Branding cities by archetypes

How do you define the identity of a city? Is there a workable method to say something essential about something so complex as a city? Maybe there is. Over the past few months brandstrategists Brandfriend and I have been testing a method based on Jungian archetypes. This is not a novel approach in the field of brandmanagement. Check the groundbreaking work done by Margaret Mark en Carol Pearson in their book The Hero and the Outlaw. What's new is applying their archetypal branding theory to cities.

Brandfriend and I have tested the citybrand archetype approach on the Dutch twin cities of Nijmegen and Arnhem. Geographically close (a mere 10 miles) and well linked, they are also rivals in anything from soccer and festivals to attracting talent. The brandarchetype test revealed a Jester (Nijmegen) versus a Ruler archetype (Arnhem), exactly pinning the differences down to their specific character.

Archetypes play a vital role in myths and legends. They personalize our hopes, fears and our endeavours to make an imprint on this world, bring order to chaos, be part of a community or explore the unknown. Archetypes have dominated storytelling ever since man could tell stories. Many are familiar with the work Joseph Campbell did in the field of comparative mythology and the hero's journey. All truly great movies explore this journey-theme and make use of archetypes.

Brands are stories What are brands other than stories told? The world's best brands, as Mark and Pearson pointed out, know the archetypal power of their brand. Ben and Jerry's is the Jester brand - making fun and having a good time. Nike is the archetypal Hero brand, honoring the great sportsheroes in their flagshipstores which are none other than temples full of stories on heroism. Or Apple, who started out as the Revolutionary brand challenging the status quo, but who are now the Ruler themselves determining design and standards.

Citybrands are, well .. citystories If brands are about storytelling, citybranding should be about urban storytelling. The test is devised to provide input for the archetypal brand story of a city (or region for that matter). The test that we have developed lets people score on statements, questions, pictures and videoclips. Questions on the perceived character of their city, on the stylepreferences of the people, on the perceived organizational cultural values of their city and on the archetype of the city itself.

As branding is about positioning, we have people compare their city to another they know well. It makes for easier scoring when you take this approach. And it is more fun as well. We tested a live audience of 160 people from the cultural sector to have them determine the personality of Nijmegen as a creative city. Nijmegen comes out of the test as a 'loveable Jester'- a person who likes experiment and fun, caring for others as well. This was exactly the picture that came out of earlier in-depth interviews we held with nine well-known people in the Nijmegen cultural sector. Arnhem, on the contrary, was seen by Nijmegen creatives as a mainly Ruler archetype - structuring and deciding, focusing and acting. This is exactly the opposite of Nijmegen - something that was always felt.

What good is it?

Now you have your brand story, what are you going to do with it? Well, it is a compass for authentic citybranding campaigns. When you know your archetype, you know the motives of your people and brandmovies can tap into that. But it is also a guide for policymaking. The cultural values of a city - cultural in the sense of 'the way we do things around here'- determine which policy approaches would work and which won't.

Arnhem focuses on fashion and design. This is not only economically justified, but going for product leadership in specfic sectors fits the Arnhem archetype. If Nijmegen would go for a specific cultural sector, it wouldn't work. Their focus should be on the experiment and making experiments more successful, regardless of what sector the experiment is in.

Within short we will have an online version of the test as well, but right now we'd love to test more cities and position them on a wheel with the 12 archetypes. This will provide a deeper insight into the truly authentic

stories that cities can tell.