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.

Never doubt that a small group of committed people

Lately I've been combining my work on cities with a process of dialogue tables throughout my university in Arnhem, The Netherlands. We talk about professional culture and our passion for teaching. It was just a new way of doing things. Now, after a few months of dialogue sessions at lunchtime, it is not only the staff that is taking part, but also management, hr and even the board. What I see is that, slowly, the dialogue - introduced to think about the space we have as professionals - is becoming the space. The dialogue ís the change.

So, I thought, why not start a dialogue in your city? So often when I speak about urban creativity at conferences, the creativity seems to end once the conference is over. Mostly the conferences themselves aren't even creative. They are only about creativity. It's just cities talking to other cities. It's like looking at a powerpoint on how to swim.

I invited Peter Senge to my university a few years ago. He gave a presentation for 400 people at our city music hall and made everyone sit around tables and go into dialogue. You know what happened? Many people got angry. They just wanted to look at a managementguru to tell them what to do the next day when they got to the office.

But if you want change and you are not prepared to sit around a table with 3 or 4 others and look eachother in the face, you don't want change. If you want change, real change in your city, you let your people start dialogue tables. Just start with a few and then train the people at your table to become dialogue leaders. And so on.

I know there are cities where they did this. And it is the test. If you want real change, you better start doing things with the people, instead of for the people. 'You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all of the people all the time'. Now, if a small group can really get this thing going, who knows where it will end. Quote Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

New Juice for Arnhem

New media artists and students from ICA Academy Arnhem will go underground for the New Juice festival (http://www.newjuice.nl/) They will be deep into the city's historic underground network of cellars. Arnhem had a thriving underground scene in the early 80's with punk, new wave and squatters claiming the city. Let's see it get back in 2.0. Ever since creativity got accepted by policymakers, be aware. It's time for the subversives and edge types to go for creative chaos once again!