Cities as brands: the role of communication strategy in place marketing context

Resumo

This paper acknowledges the role of place marketing and city branding as driver of economic development. It is a very important strategic decision for a place to start systematic place marketing in order to increase the competitiveness aiming to attract the scarce sources of wealth. This paper aims to contribute to the conceptualization of the city branding theoretical framework. The importance of the destination self-congruity in the creation of a tourist-destination brand relationship is related with the concept of innovative salient experiences as a key success factor in a place marketing strategy. Also the benefits caused by image transference from city brand image to city-of-origin products are discussed.