todifficulties of refining and targeting messages. Third,the role assigned to city branding is not exploiting itsfull potential, but it is used solely as a promotionaltool.

There is perhaps a question arising from thesepoints of criticism. Could Amsterdam have chosena better strategy or a more refined implementation?This is related to the wider question of how to eval-uate the efficacy of city marketing and branding ef-forts? One way is through various rankings – someof which are mentioned above – but the methodolo-gies used and the implicit goals of the organisationsundertaking them is a matter of dispute. If, as ac-cepted in this article, city brands are constructed inpeoples’ minds, then the only way to identify andmeasure changes and the efficiency of strategiesshould be research on the city’s target audiences: vis-itors, investors and residents. Also if the common,but rarely proven, statement that ‘‘the people makethe city’’ is true, then additional attention should begiven to the city’s residents and stronger effortsshould be made towards their participation in citymarketing. Perhaps worth mentioning here is the ini-tiative ‘‘We Amsterdammers’’ (www.wijamsterdam-mers.nl), which is an open communication platformfor residents of the city. The initiative providesfinancial support to various activities that cater forcontact between the diverse groups of residents,organises events, like the ‘Amsterdam Day’ anddevelops campaigns with the same goal.

As already stated, cooperation between the par-ties involved and consistency in actions can proveto be the most critical success factor. Only time willreveal the success and effectiveness of marketingAmsterdam.

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3. - Amsterdam City Branding