Jack Yan
CEO, Jack Yan & Associates, PO Box 14-368, Wellington 6241, New Zealand
jack.yan@jyanet.com

J. Yan: ‘Saving Detroit, by Not Making the Same Old Mistakes’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008.
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Executive summary
Detroit has not ever used a brand orientation in its automakers’ marketing strategies, and it talks of trimming brands and numbers to allow it to compete. The author believes in being more focused on brands and not losing economies of scale, and building more of what consumers want. The tools are there, such as consumer-targeted blogs, but manufacturers need to use them.

Introduction
Motown has been in trouble constantly since the 1970s. That time, it was its failure to see how the imports were gradually conquering North American market, and when the Arab-Israeli War forced up fuel prices in 1973, the Japanese were already there with models that had great gas mileage. When the second oil shock happened, US companies were still largely ill equipped. Then-Ford president Lee Iacocca noted that sales of its full-size cars were going up, leaving Detroit’s number two without many economy models.¹ The Japanese won again.
   Similar patterns began emerging in the 1990s. Then, Detroit was obsessed with trucks and SUVs. It is generally regarded that there is some ?nancial wisdom behind building these large vehicles, as they generate plenty of pro?t in an industry where US automakers have massive costs, especially relating to union workers’ pensions and healthcare. But it was becoming obvious to only a few that Detroit was leaving its economy models behind, while the Japanese, once again, were sweeping in with up-to-the-minute variants of their Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic.
   The author wrote of this folly at the turn of the century, including DaimlerChrysler’s decision to abandon the low-cost Plymouth marque²—in case low-cost, cheap cars became necessary again. In both these cases, the latest (2008) fuel crisis, driven by high prices and speculation, have proven him right. Detroit is scrambling once again, as it did in the 1970s and early 1980s, wondering how to ?x itself. And its ideas smack of repetition—since some of them have been proven to have failed the industry before, in other nations.
   The problems are long-term ones that cannot be ?xed by short-term adjustments. The truck and SUV obsession was a short-term ?x, a quest for pro?ts which Chrysler Corp., in particular, rode very well with its Dodge and Jeep lines in the 1990s. But it left Chrysler weak in passenger cars.³ It is to be expected, however, since Wall Street itself has an obsession: that of the quarterly result. This, however, does not bode well for corporations that have to last generations.
   Japan seems to lack this problem as investors are perfectly happy for their companies to see out a longer term. While there are exceptions, Toyota has been mostly left to its own devices, its management opting for a gradual evolution of its strategies, cutting costs of manufacture and appointing westerners to the board. It builds, for instance, the Camry and Corolla in more locations than any one US model.
   It would be foolhardy to say that Toyota is impregnable. It has weaknesses, in that its cars are considered the equivalent of domestic appliances: reliable but uninspiring. Detroit had attempted such cars before, often with Japanese input. And it found that these models were not true to the various brands owned by Chrysler, Ford and General Motors.
   The brand orientation, which necessitates long-term thinking, is what Detroit needs.
   This is a bold statement as GM-watchers may be able to point to a failed era where the company did just that. Buick, Cadillac and other GM divisions were, the company claims, run as brands. But this is not true, at least not branding as most professionals understand it. GM made the classic mistake of equating sales to branding: all it did was to regroup into a geographical sales structure and expected its regional heads to maximize sales.⁴ Little consideration was given to the meaning behind each brand, nor was there feedback from consumers. The experiment was deemed a failure.
   Others may also point to the failure Ford has had with its brands, even if it has been credited with being a good brand steward of properties such as Volvo and Aston Martin, two which it had acquired in the 1990s. Jaguar, it is pointed out, was always a division that kept needing investment, never making anything for Ford, despite it paying US$2·5 billion. But there, too, Ford misunderstood the Jaguar brand, lumbering it with passé designs that the marque’s customers did not want. While it never wound up merely badge-engineering Ford cars, it cannot be easily argued that Ford’s failures were due to brand management.
   The talk around Detroit is of rationalization and killing off brands, getting its costs and sales more into line. GM, it is argued, may have to be content with being a global number-two, and Toyota can remain in its top spot. Retrenchment seems to be the theme.
   It’s true that the Big Three need to leave or at least reconsider sectors where they have not created products that the customer wanted. But are they listening? There are enough tools out there on the blogosphere to show that, for example, Ford buyers would prefer the latest European Focus rather than the model it is currently selling. But only GM has made any headway in blogging and listening directly to consumers’ feedback. Ford is blinded by the fact its old-tech Focus is selling well, without realizing that the same behaviour turned the original Ford Taurus from class leader to a has-been model line in less than a generation.
   Most of the techniques have existed for decades. Retrenchment and rationalization were pursued by British Leyland in the 1970s on. The company now exists, other than the Jaguar and Land Rover businesses, as an independent company making one MG model, as a division of Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. Jaguar and Land Rover are owned by India’s Tata Motors.
   Toyota, the darling of the motoring press, particularly for its hybrids, does not pursue retrenchment. It is easily argued that it does not have to. But it has been clever in ?lling niches and using a minimal number of platforms to create a wide variety of cars—something Detroit’s Big Three were once credited with doing and needs to again. Right now, it’s looking at ways to cement the lead, especially in a cost-cutting programme—in the belief that it’s better to do this calmly than being forced to.⁵
   This paper deals ?rst with some of the ideas being bandied about the US auto industry for starters, then groups them into techniques that could save the Big Three.

Troubling thoughts in Detroit
Ingrassia⁶ points out that the Big Three have shed 269,440 employees since 2000 and lost a combined $67 billion in the last three years—and that’s not even counting Chrysler for all 12 months of 2007. But at the same time he points out that Fiat turned itself around and posted record pro?ts. Nissan went from lossmaker to pro?table in 2001. Chrysler itself was turned around by Iacocca in the 1980s.
   The industry, he says, has at least made moves on the union front, which is one of its biggest hurdles.
   But some of the ideas that he has found executives mentioning in Motown show the usual maximize-profits-now mentality that landed the automakers into trouble in the ?rst place.

GM
GM has eight brands, and it is believed, some need to go. In fact, GM has more than eight, once one starts counting Opel, Vauxhall and Holden in its overseas arms. Ingrassia reports very geocentric thinking from Detroit: ‘If you’re shopping for a midpriced sedan, for example, G.M. has six. Buick by itself has two. Toyota, by comparison, has just one—the Camry, which sells nearly as many vehicles each year as all six of G.M.’s offerings combined.’⁷
   It’s not totally true. Even in the US, Toyota has a Lexus sedan costing what a well equipped Camry would cost. In its home market, Toyota ?elds more than six mid-priced sedans, selling to a smaller total population. While this is a straw-man argument—foreign automakers have a small share in Japan and Toyota nears 50 per cent⁸—the quantity of entrants in any sector is generally not a problem.
   The important thing is that each brand is well de?ned enough without cannibalization. Ingrassia indicates that GM CEO Rick Wagoner is trying to consolidate sales’ channels without trimming the brand line-up. This makes total sense, because there is nothing that suggests that one manager could not oversee two or three brands. The Japanese have generally kept trim structures for its brands. Toyota itself manages three. Having one divisional head oversee two or three brands can work if there are no favourites and each brand’s positioning is well defined and understood.
   The short-term thinking is that Saab, Buick, Pontiac, Hummer and Saturn should die. This is the same thinking at DaimlerChrysler that led to Plymouth’s demise. But it is not the same thinking that led to Oldsmobile’s, a GM division, at the turn of the century.
   Oldsmobile became an untenable brand for GM because it occupied a very similar market niche—price-wise and psychographically—as Buick. Purists will be able to nit-pick that argument as there were differences between the buyers: Oldsmobile ones sought American quality and tradition, while Buick ones sought presence without arrogance. However, the reality inside GM was that Oldsmobiles were not really given a distinctive character and given that one of branding’s core tenets is differentiation, the brand had failed.⁹
   Plymouth, however, was on its way to becoming a distinctive brand with its own design language. Chrysler had already débuted the Plymouth Prowler, a hot rod acting as a halo car for the brand. The next model, the PT Cruiser, was about to be launched, débuting a retro design. The remaining Plymouths, developed as Dodges with different trim, were given scripted badging that hinted at the brand’s more youthful, lively positioning for the 21st century.
   A Plymouth division, had it not been for its cancellation under DaimlerChrysler, would have expressed American youthfulness—the PT Cruiser’s initial success illustrated as much—while Chrysler itself would have remained premium, and Dodge sporty.
   Instead, Plymouth products were rolled into the Chrysler marque, confusing that brand—diluting it and forcing a repositioning into a sort of American Volkswagen. At least then it posed no greater threat to some of Mercedes-Benz’s lesser models. But Chrysler lost a distinctive brand with value-leading models—which would have helped it today in an age of high fuel prices. Plymouth had stayed away from SUVs and trucks—a great brand image for 2008.
   The brand-trimming argument is what caused BL to kill Triumph’s saloons and MG’s sports cars a generation ago. The thinking was that Triumph and Rover saloons competed in the same sector—based on price, they did.¹⁰ Based on brand, they didn’t. There was similar thinking that led to the closure of MG—because Triumph, it was decided, already had a corporate sports car.
   The consequence that played out over decades was that BL’s successors lost their economies of scale.
   BL was starved of investment, however, which meant it could not have realistically ?elded two identical cars with different badges for long. But it had already made steps to group Austin and Morris together, then Jaguar, Rover and Triumph. One divisional head could have overseen well de?ned brands, putting a sporting version of one saloon into Triumph’s range, and a traditional one into Rover’s. Experts generally agree today, with hindsight, that the failure to understand the distinctive brand attitudes and brand loyalty behind each BL brand caused credible models to be axed.
   Even Toyota has been careful in Japan. It ?elds, for instance, mid-sized front-wheel-drive sedans such as the Camry and rear-wheel-drive models such as the Mark X. They look fairly similar. But it understands that they appeal to different buyers in a market where consumers are likely to be loyal to model lines in the way US buyers are loyal to brands. If this holds true, then Chevrolet, Saturn and Pontiac can coexist, for example.
   There is no need to ape Toyota just because it ?elds just three brands in the US. No US automaker can afford to rationalize its range to that extent, because none has been able to show that a single American brand can sell twice the volume of two defunct brands. A Chevrolet Cobalt might not be able to ?ll its own shoes as well as that of a Pontiac G5’s, if Pontiac were to be axed. It’s just as likely that those Pontiac buyers would go to the imports. Historically, did Oldsmobile and Plymouth buyers remain with GM and Chrysler after their parent ?rms killed them?
   Brand axeing should take place in cases of overlap or ill de?nition—and a recent example in Japan would be that of Mazda, which bid farewell to many of the marques it tried to create in the early 1990s (such as E?ni and Eunos).
   Saab is a distinctive brand that has been starved of new models for years, but it certainly isn’t in as bad a shape as any of Mazda’s old marques. It has two sedans on Opel Vectra platforms, by themselves not that successful. An SUV was put into the range to stop buyers from leaving the marque. Saab’s problems are not down to a brand that has a strong aircraft heritage, the warmth of Swedish culture and a history of innovation—messages that are still continued in its marketing. Saab’s problems are due to the dearth of new models, which means that it fails as a BMW or Mercedes-Benz rival.
   It has no ready overlap in the GM universe, and all the brand really needs are new models. GM has made some headway in putting Saab development with its German company Adam Opel. What it needs Stateside is to look at Saab alongside a non-competing GM brand—and any are compatible. In Australasia, Saab is sold alongside HSV and Hummer, two other premium GM brands.
   Modern communications could see a very effective platform engineering programme, which GM is already putting in place anyway. This means one team is working on the Opel Corsa E and Daewoo Gentra replacements, which will be sold in the US as the Chevrolet Aveo successor next decade. GM Europe is working on mid-sized cars such as the Opel Insignia and the next Chevrolet Malibu. And GM’s Australian arm, Holden, created the full-size platform underpinning the Holden Commodore and Chevrolet Camaro.
   This programme simply needs to be extended further to creating niche vehicles for Saab as well as replacements for its current range—and there is evidence that GM already got that memo. Buick should benefit from this, too: a Lucerne replacement could easily have been developed alongside the Commodore.
   Similar arguments could be made in support of Buick’s presence. While that brand has trimmed models in recent years, what it does ?eld is distinctively styled and its brand, too, is well de?ned. Sheetmetal might cost money, but the majority of R&D goes into automotive architecture—stuff that customers cannot see. Buick and Hummer appeal to very distinctive buyers who are not catered for elsewhere, and Hummer itself is leading the charge into international markets.
   That leaves Pontiac and Saturn, which is already bene?ting from globalization. Pontiac fields two rebadged Holdens: a large sedan and a truck. Saturn is becoming the American name for Opel: it can easily go from import-?ghter to import-seller, provided it keeps its no-nonsense approach to retail, one of its main differentiating factors.
   GM has used the rebadging idea well in some markets. In Britain, most Vauxhalls are really Opels—in most of the range, the model names are even the same. For years, Holden used the same method, though now it rebadges several Daewoo models (Daewoo is another GM brand). There is no reason for Pontiac not to have some Holdens, with the rest of the range selling extreme-performance models made in the US. It would increase economies for Holden. Saturnized Opels would also help Opel in Europe reach greater economies there.
   If there is one thing that history has taught us is that tastes are cyclical. Muscle cars may be wrong for 2008 but they may be right for 2012. If Pontiac is killed off, can GM successfully deal with that sector then?
   The above are cursory brand analyses only. No one should say that that Saturn’s only differentiator is a no-nonsense retail approach. There are plenty of other reasons that Saturn is distinct from Chevrolet or the other automakers’ brands. And those other reasons, especially considering the buyer, probably won’t overlap as greatly as a mere ?nancial, BL-style analysis would suggest.
   In fact, Aaker’s ?ve brand equity targets¹¹ are instructive and it is not impossible to maximize all of them, propelling every GM brand to varying degrees of success. GM and its investors need to remember history and why Britain still has a car industry, just one dominated by Japanese and foreign makes.
   GM needs to begin by de?ning its brands and engaging consumer help to get there. It has a good enough support base via its blog, Fast Lane, to which Bob Lutz, its product czar, contributes. People believe their ideas are being heard and Lutz has been making many of the right moves by enlisting the help of global GM divisions. That can only be enriching to brand equity.
   One brand that has escaped criticism for the most part is Cadillac, which has at least sorted its design language and styling out, produced products that Americans (especially style-conscious younger consumers) want,¹² so either GM got lucky—or GM has the skill set already within its company.
   GM’s other great asset, which it is ?nally using now with Lutz’s top-down endorsement (another necessity in branding), is its global divisions.¹³ Each has been made a centre of excellence. Each is part of a greater global structure, entrenched in GM behaviour over decades. Toyota centralizes a lot more of its product development, but GM may be able to have each centre work in tandem and bring products to market more quickly.

Ford
Ingrassia is more optimistic about Ford, which has been slimming down, selling Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover. But he is critical of the company’s product range, and rightly so.
   At the time of writing, Ford has been enjoying healthy sales in the US with its Focus compact car. However, car enthusiasts have been critical of this model, since it uses an old platform. Even México has the new-platform model in its range, leading some to disbelieve Ford’s reason that the newer model would be priced too highly to be competitive in the US. (Ford also sells the Mazda 3 in the US at a competitive price, and that is on the newer platform.) Alongside the Honda Civic, the Focus seems old hat.
   However, expensive fuel and Ford’s widespread US dealer network have meant that the Focus is being snapped up. Some of this is probably due to brand loyalty, too: those that stuck by the company in the days of the truck and the Explorer SUV are looking at the Focus as a simple, bugs-ironed-out model.
   As mentioned earlier, strong sales are not always an indicator of long-term brand strength. Should fuel prices come down and people begin repeating their less considerate, energy-consuming behaviours, will they turn to Ford? Many Taurus buyers did not return to the company when they wanted another mid-sized sedan: they went to Toyota and Honda. There are only so many years that a company can sell an old-platform design, and in the age of the internet, car buyers are more savvy than ever.
   Ford has a bright spot, says Ingrassia: its CD338 line of sedans (Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKZ). He is right, as these have also managed to be sold in South America as well, as premium models. Using an old (but revised and competitive) Mazda Atenza platform, CD338 was developed with good savings, showing that single platforms can be adapted further. The current Taurus, using a Volvo platform, is another example.
   But Ford could trim its platforms further and make use of its international divisions. The Ford Mondeo’s European development duplicated that of CD338, and enthusiasts have been supportive of the European car. Ford is ending the duplication with its next B-sector (supermini) car, the Fiesta, which will be sold in Europe, North America, Asia and Oceania.
   Ford’s problems in the past were linked to internal politicking, leading many to dismiss the global model. They cite the CDW27 project of the early 1990s to be an example of a car developed in Europe and failing in the US. Its size was often blamed. The reality was that CDW27 was under-marketed, especially as BMW continued to earn sales in the same size segment.
   Facing troubles, and with a new leader in the form of CEO Alan Mulally, Ford may well have realized that being a united company has its benefits.
   It could do more, as Australian commentators are quick to point out that their countrymen’s big-car expertise is not used suf?ciently. But it does make use of Volvo as a safety centre of excellence, and there are signs of change.
   From a branding point of view, Ford may well have sorted things with its core brand, steadily sorting its product range out in what appears to be a medium-term plan leading into the mid-2010s.
   It has generally been regarded as a good brand steward for Volvo and Land Rover. Jaguar’s problems were detailed earlier and they seem to have been an (expensive) exception rather than the rule. Aston Martin grew under Ford as well.¹⁴
   Volvo has been engineering class-leading platforms for the company, it has a well de?ned brand centring around safety and Swedish design, and it’s a rare case where the (pro?table) status quo should be observed. Mazda is Ford’s sporting brand, and seems to trade well on its Japanese origins and philosophy, with halo cars such as the MX-5 and RX-8.
   Its problems rest with Lincoln and Mercury. Lincoln was once a proud brand, but with the demise of the Town Car, no longer ?elds a large luxury model to rival the large Lexus LS and the top Cadillac. Instead, its models are warmed-over Fords, making sense from a cost perspective. Lincoln buyers are indeed different, brand-wise, from Ford ones. But surely they are discerning enough to notice that what they drive does not look that special?
   The good news for Lincoln is that it has downsized, something that it failed to do in the 1970s until GM had already made its move. However, Ford is falling into a trap with cars that do not support the Lincoln brand well, and it can hurt the company in the long run. A brand vision was once developed and show cars built (such as one called the Mark IX), demonstrating a renaissance and a design language for the brand. Little seems to have come of it other than adopting the grille design. It shows short-term thinking and Lincoln is being hurt until it can launch more interesting cars. It seriously needs a brand strategy outlined.
   If Lincolns are not special, then what of Mercury—which has languished for over a generation? The brand is nearly invisible, it sells cars that are considered upscale Fords, and the company’s ?nancial problems meant that any distinctive models (such as the Cougar) were cancelled.
   Mercury could be ?xed if Ford simply examines its Japanese af?liate’s range at Mazda, which develops more models than US consumers see. If the brand were de?ned as a quality import-fighter, it could have a chance at distancing itself from its warmed-over-Ford image. An obvious candidate for “Mercurization” would be the next Mazda MPV.

Chrysler
Chrysler, the smallest player, is now under a private equity ?rm’s control and is not particularly well positioned. Once a highly respected company in the 1990s, Chrysler had lean R&D processes, exciting niche models and the admiration of American businesses. Forbes called it the Company of the Year.
   This was appealing to Daimler-Benz AG of Stuttgart, which took over Chrysler in the late 1990s. As discussed, the Plymouth marque was a casualty. But the takeover was poor in other areas: there were cultural clashes, the brands were never defined to begin with, and the newly merged DaimlerChrysler found dif?culty getting economies of scale with the platforms. Lean R&D suddenly seemed more cumbersome. And the resignations of many of Chrysler’s old bosses—Bob Eaton, Bob Lutz, François Castaing, inter alia—did not do much for the workforce.¹⁵
   Dodge was an easy brand to de?ne, alongside Americanness and sportiness. However, Chrysler went from innovative American luxury—its LH big cars were highly acclaimed, as were their successors—to a sort of Volkswagen, having low-priced models such as the Neon and PT Cruiser sitting uncomfortably with the 300 large car.
   Brand-wise, Chrysler is all over the place. Ingrassi is right that the company has not ?elded a true luxury car for years. It is cooperating with Chery of China on a small car—which might be too little, too late, when it is launched.¹⁶ And when it is launched, where will it go? It would have been ideal for Plymouth.
   Meanwhile, Nissan is building a subcompact for Chrysler in South America. Chrysler is building a minivan for Volkswagen at a Canadian plant.
   One scenario is to kill Chrysler off, which would dilute Dodge’s brand—since models such as the Chery joint-venture vehicle will have to be absorbed. It would ?t as poorly there in buyers’ minds as the PT Cruiser did with the old LHS and 300M large cars. Dodge, after all, has just released a sports car, the Challenger, a retro-design exercise meant to recall an age when its brand was well defined and proud. The Chery JV model could well look sporty—but if it is an economy model, will Chrysler be tempted to put another marque on it?
   Having fewer brands will do Chrysler no favours with its future models. Any disease the parent brand has will simply be passed on. Its saving grace is Jeep, which has not been tarnished greatly; in fact, Chrysler has been quite good at managing that brand and, for the most part, delivering the right product.¹⁷
   While it might make some sense to streamline further, buyers make their decisions about a brand quickly. Brands are shortcuts so consumers can grasp their message quickly, hence the need for recognizable brand “attitudes”.¹⁸ And Dodge and Jeep have distinct characters that shouldn’t be tampered with for fear of turning consumers away from that easy recognition and brand equity. Chrysler can be rede?ned as a quality marque, one with a dose of snob appeal but everyday prices—if it can really deliver that quality. Taking the halo effect of the 300, its most recognizable model, and bringing it on to smaller models isn’t a bad idea—but it remains to be practised.
   It will never be a Cadillac rival in the foreseeable future, unless some of those rapid R&D and tight inter-business relationships can return to make it a lean niche-?ller. Those glory days weren’t that long ago.

The solutions
First, each of Detroit’s Big Three has some homework to do, in understanding their brands’ visions, what they mean, and what they can mean. They can involve the public via the blogosphere, in a country that has high internet penetration. This will show transparency and a willingness to engage with the American car buyer, whom each company needs to win back. Or, they can do the exercise internally with cross-functional groups, but properly¹⁹—there is no more room for a lip-service nod to branding as there was in the 1990s.
   Secondly, the Big Three need to understand just what makes their cars appealing. Aaker’s brand equity elements are a good start but the quest for them needs to be constant.²⁰ The Japanese may have used W. Edwards Deming’s principles over decades to get their quality up. American companies need to leap-frog that by being more engaging, being open where Japanese companies act closed. Continued understanding of consumer tastes via the blogosphere is one method; using that to inform future tastes is another. Feedback is important, and it has only recently played a part in the marcom end of the Big Three. Prior to that it only had customer clinics.
   Thirdly, there is an untapped generation, namely the young people who are either too young to drive or getting into their ?rst cars now. What has informed their choices? The author is willing to bet that while there are some who love muscle cars, there may be many more impressed by models that conserve energy.
   Fourthly, US automakers are among the heaviest R&D investors—and they need to bring more innovation to the market more rapidly.
   Fifthly, they need to realize the effect of a loss of economies of scale. The historical models are there. The key is to build the cars consumers want²¹—something that GM and Ford actually do quite well in Europe. If Levitt is right and there is a homogenization of tastes²²—BMW and Porsche operate on this notion, and Toyota does in the mid-sized and subcompact sectors—then foreign bases need to be used more effectively. It’s not about shutting factories and ?ring personnel, but being more sincere about delivering for future consumers.

Summary
Killing brands, as any observer of British Leyland has demonstrated, is not a solution when those brands are well de?ned, contribute to economies and have brand loyalty, recognition and perceived quality. Even if a brand contributes to economies alone, it can be saved through repositioning.
   The US automakers need to put in play longer-term thinking. Chrysler is most dire at the moment, and Ford, while leaner, could do more with Lincoln and Mercury. Ford itself has excellent product and needs to show it can overcome regional politics. In neither case should they feel forced in delivering short-term results. In Chrysler’s case it may be able to demonstrate to its owners that it can do well without the pressure of share prices.
   General Motors has all the necessary ingredients for survival. It has shown a willingness to engage consumers, ?nd ways of making use of its foreign operations and look at ways of retaining brands and economies of scale.
   Being true to their brands can help US automakers get back to a strong position. Setting one’s sights lower and claiming easy victories was certainly not the way Toyota rose to number one. Honda climbed from obscurity to Japan’s number two—and it has one of the US’s top-selling models—by setting higher goals. British Leyland should be a constant reminder of what not to do—unless the Big Three want to wind up being subsidiaries of foreign ?rms, their marques mere reminders of better times.

Notes
   1. L. Iacocca and W. Novak: Iacocca: an Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books 1984.
   2. J. Yan: ‘Where Is DaimlerChrysler Heading?’, CAP Online, February 12, 2000, <http://www.jyanet.com/cap/2000/0212ob0.shtml>.
   3. J. Flint: ‘Company of the Year: Chrysler’, Forbes, January 13, 1997, pp. 83 ff.; q.v. E. A. Robinson: ‘America’s Most Admired Companies’, Fortune, March 3, 1997, p. F-2.
   4. M. Kerbs: ‘G.M. Will Pare as Many as 1,000 White-Collar Jobs’, The New York Times, August 5, 1998.
   5. P. O’Connell (ed.): ‘The Man Driving Toyota’, Business Week, July 22, 2005 (also online at <http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2005/nf20050721_7169_db053.htm>).
   6. P. Ingrassia: ‘Who Will Survive?’, Condé Nast Portfolio, June 2008, pp. 86–95.
   7. Ibid., at p. 93.
   8. I. Rowley: ‘Toyota Set to Top 50% Market Share in Japan’, Business Week, ‘The Auto Beat’, November 1, 2007, <http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2007/11/toyota_tops_50.html>.
   9. See, e.g., E. Shapiro: ‘Is Oldsmobile Name a Marketing Lemon?’, The New York Times, October 29, 1992.
   10. The Triumph brand is owned by BMW, which understands that from a branding perspective, it poses a threat to its core range.
   11. D. A. Aaker: Managing Brand Equity. New York: Free Press 1991.
   12. J. Yan: ‘The Brand Attitudes of Automobiles’, New Age Branding: Concepts and Cases, vol. 1. Hyderabad: ICFAI Press 2002, pp. 101–13, at pp. 105–6.
   13. Remaining divisions such as Cadillac simply need to get the product right: the author understands that its much-lauded CTS sedan, for example, still falls well behind its German rivals on the interior. Meanwhile, Opel does acceptable interiors. This is a single example of GM’s unused assets.
   14. J. Yan: ‘The Brand Attitudes of Automobiles’, op. cit., at pp. 111–12.
   15. Ibid., at p. 111.
   16. Not every company has been successful in cooperating with Red Chinese companies. Chrysler has had some experience with its Beijing Jeep venture, among others, but not with Chery.
   17. Some cannibalization has been risked with models such as the Jeep Commander, and its low-end passenger-car spin-offs have questionable appeal for the brand long-term.
   18. See, e.g. J. Yan: ‘The Brand Attitudes’, op. cit., and W. Olins as quoted in J. Yan: ‘The Attitude of Identity’, Desktop, October 2000, pp. 26–31.
   19. See, e.g. J. Yan: ‘The Brand Attitudes’, ibid.
   20. Toyota’s success factors are discussed in ibid., at pp. 108–9.
   21. See, e.g. G. Green: ‘Meet the Inspirational, Indefatigable Geoff Polites’, Car, June 2008, pp. 130–3, at p. 132.
   22. T. Levitt: ‘The Globalization of Markets’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 61, no. 3, May-June 1992, pp. 92–102; cf. M. Grif?n: ‘From Cultural Imperialism to Transnational Commercialization: Shifting Paradigms in International Media Studies’, Global Media Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, fall 2002, <http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/fa02/gmj-fa02-grif?n.htm>.

This paper has also appeared in CAP Online.

Sicco van Gelder
Placebrands

S. van Gelder: ‘How to Improve the Chances of Successfully Developing and Implementing a Place Brand Strategy’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 2, no. 1, August 2008.
Microsoft Word version

1. Introduction
Place branding (for countries, regions and cities) is a relatively new discipline and inevitably people have many questions about it. One important question is how to successfully brand a place. This question actually consists of a number of discrete questions, namely whether:

• Branding is more suitable for some places than for others?
• There are pre-existing factors that increase the likelihood of successful place branding?
• There are factors that improve the success-rate of the brand development process?
• It is possible to predict the success of a place brand strategy?

This paper tries to answer each of these questions by describing the criteria and factors that contribute to successful place branding. By assessing the place, the players and the plans they make, it is possible to predict the likely success of a place branding initiative.

2. Should all places brand themselves?
There is a debate whether all places should be actively branding themselves or that the method is more appropriate to some places than to others. There is a perception that places facing some sort of crisis are more likely candidates than places with stable economic, social and cultural settings.
   Although a place that faces a crisis may become acutely aware of the weaknesses of its brand and decide that it is high time to do something about it, there is little evidence to suggest that crises in themselves are a reason to brand a place. This is due to two factors, namely:

• brands are not built (and seldom even destroyed) in a day. Place branding is certainly a long-term endeavour and requires years of consistent and persistent actions for the brand to take shape;
• branding will not help solve the crisis simply because only decisive and targeted actions will do so. The brand will however, provide the context for solving the crises and the brand’s strengths should be applied to the solution. A strong brand will also help to mitigate the effects of a crisis as the crisis will not be (one of) its only claim(s) to fame.

If it’s not places that face immediate calamity, catastrophe or disaster, then which places can most usefully apply branding? Certainly, some kinds of places are more likely candidates for place branding. These include:

• places that face intense and increasing competition. These places are obvious candidates because they need to sharpen their competitive edge to retain or improve their positions. This is currently happening in southern Africa, where the rise of South Africa is putting pressure on the neighbours. In Europe, competition between major cities has increased over the past decade and a place such as Amsterdam finds itself competing with Madrid and Barcelona for visitors, investors, talent and events. Similarly in Asia, Hong Kong is facing more intense competition from the likes of Shanghai and Singapore;
• places that face complex development tasks, such as areas of urban expansion, regeneration and transformation. These places need to have a very strong sense of what they wish to become, what they will offer and how they will function, which is what branding can offer them. Examples are mixed-use waterfront developments that dot the cityscapes around the world: Hamburg, Toronto, Lyon, Melbourne and the like;
• places that face a slow and steady decline. Such places often lose businesses, inhabitants, institutions and events at a pace that doesn’t start the alarm bells ringing until the scale of the problem becomes acutely apparent. These places have the opportunity to stop and even reverse their slide if they act in a concerted effort to shore up their brand. Examples are Southampton in southern England and Cleveland, Ohio in the USA;
• places that have lived through a crisis and need to reinvent themselves. These places have had a major crisis that has completely altered the economic, social and (sometimes) cultural structures. There is no opportunity to reverse the situation and the only thing left is to completely rethink the brand. One of the most obvious examples is Bilbao in Spain that has reinvented itself as a tourist destination after the collapse of its manufacturing base. Other examples of places needing to reinvent themselves are Belfast and Detroit.

3. The likelihood of successful place branding
Not only is there discussion about which places should develop their brand strategies, there is also debate about what preconditions improve the likelihood of success. We find that having the following characteristics contribute to a place’s ability to brand itself:

• unity: the key stakeholders of the place need to agree to come together to shape its future by developing and implementing a brand strategy. This is not a given in most places. Stakeholders have seldom sat together to discuss their shared future and to determine how their views on the subject coincide and differ. And in even fewer places have stakeholders actually decided to act to jointly shape that future. We’ve worked in places where bringing together the stakeholders and getting them to work together was the hardest task of all;
• diversity: places that are more economically, socially, culturally and naturally diverse stand a better chance of developing a strong and effective brand. This is due to the fact that place branding is not an exercise in reduction, but rather one of adding or enhancing layers of richness. Diversity gives such places like Vancouver, Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town their attractive edge;
• initiative: places whose stakeholders already (jointly) undertake (marketing) initiatives. These provide necessary experiences beneficial to the place brand development efforts. This is due to the fact that they have already accepted the need for changes and are taking actions to bring them about;
• experimentation: there also needs to be a willingness to take risks and a certain tolerance towards failure of experiments. Often, accepted ways of working are entrenched and people stick by what they know. Risk aversion is often prominent in some of the large (and bureaucratic) organizations that are key stakeholders of many places.

4. What is required to successfully develop a place brand?
Not only are there existing factors that improve the likelihood of success for place branding. More importantly, there are factors that influence the success of the brand development exercise itself. These are:

• partnership and leadership: a place brand can only successfully be developed and implemented by the key stakeholders of the place. It is not a task to be left to the government alone. The organizations that can shape the future of the place through their actions, investments and communications should come together in partnership and should demonstrate shared leadership in the development and implementation of the place brand strategy. In lots of places, government departments have been tasked to brand and market their city, region or country and the results are mixed at best;
• vision and strategy: the first thing the brand partners need to do is to share and compare their views on the future of the place and make sure that they develop a shared vision of a greater magnitude than the sum of their individual visions. Existing visions often are highly sector-related (in one case we found 23 visions for the same city) and do not rise above the commonplace of a great place to live, with the best possible healthcare and education and jobs for everyone. Once they have agreed a shared vision, the partners need to map out a strategy for the brand of their place that they can jointly deliver;
• appraisal and creativity: the brand partners need to be realistic and understand what has shaped the brand of their place so far, and what has worked in the past and what has not. That should, however, not preclude them from finding new ways of doing things, from developing original ideas and from creating innovations for their place;
• “on brand” implementation: finally, the partners need to involve other stakeholders in realising the brand through actions, investments, attraction programmes and events that demonstrate the brand in action.

There is an immense task here of managing the stakeholders and their activities and communications to ensure that agreed initiatives are carried out, consistently and “on brand”. The brand partners must, therefore, decide how best top organise this task to ensure effective implementation of their plans.

5. When is a place brand a success?
Finally, there is the question of when a place brand strategy can be considered to be successful. In other words, what should the place brand embody of to become successful?

• value and purpose: the brand is a promise of value and one that needs to be kept. The more valuable the place brand is to its key audiences, the more likely they will be swayed by it. The brand also provides a sense of purpose to the place’s stakeholders, as it embodies the things they want to achieve. The stronger this sense of purpose, the more likely that stakeholders will pull together and deliver. Too often the brand of a place does not provide a common purpose, but only a trite slogan: City of Lights (Anchorage), the Friendly City (Orange Country), Get in on It (Baltimore), Every Day Is an Opening Day (Atlanta) and It’s Cooler Here (Edmonton);
• truth: the brand needs to reflect the reality of the place. Place brands are largely built on people’s experiences of the place, on recommendations by trusted endorsers, and on what goes on in the place. Any dissonance between the brand’s promise and these realities harms the place brand’s equity. The experience of the rough immigration treatment meted out to visitors harm the brand of the USA. The scenes of the scores of itinerant labourers sleeping on the streets of Mumbai can come as a shock to a first-time visitor to ‘The Fastest Growing Free Market Democracy’;
• inclusive and for the common good: the brand must appeal to the local community and must provide it with tangible and intangible benefits. Only if the place’s brand is embraced by its population, businesses and institutions will it also be credible to outsiders. In Bangalore local pride groups conflict with what are seen as the “outsiders” of the city’s booming IT industry. In a bid to appease these activists, the city government decided to change the official name of the city to Bengaluru, which is the local pronunciation and the city’s IT companies have started to fly the local flag. Neither move will do much unless the Kannada population of the city feel that they have a stake in the city’s future;
• creativity and innovation: the brand must help to encourage and release the resourcefulness and inventiveness of the stakeholders in their quest for realizing the place brand strategy. The brand should promote new ways of working, investing and communicating and advance new and original ideas, products and services. Newcastle-Gateshead kicked off a flurry of creative activity with the Angel of the North, a huge steel statue along the motorway, and followed this up with the distinct Millennium Bridge, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Sage Concert Hall. All a far cry from its drab and dreary post-industrial past;
• complexity and simplicity: the brand of a place needs to reflect its richness and not try to reduce it to a single utterance or representation. However, at the same time, the core of the brand must be straightforward enough for people to grasp its value easily. Italy stands for style, France for romance and Japan for perfection, but we also know that these places have a lot more to offer that makes them distinctively attractive;
• connectivity: the brand must help to connect up people, businesses and institutions inside as well as outside the place. A brand that allows and encourages people to rally around it stands a far better chance of being successful. In some cases, making use its diasporas’ relationships with the home country help to fan the brand’s flames. Cases in point are Ireland, India and China;
• validity: a brand must remain relevant to its stakeholders and audiences over a long period and it can only do so by delivering consistent value to them. This does not mean that the brand should remain unchanged. The world changes and so do people’s wishes and expectations, the competition (and what they have to offer), and economic, social and cultural developments. It is important to regularly check and preserve the soundness of the brand over time and to take appropriate actions for it to retain its significance.

6. Risks and rewards
Place branding is an intricate activity and chances of doing it successfully rest on a proper understanding of the factors that influence the outcomes. Without understanding the risks involved and how to reduce these to a manageable level, success is unlikely and subsequent failure will simply prove what the (inevitable) critics have said all along: ‘It’s a waste of money that could have been better spent on health, education, housing, infrastructure, etc.’ But if there are possible risks, there are also potential rewards to successful place branding, such as:

• improved and sustainable competitiveness, e.g. for attention, investments, jobs, inhabitants, institutions, visitors and events;
• higher returns on investment, e.g. in real estate, infrastructure, promotions and events;
• coherent development of the place as physical, social, economic and cultural planning join up to realize the brand’s promise;
• pride in the place, as the population, businesses and institutions experience its (renewed) sense of purpose and direction;
• unsolicited praise, approval and endorsement from media, celebrities and (international) institutions;
• increased word-of-mouth among (foreign) target audiences as personal experiences and a wish to be associated with the place create a buzz.

Pierre d’Huy
Experts Consulting
p.dhuy@experts-consulting.com

Translated from the French by Stanley Moss
CEO, The Medinge Group
Founder, Diganzi
diganzi@medinge.org

P. d’Huy: ‘PowerPoint: Rhetoric Machine’, tr. S. Moss, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
Microsoft Word version | Version original

‘With the device of rhetoric, what is offered at the beginning—and appears at the risk of collective aphasia—are the raw materials of reasoning, of facts, of subject; yet what is found at the end is a complete language, structured and armed for persuasion.’—Roland Barthes: ‘L’ancienne rhétorique’, Communications, no. 16, 1970, B.0.4, p. 197.

PowerPoint is a Microsoft program which allows the user to create electronic presentations in the form of a succession of slides, often linked by simple animated visual effects. These slides can contain pictures, text, films, sounds, moving figures and different computer graphics or hyperlinks. This presentation application is used in great numbers internationally by businesspeople and students alike. Microsoft estimates 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made every day all over the world.
   The success of PowerPoint is so considerable that its emergence cannot be explained away solely by the recent fall in the price of computers and projectors. In itself, PowerPoint seems to constitute an emerging medium of societal communication. Such unprecedented success inevitably attracts the eye of the médiologue. Rather than dismiss PowerPoint as a minor event, let us take time to re-examine it.
   Over a long period, the uninterrupted use of PowerPoint as reference support has evolved a particular form of speech. It models a distinct manner of thinking, demonstrating, and persuading. Since its creation twenty years ago, PowerPoint has survived inconspicuously, a hegemonic example of constitution of norm.
   One is tempted to wager that soon the young generation will no longer be able to express themselves orally without help of a tool of presentation. In this respect, note that PowerPoint is reported to be more and more widely used for wedding speeches. Even more troubling, there may come a day when people cannot listen unless a speaker expresses himself in conjunction with PowerPoint. Faced with the “little music” that a rhetorical machine produces, classical speech could become inaudible.
   PowerPoint abets the impression of clear presentations. Steve Jobs made such a demonstration when he launched iPhone at Mac World 2007 in San Francisco.¹ Like a pianist who perfectly controls the independence of left and right hands, he linked a simultaneous projection of text and pictures to illustrate his purpose. Thanks to PowerPoint, the quality of audience reception was maximized, and understanding was made easier.
   PowerPoint also allows the manipulation of audiences by the fundamental use of argumentation founded more on effect than on proof. On February 7, 2003 the American General Colin Powell introduced a PowerPoint document to the Security Council of the United Nations, the intention of which was to demonstrate confirmation of the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (See attached reproductions of certain slides used).
   The perverse effects raised by PowerPoint’s detractors revolve around five major problem points:

• problem of the user: while PowerPoint aids good presenters, it always renders the mediocre ones unbearable. PowerPoint is a complex professional multimedia instrument placed at the disposition of an insufficiently competent general public;
• problem of writing: rare are the PowerPoint presentations which play the game of brevity and are an instrument of the supportive kind. The better part of PowerPoint presentations are talkative and laboured;
• problem of effectiveness with principles of demonstration: the logical fluidity of classical speech is at odds with thoughts broken apart by the succession of PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint often stutters;
• problem of manipulation: the principle of juxtaposition exempts the presenter from the logical necessity of linking reason to effect in written text. To juxtapose is not to show. Often the syllogisms of demonstration found in PowerPoint presentations are weak or contestable. But they are difficult to refute because the presenter can overlook the first parts as he pleases. The mind of the audience is under the control of imposed rhythms and enforced reading in fragments;
• problem of use: explanation is the job of the presenter. PowerPoint is often sent by electronic mail without explanation, as a reference document. This is a bit like giving a person the apparatus of a conjurer and expecting them to competently perform magic tricks on stage. By removing the obligation to support a presentation, PowerPoint corrupts the information which it is intended to carry.

   For all these reasons, doubt is growing over the real pedagogic effectiveness of PowerPoint. Associations of parents of American pupils are seeking a ban on its use in secondary schools and universities in the USA.
   To look in greater detail at the opinion of its detractors, it helps to refer to the very effective work of Edward Tufte² and to articles such as ‘PowerPoint Makes You Dumb’³ in The New York Times^, or ‘Point of View on PowerPoint’⁴ in The Guardian.

PowerPoint: simultaneous speech
PowerPoint comes from the world of Apple Macintosh, that is to say from the world in the ’80s which first allowed the general public access to computer science. The world of Apple is that of the visual, of “creatives” and of graphic designers, the world of those who free themselves from the dictatorship of the parallel horizontal line, the unmoving characters of print. This is the universe of the mouse, of the cursor which drifts freely across the screen and finishes in the blinking vertical line, of letters arrayed on the keyboard. It is the Macintosh brush and mobile characters in opposition to the static Underwood typewriter. The mind freed from drawings can visualize on the electronic screen. One recollects the freedom of the Calligrams of Guillaume Apollinaire and the technical difficulty of their reproduction.
   PowerPoint multiplies the battery of effects at the disposition of the speaker, and in doing so compounds its means. PowerPoint “effects” are the new rhetorical devices of our time. The pictures, schemata, graphs, pop videos, computer graphics, animations, or illustrations are like digital cousins to metaphor or metonymy. This somehow justifies calling the toolbox of its capabilities an ‘auto-content wizard.’ Richard Mayer, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studied its human features in detail, looking at the system of information, segmented by how it sees itself and those instructions which it agrees to follow. He determined that simultaneous contact to both channels allows the public not only to better understand, but to better persuade. It is the ‘dual channel’⁵ effect, a key element of the mechanics of firm belief in PowerPoint.
   Let us pause for an instant and reflect on an interesting mixture of typologies, since in PowerPoint, the visible splits the legible into two distinct parts. PowerPoint creates a new behaviour here: collective reading onscreen. To reference the three ages of Régis Debray,⁶ someplace new has been created which exists between the graphosphère and the vidéosphère, between appearance and publication, since the text is read and seen, simultaneously and collectively. This perhaps explains its success. PowerPoint plays on thresholds. PowerPoint is a machine to conciliate what is written and what must be seen. Picture redeems itself as behaviour through the counterpoise with written text. As the text gets lighter, it is elevated by pictures.
   PowerPoint automatically formats and gives life to slides consisting of text, pictures, figures, and effects, all at the same time. Here one rediscovers the simultaneity of the Surrealists, which one can find in La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France. In 1913 Blaise Cendrars captioned this poem, illustrated by drawings of Sonia Delaunay, as the ‘first simultaneous book’.
   PowerPoint software understands that to communicate definitively and persuade, it is necessary to multiply statements in parallel, all at the same time: see a picture–read a text–hear the voice of a presenter. The rhetorical figures of PowerPoint are built in the gaps between the three dimensions: picture, text and voice. The three statements synchronize, are repeated, or—to the contrary—move, move apart, collide.

PowerPoint: presentation or performance?
First regarded as a simple tool of support, the PowerPoint program is on the way to becoming a universal language used by both professional and academic worlds. These are the places where speech is carefully staged. These worlds seek to prescribe order which successfully coordinates image, movement and writing. Every multinational today has meeting rooms endowed with big screens designed to receive presentations. Any information arrayed there is invariably transformed into presentation. Each presentation repeats, constructs, takes up time, times its interventions. If the medium is the message, then with PowerPoint everything turns into show business. To such an extent, speech becomes more important than the transmitter. To such an extent, the searchlight and the newscaster end up merging.
   More and more press websites offer their visitors slide shows in PowerPoint. The Newspaper of the Net, in partnership with the AFP, offers this type of slide show, for instance, designed to explain the economy in 675 frames. Business Week adds slide shows to many of its online news stories. These presentations automatically activate, and display as a programmed succession of slides. They constitute a kind of intermediary between written articles and that of short video subjects. They show wonderfully that a good PowerPoint can very effectively operate without a newscaster or presenter.
   This explains why the PowerPoint presenter is compelled to deliver theatrics. It is due to the overlap of information and not the synergy, of competition with the PowerPoint presentation. Facing a huge screen, the presenter is encouraged to make more of it than really exists. A simple purpose then becomes a presentation; a hypothesis suddenly becomes a claim. The presenter is compelled, often in his defending arguments, to prove, to demonstrate, even when he has nothing of substance to offer. Bereft of real reasons, presenters get carried away. They display only glittering facets of their case. It is the most serious reproach which can be made about PowerPoint: PowerPoint does not like stories, PowerPoint kills narration. Narrative migrates in an opportunistic scenario, sequencing inappropriately, defended by the language of firm belief.

PowerPoint: ownership of speech
PowerPoint’s response to Barthes’ idea of rhetoric is to offer a description of the machine, defined by Microsoft, as ‘The most prevalent form of persuasion technology’.⁸ This means that the argument (‘fidem facere’ of Probatio) tells and moves at the same time (‘animos impellere’) and thus persuades by what is seen. PowerPoint directs our attention to the art of persuasion. This art has been left fallow since the time of Napoleon III, the epoch of the last important treatises on rhetoric, when it constituted the backbone of the education of all ruling classes since Athens in the fifth century.
   Rhetoric is a contemporary of Democracy, and a language conceived to entice the jury during courtroom trials. It is not by chance that PowerPoint is of American origin, the product of a nation enamoured with litigious business, who first aligned PowerPoint to the principles of computerization. This ‘first rhetoric’ is disparaged by Plato in Gorgias.⁹ Socrates compares the ‘make believe’ of rhetoric, contrasting it to the ‘informing’ of the philosopher. Calliclès answers that ‘rhetoric does not need to know what the things are about which it speaks; it has simply discovered a technique which serves us for persuading.’ PowerPoint has no knowledge as its objective, only firm belief. It lies far from the Socratic maieutics, the search for truth by dialogue and confutation. Rhetoric contents itself with its status as a machine of persuasion. Any likely simplistic assemblage is acceptable, provided that the target is reached.
   Barthes said to us in 1964, in his seminary at the École des Hautes Études, that rhetoric is a social practice, as well as a privileged technology, since it is necessary to pay to acquire it. It allows the ruling classes to gain definite ownership of the word. With PowerPoint, one also definitively gains the ownership of speech. This occurs thanks to a format of content, which is taught and which one learns. It is a pure technology of persuasion, in search of firm advocacy from its audience. This is an art ‘of persuasion, a group of rules, recipes, wherein the implementation intends to persuade the listeners of speech, even if that of which they must be persuaded is wrong.’¹⁰
   PowerPoint is, finally, a tool of education. Occasionally during some university orals, a student might wonder if the oral was more about a financial year, a lesson driven by PowerPoint, first of all. The question is no longer to prepare students for the job, but to create good rhetoreticians. On this point, Gorgias explains to Socrates, ‘And whoever is the man presenting an argument in favour, compared in debate, the speaker will persuade that his argument be chosen, rather than that of his opponent; because there is no subject on which the speaker would speak in a more convincing manner in front of a crowd, so great and appealing is the potency of our art’.
   The contemporary translation of this statement could be that it is better to have a good PowerPoint introduced by an incompetent, than be given a speech by an expert. So, to persuade about the urgency to struggle against global warming, it is better to have the PowerPoint used by Al Gore in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth¹¹ by David Guggenheim than to provide speech of the most erudite climatologists.

PowerPoint: show, to provoke thought
It would be inadequate or inexact to dismiss the success of PowerPoint solely for its triumphant packaging of content. PowerPoint often supports a sophisticated rhetorician, a technician.
   The médiologue can also discern the numerical resumption of a more Aristotelian rhetoric, a rhetoric less subjugated by its own power, a rhetoric more in the service of truth and beauty. There is nothing worse than when PowerPoint renders rhetoric heavy, when it is badly used. Of course, one can see it coming, an annoying aspect of the control of the progression of thought. The presenter is there to persuade, but after all, the firm commitment apparent in the flux of a well-written text is worth the artful juxtaposition of a PowerPoint presentation, if the reason is fair.
   We have seen a Minister of Finance¹² skilfully use a PowerPoint presentation as a kind of supplement. His bright and open speech was simplistically interspersed by dynamic zooms into a slide or swift transitions from one to the other, to the delight of his audience. By recalling the conditions of a dialectical exchange, reinstituting dialogue with his public like a midwife might, he revitalized the foreseeable fixity of his PowerPoint. Pictures came in support of words and provided more evidence that yes, in order to persuade the young generations one needed to divert eyes taught to dart from screen to screen. Such technique was needed, at the very least. It proves that a good visual speech, that is to say a speech which constructs a “point of view”, is a universal speech bearing firm belief, one which transcends national languages. A picture does not require translation.
   PowerPoint is a rhetoric machine adapted for the Doubting Thomases of the world, who believe only what they see. PowerPoint, sits at the peak of the vidéosphère, the worship of appearance. During the first film screened by the Lumière Brothers, the seated audience dropped down under their chairs when they saw an engine entering the railway station of La Ciotat. What sequence of slides could be placed in a row today to produce the same result?
   A century later the young generations have an advanced disposition to the screen. Consequently they understand that the picture of the engine signals no danger. Their enormous experience with an ongoing succession of screens has conferred upon them three new talents.

1. They learned to read pictures, and not only texts.
2. They know how to read several speeches at the same time, from multiple sources, without being unsettled.
3. They demand a connection which enables interaction (i.e. Wikipédia¹², continual interaction with a “living” encyclopædia).

   PowerPoint answers the first two points wonderfully by arranging the reading of picture and writings hierarchically. For the third, let us note that in its 2007 version, PowerPoint’s new connectivity allows collaborative tasks and hyperlinks with the Internet universe. In doing so, Microsoft upgrades PowerPoint in the hypersphère¹³ of Web 2·0, reinforcing the potential to perpetuate its already considerable success.
   PowerPoint is a sign of the times, ardently American, giving everyone the possibility of creating amateur cinema, and of conceiving small illustrated visions of the world. Even when it occurs in a clumsy manner, even if its assertiveness of firm belief is applied for the poorest of reasons, it has its worth. PowerPoint understands that it is necessary to demonstrate in our contemporary world, and thus to compel people to think.

Notes
   1. Steve Jobs, MacWorld 2007, San Francisco, Calif. Video of available speech at http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d5200/event.
   2. E. Tufte: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2nd ed. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press LLC, 2006.
   3. E. Tufte: ‘PowerPoint makes you dumb’, The New York Times, December 17, 2003.
   4. ‘Point of view on PowerPoint’, The Guardian.
   5. R. E. Mayer: Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.
   6. ‘The most prevalent form of persuasion technology.’ Readers will appreciate the ambiguity of the English word prevalent, which means at the same time spread and predominating.
   7. R. Debray: Cours de Médiologie générale. Paris: Gallimard 1991, reissued folio, Paris: Gallimard 2001.
   8. Plato: Gorgias.
   9. An Inconvenient Truth, film by David Guggenheim, 2006.
   10. R. Barthes: ‘L’ancienne rhétorique’, Communications, n° 16, 1970, p. 197.
   11. This refers to a presentation by Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
   12. Wikipedia is an online-based collaborative encyclopædia, www.wikipedia.com.
   13. L. Merzeau: Cahiers de médiologie, no. 6, 1998. ‘This will not kill that.’

Pierre d’Huy is an international consultant specializing in the Management of Innovation, and a professor affiliated with the Management Institute of Paris. He teaches at CELSA Sorbonne Paris IV. His most recent book is Collective Innovation from Éditions Liaisons Sociales. There is more to come in February 2007 in another book, Collective Imagination.
   Stanley Moss translated this essay from Pierre d’Huy’s original text in French. Mr Moss is CEO of the Medinge Group, a Stockholm-based think-tank on international branding. He is also founder of Diganzi, an international brand consultancy, www.diganzi.com.

Pierre d’Huy
Experts Consulting
Professeur associé, Management Institute of Paris
p.dhuy@experts-consulting.com

D’Huy: ‹PowerPoint, la rhétorique universelle›, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
Version PDF | English translation by Stanley Moss

Êtes-vous PowerPoint? Il faut du courage pour se lancer aujourd’hui dans une conférence sans la ressource du précieux logiciel de mise en écran des textes et des images (ou de ce qu’il faut en retenir). Mais cette pensée PowerPoint peut faire aussi quelques dégâts.

‹Dans la machine rhétorique, ce que l’on met au début, émergeant à peine d’une aphasie native, ce sont des matériaux bruts de raisonnement, des faits, un «sujet»; ce que l’on trouve à la ?n, c’est un discours complet, structuré, tout armé pour la persuasion› – Roland Barthes: ‹L’ancienne rhétorique›, Communications, n° 16, 1970, B.0.4, p. 197.

PowerPoint est un programme de Microsoft qui permet de concevoir des présentations électroniques sous forme de succession de diapositives. Ces diapositives peuvent contenir des images, du texte, des films, des tableaux de chiffres et toutes sortes d’infographies ou d’hyperliens. Cet assistant de présentation est utilisé massivement partout dans le monde par les hommes d’affaires et les étudiants. Microsoft estime à trente millions le nombre de présentations PowerPoint élaborées par jour dans le monde. Le succès du programme PowerPoint est si considérable qu’il ne peut être expliqué uniquement par la baisse récente du prix des projecteurs et des ordinateurs. Il constitue en soi un fait de société qui semble aller de soi. Ce type de succès inaperçu attire immanquablement l’œil du médiologue. Plutôt que de le relativiser, prenons le temps de le revitaliser. L’utilisation continue de PowerPoint, comme support de référence, construit, à la longue, une forme particulière de discours et modélise une certaine façon de penser, de démontrer, de convaincre. Depuis sa création, il y a vingt ans, PowerPoint poursuit discrètement un travail hégémonique de constitution de norme. Il y a fort à parier que bientôt les jeunes générations ne pourront plus envisager de s’exprimer à l’oral sans assistant de présentation. On observe à cet égard que PowerPoint est de plus en plus utilisé pour … les discours de mariage.
   Plus inquiétant, elles pourraient ne plus pouvoir écouter un orateur s’exprimer sans PowerPoint. Face à la petite musique que produit la machine rhétorique, le discours classique pourrait leur devenir inaudible. PowerPoint permet de concevoir des présentations limpides, Steve Jobs en a fait une démonstration lors du lancement de l’Iphone au MacWorld 2007 de San Francisco.¹ À la façon d’un pianiste qui maîtrise parfaitement l’indépendance des aides de sa main gauche et de sa main droite, il associe une projection simultanée de textes et d’images pour illustrer son propos. Grâce à PowerPoint, le confort d’écoute est maximum, et la compréhension est facilitée. PowerPoint permet aussi de manipuler son auditoire par l’utilisation de principe d’argumentation fondé sur l’effet plus que sur la preuve. Ainsi c’est sur la base d’un document PowerPoint que le Général américain Colin Powell présenta, le 7 février 2003, la confirmation de la présence d’armes de destruction massive en Irak au Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies (voir reproduction jointe de certaines diapositives utilisées).
   Ainsi des effets pervers, soulevés par ses détracteurs, peuvent se résumer autour de cinq points majeurs:

• problème d’utilisateur: si PowerPoint améliore les bons présentateurs, il rend toujours insupportable les médiocres. PowerPoint est un instrument professionnel multimédia complexe mis à disposition d’un grand public insuffisamment compétent;
• problème de rédaction: rares sont les présentations PowerPoint qui jouent vraiment le jeu de la brièveté d’un instrument de type ‹support›. La plupart des présentations PowerPoint sont bavardes et laborieuses;
• problème d’efficacité du principe de démonstration: à la logique de fluidité du discours classique s’oppose le principe haché de la successivité des diapositives PowerPoint. Souvent PowerPoint ânonne;
• problème de manipulation: le principe de juxtaposition exonère le présentateur de la nécessité logique d’enchaînement de cause à effet du texte rédigé. Juxtaposer n’est pas démontrer. Souvent les syllogismes de démonstration des présentations PowerPoint sont faibles ou contestables. Mais ils sont délicats à réfuter parce que le présentateur peut à sa guise en escamoter les premières étapes. La pensée de son auditoire est sous le contrôle d’un rythme imposé et d’une lecture partielle;
• problème d’utilisation: le support PowerPoint, qui a nécessairement vocation à être porté par un présentateur, est souvent envoyé par courriel, sans explications, comme document de référence. C’est un peu comme si on envoyait les accessoires d’un illusionniste et que l’on charge la personne qui les reçoit de reconstruire le numéro qu’il fait sur scène. Détourné de son statut de support de présentation, PowerPoint corrompt l’information qu’il est censé porter.

   Pour toutes ces raisons, certaines personnes doutent de la réelle efficacité pédagogique de PowerPoint. Des associations américaines de parents d’élèves réclament l’interdiction de son utilisation dans les collèges et les lycées. Pour entrer plus dans le détail sur le point de vue de ses détracteurs, il suffit de se référer au très efficace ouvrage d’Edward Tufte² et à toute une série d’articles comme celui du New York Times intitulé ‹Power Point vous rend idiots›³ ou encore ‹Point de vue sur PowerPoint›⁴ du Guardian.

PowerPoint, discours simultané
PowerPoint provient de l’univers Apple Macintosh, c’est-à-dire d’un monde qui a permis l’accès du grand public à l’informatique dans les années 80. Le monde d’Apple est celui de l’image, celui des créatifs et des graphistes. Le monde de ceux qui s’affranchissent de la tyrannie de la ligne horizontale parallèle des caractères mobiles d’imprimerie. Le monde de la flèche de la souris qui se promène librement sur l’écran et s’additionne à la barre clignotante des lettres du clavier. Le pinceau de Macintosh contre le caractère mobile et la machine Underwood. L’esprit libre du dessin peut s’envisager sur l’écran électronique. On songe à la liberté des Calligrammes de Guillaume Apollinaire et à la difficulté technique de leur reproduction.
   PowerPoint multiplie l’arsenal des effets à disposition de l’orateur et ce faisant, superpose ses moyens. Les ‹effets› PowerPoint sont les nouvelles figures rhétoriques de notre temps. Les insertions d’images, vidéo-clip, schémas, graphiques, infographies, animations, illustrations par des images diverses sont comme les cousins numériques de la métaphore ou de la métonymie. Ce qui justifie qu’on le qualifie d’auto-content wizard, de magicien de contenu automatisé.
   Richard Mayer, professeur de psychologie à l’université de Californie à Santa-Barbara, a étudié dans le détail une particularité humaine: posséder un système d’information séparé pour ce qui se voit et ce qui s’entend. Il a aussi constaté que s’adresser aux deux canaux simultanément, permet au public non seulement de comprendre mieux, mais de convaincre mieux. C’est l’effet ‹Double Canal›,⁵ élément clé de la mécanique de conviction PowerPoint.
   Arrêtons-nous un instant sur un intéressant mélange de genres, puisque en PowerPoint, le visible se dédouble dans le lisible. PowerPoint crée ici un nouveau comportement: la lecture collective sur écran. Quelque chose qui se situe, pour reprendre les trois âges de Régis Debray,⁶ quelque part entre la graphosphère et la vidéosphère. Entre l’apparition et la publication puisque le texte est lu et vu, simultanément et collectivement. Ceci est peut-être une explication de son succès. PowerPoint joue sur les frontières. PowerPoint est une machine à réconcilier ce qui est écrit et ce qui doit être vu. L’image se rachète une conduite par le contrepoids du texte écrit et le texte s’allège, s’élève par l’image.
   PowerPoint met en pages et conçoit des diapositives comprenant du texte, des images, des chiffres, des tableaux, simultanément. Le simultanéisme, propre aux surréalistes, que l’on trouve dans la Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France en 1913. Ce poème, illustré par des dessins de Sonia Delaunay, fut sous-titré, par Blaise Cendrars, Premier livre simultané. Pour bien communiquer, et convaincre, le logiciel PowerPoint a compris qu’il faut multiplier des dires en parallèle: voir une image-lire un texte-entendre un présentateur, tout cela simultanément. Les figures rhétoriques de PowerPoint s’effectuent dans les écarts entre les trois dimensions: l’image, le texte et la voix. Trois dires qui se synchronisent, se répètent, ou tout au contraire, se décalent, s’éloignent, se percutent.

PowerPoint, présentation ou représentation?
De simple support, le programme PowerPoint est en passe de devenir une langue. Une langue universelle utilisée par le monde professionnel, comme par le monde universitaire. Le discours y est soigneusement mis en scène. Y faire son cinéma, c’est le mot d’ordre. Toutes les salles de réunion de toutes les multinationales du monde sont aujourd’hui dotées d’un grand écran pour l’accueillir. Toute présentation s’y transforme invariablement en représentation. Chacun répète, construit, monte, chronomètre ses interventions. Si le médium c’est le message, alors avec PowerPoint tout est show business. À tel point que le discours devient plus important que l’émetteur et que l’on finit par confondre le projecteur et le présentateur.
  De plus en plus de sites de presse proposent à leurs visiteurs des diaporamas en PowerPoint. Le Journal du Net, en partenariat avec l’AFP, propose ce type de diaporama pour comprendre l’économie en six cent soixante quinze images. Business Week conçoit un ‹Slide Show› sur la plupart de ses thématiques. Ces présentations sont auto-animées, elles se présentent comme une succession de diapositives. Elles constituent un intermédiaire entre la proposition d’articles rédigés et celle de courts sujets vidéo. Elles démontrent admirablement qu’un bon PowerPoint peut, en réalité, très bien se passer de présentateur. Ceci explique pourquoi le présentateur de PowerPoint est contraint à la théâtralisation. C’est parce qu’il se trouve souvent en porte-à-faux, en situation non pas de synergie, mais de compétition avec sa présentation PowerPoint. Face à un écran géant, il est poussé à en faire trop pour exister. Un simple propos devient alors une présentation; une hypothèse, une revendication. Le présentateur est entraîné, souvent à son corps défendant, à montrer, démontrer, même quand il n’y a rien à voir. Sans raison réelle, on s’emballe, on étale, on paillette le propos. C’est le reproche le plus grave que l’on peut faire à PowerPoint. PowerPoint n’aime pas les histoires, il tue la narration et la fait migrer, en la séquençant de façon inopportune, en discours de conviction.

PowerPoint: propriété de la parole
PowerPoint répond point par point à la description de la machine rhétorique de Barthes, il est défini par Microsoft comme ‹la forme de technologie de persuasion la plus aboutie›.⁷ Convaincre (fidem facere, de la Probatio) par ce que l’on dit et simultanément émouvoir (animos impellere) par ce que l’on voit. PowerPoint. C’est le retour d’un art de la persuasion qui n’a été laissé en jachère que depuis Napoléon III, époque des derniers traités rhétoriques d’importance, alors qu’il a constitué la colonne vertébrale de l’enseignement de toutes les classes dirigeantes depuis Athènes au cinquième siècle. La rhétorique est contemporaine de la Démocratie, c’est une langue conçue pour séduire les jurys populaires des procès. Ce n’est peut-être pas le fait du hasard que ce soient des Américains, grands amateurs d’affaires judiciaires, qui imaginent avec PowerPoint le premier principe d’une application informatique. Cette première rhétorique est décriée par Platon dans son Gorgias.⁸ Socrate y oppose le ‹faire croire› du rhéteur au ‹faire savoir› du philosophe. Calliclès lui répond que ‹la rhétorique n’a aucun besoin de savoir ce que sont les choses dont elle parle, simplement elle a découvert un procédé qui sert à convaincre›.
   PowerPoint n’a pas pour objet la connaissance, mais la conviction. Loin de la recherche de la vérité par le dialogue et la réfutation de la maïeutique socratique, la rhétorique se contente de son statut de machine à convaincre. N’importe quel type d’assemblage de simples vraisemblables lui convient, à condition que cet objectif soit atteint. Barthes nous rappelle, dans son séminaire à l’École Pratique des Hautes Études, en 1964, que la rhétorique est aussi une pratique sociale, une technique privilégiée (puisqu’il faut payer pour l’acquérir) qui permet aux classes dirigeantes de s’assurer la propriété de la parole. Avec PowerPoint, c’est bien de cela qu’il s’agit, s’assurer la propriété de la parole. Grâce à une mise en forme de contenu, qui s’enseigne et s’apprend. Une pure technologie de persuasion au service de la conviction d’un auditoire. ‹Un «art» de la persuasion, ensemble de règles, de recettes, dont la mise en œuvre permet de convaincre l’auditeur du discours, même si ce dont on doit le persuader est faux.›⁹
   PowerPoint est enfin un enseignement. Ainsi parfois, lors de certains oraux d’épreuves universitaires, on se demande si l’oral n’est pas, tout d’abord, un exercice, une leçon de PowerPoint. Puisque la question n’est plus tant de faire des étudiants des hommes de métier, mais des bons rhéteurs. Gorgias s’explique à Socrate sur ce point: ‹Et quel que soit l’homme de métier que lui opposerait le débat, l’orateur persuaderait qu’on le choisisse lui plutôt que n’importe qui d’autre; car il n’y a pas de sujet sur lequel l’orateur ne parlerait de façon plus persuasive que n’importe quel homme de métier devant une foule. Tant est grande et belle la puissance de notre art›. La traduction contemporaine de cela pourrait être qu’il vaut mieux un bon PowerPoint présenté par un incompétent, qu’un discours d’expert. Ainsi, pour convaincre de l’urgence à lutter contre le réchauffement climatique, mieux vaut le PowerPoint d’Al Gore dans le documentaire Une vérité qui dérange de David Guggenheim que les discours des plus érudits climatologues.

PowerPoint: donner à voir, pour donner à penser
Ce serait un raccourci inexact de ne considérer le succès de PowerPoint que comme le triomphe d’un contenant sur un contenu. PowerPoint est souvent le support d’une rhétorique sophiste, manipulatrice. Le médiologue peut aussi y voir une reprise numérique d’une rhétorique plus aristotélicienne. Une rhétorique moins subjuguée par son propre pouvoir, une rhétorique plus au service du vrai et du beau. Il n’y a rien de surprenant à ce que la rhétorique PowerPoint soit lourdaude lorsqu’elle est mal utilisée. Bien sûr, on la voit venir, avec le côté irritant du contrôle du cheminement de la pensée de celui qui reste à convaincre … mais après tout la conviction du flux d’un texte bien rédigé vaut bien la persuasion de la juxtaposition adroite d’une présentation PowerPoint, pour peu que la cause soit juste.
   On a vu un ministre des finances¹⁰ utiliser habilement une présentation PowerPoint comme une sorte de stock. Son discours brillant et libre fut simplement émaillé par de brusques zooms sur une diapositive ou une autre, au gré de ses échanges avec son auditoire. En reconvoquant les conditions d’un échange dialectique, en réinstaurant le dialogue avec son public à la façon des maïeuticiens, il revitalisa la fixité prévisible de son PowerPoint. L’image vint en support au verbe et l’on se dit que oui, peut-être, pour convaincre les jeunes générations et détourner leurs yeux habitués à virevolter d’un écran à l’autre, il fallait au moins cela. Un bon discours visuel, c’est-à-dire un discours qui construit un ‹point de vue›, un discours universel de conviction qui transcende les langues nationales. Parce qu’une image ne se traduit pas. PowerPoint est signe de son temps, américain en diable, il offre, à tous, la possibilité de faire son petit cinéma amateur, de concevoir des petites visions du monde illustrées. Et, même si cela se produit la plupart du temps de façon maladroite, même si sa puissance de conviction est parfois utilisée pour de mauvaises causes, il a du moins le mérite d’avoir compris qu’il faut donner à voir à notre monde contemporain, pour lui donner à penser.

Notes
   1. Steve Jobs, à MacWorld 2007, San Francisco. Vidéo du discours disponible sur http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d5200/event.
   2. E. Tufte: The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2e édition. Cheshire, Conn.: Graphics Press LLC, 2006.
   3. E. Tufte: ‹PowerPoint makes you dumb›, The New York Times, 17e decembre 2003.
   4. ‹Point of view on PowerPoint›, The Guardian.
   5. ‹Dual channel›, dans R. E. Mayer: Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.
   6. R. Debray: Cours de Médiologie générale. Paris: Gallimard 1991, rééd. coll. Folio essais. Paris: Gallimard 2001.
   7. Platon: Gorgias.
   8. An Inconvenient Truth, documentaire de David Guggenheim, 2006.
   9. R. Barthes: ‹L’ancienne rhétorique›, Communications, n° 16, 1970, p. 197.
   10. Il s’agit de Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
   11. Wikipedia est un encyclopédie collaborative, www.wikipedia.com.

Pierre d’Huy est consultant International en Management de l’Innovation, Professeur associé au Management Institute of Paris, Enseignant au CELSA Sorbonne Paris IV. Dernier ouvrage paru L’Innovation Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales et à paraître en février 2007, L’Imagination Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales. Pierre d’Huy est consultant International en Management de l’Innovation, Professeur associé au Management Institute of Paris, Enseignant au CELSA Sorbonne Paris IV. Dernier ouvrage paru L’Innovation Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales et à paraître en février 2007, L’Imagination Collective, Éditions Liaisons Sociales.

Malcolm S. Allan
Locum Consulting
mallan@locumconsulting.com

M. Allan: ‘Place Branding’, The Journal of the Medinge Group, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007.
PDF version

Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to outline what is involved in place branding and its relevance to urban planning and the environment and to illustrate this through a case study of the brand strategy recently created for a major new urban development in the Overhoeks area of north Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

What is a brand?
A brand is the good name of a product, an organization or a place. For time limited consumers—shoppers, investors, traders, visitors, migrant talent—it’s a short-hand to an informed decision to buy a particular product, to access a specific service, or to travel to a city, region or country for a holiday or to attend an event, to invest in a development or to open a factory. But, of most importance, a brand is a promise of value to consumers—e.g. a guarantee of value, of quality, of performance, of service delivery, or of after-care.

What is branding about?
Branding is about creating value for those who have a stake in a brand, its reputation, its products or services—designers, investors, manufacturers, salesforces, retailers, and outlets, and about creating value for consumers who wish to purchase its products and services. A brand is also an organizing principle and a decision making tool—it is the basis of the way in which products and services are created and offered to consumers and it provides a basis for making decisions about which products or services to develop, their standards of design, their quality of finish and the way in which they are made available and delivered to consumers. And a brand also helps businesses and organizations to close the gap between policy and execution by providing guidelines and values on what to offer, how to create it and how to make it available to consumers.

Why brand places?
In recent years, the expansion of trade and the growing importance of media have led to recognition of the importance of marketing and promotion in supporting the economic development of places. Globalization of trade has meant that products and services can be purchased from an almost limitless number of sources. Differences in price and quality, the traditional points of competition, are being steadily eroded; distance too matters much less. Thus, perception of place has become an important factor in distinguishing between otherwise often fairly similar products, services and investment opportunities.
   At the same time, the role of the media has increased enormously, with the expansion of access to the internet, satellite television and ubiquitous telecommunications. The images created and left by the media play a tremendous role in shaping our views of places and products. Moreover, growth in global travel and communication has increased our exposure to and awareness of places; and equally powerful images and information about places are obtained through personal networks, business travel, and tourism. What we think about investment opportunities, for example in Thailand, Indonesia, Turkey, China, Chile, India and South Africa, is inextricably tied to the information and interactions we have with these places as brands.
   In this new environment, a number of countries, regions and cities have embarked on programmes to market and promote themselves, both to domestic and to international markets. Whilst the priorities often vary, from promoting tourism to targeting FDI, to supporting exports, the overall objective is typically the same: to make key audiences aware of what the place has to offer and to shape the message that these audiences receive.
   The experience of such “place marketing” programmes has been decidedly mixed. Many campaigns have launched with a new logo and strap line, a flurry of press (and the obligatory series of CNN adverts), only to fade away in time, leaving the place with little substantive impact. Such failure typically has many root causes, but three of the most common are:

• a focus on place marketing rather than place branding: too many places confuse place branding with place marketing which tends to focus on the promotion of current attractions and the place as a destination for tourists. By comparison, creating and managing a place brand strategy involves a rigorous assessment of how a place operates, the assets it has, its offer to consumers, its ability to survive and grow, its ambition and vision for its future and the resources it has at its disposal to realize that vision, and the identification of the “on-brand” actions it needs to take to make a reality of it;
• a short-term, “campaign” mentality that does not meet on-the-ground realities: effective place branding takes time, and building a brand requires but real changes (in attitude and action) on the ground before ad campaigns and public relations can take effect. Also, too many place branding initiatives are focused on short-term advertisements, painting aspirational views of the place, which have virtually no link to the real experiences of investors, tourists and business people that interact with it. Place branding takes time and must involve a well organized, programmatic approach and long-term buy-in from public and private sector stakeholders and from the community of the place;
• lack of prioritization and clear differentiation of place: no place can (or should) be everything to everyone, yet many place branding initiatives attempt just this. Developing a clear brand image built on sources of sustainable differentiation and competitive value, and targeted to well-defined audiences, is critical to effective place branding.

What’s required for place branding?
In order to create and implement an effective brand strategy places require:

• agreement among key stakeholders on a shared vision of how their place will develop in the future and what it will offer of value to consumers;
• shared leadership and partnership between these stakeholders to define and realize their brand strategy;
• a clear understanding of the current de facto brand of the place among the stakeholders and how it was formed (i.e. its current offer);
• action to connect the key stakeholders and enable them to work effectively in partnership;
• “on-brand” actions that are taken by the stakeholders to demonstrate the brand and bring it alive, not just communications about it.

Place branding stakeholders
   Figure 1 below illustrates the key stakeholders who are required to work in partnership to create a place brand strategy. Places need to involve all of their key stakeholders who can invest in and communicate what is happening in the place and what they are doing to develop it in line with an agreed, shared, vision. All of those organizations and institutions that have a stake in the future development of the place need to be involved in the process. The investments they make in the development of the place, the actions they take and the communications they put out are all vital elements of how the story of the city will be communicated. The principle channels through which a place commonly communicates are its tourism, its private sector, its government and public policy, investment and immigration, its culture and education, and its people. The policies of the government on, and the investment made by the private sector in, tourism facilities, attractions and its workforce communicate powerful messages about the place to potential visitors about how it operates.

Figure 1
The Place Brand Hexagon
©Placebrands 2003

   The scale and nature of investment in tourism, in cultural, the arts, and heritage, says a great deal about the extent to which the place values tourism and how well it caters for and cares for tourists, cares for its environment and values its heritage.
   The private sector often says a great deal about their place, about its ability to produce excellent products and services, about creativity and their leaders. It can say things to the external world about other aspects of the place such as the private sector’s regard for sustainable development, its treatment of natural and human resources, its respect for its arts, culture and heritage.
   How the place conducts its relations with other countries, regions or cities, businesses and institutions, communicates much about the values of the place and its rulers that can create distinct impressions in people’s minds and alter their opinions about it. Similarly, perceptions of the place can be altered by the way its leadership treats its own citizens through their education, training, housing, social security, cultural and environmental policies and programmes, all of which can have an impact on business, and the attraction of tourists and foreign investment.
   The pattern, scale and nature of investment in the place, by the government and by the private sector, both local and foreign, in infrastructure—transportation, airports, docks, power and communications utilities, in human and economic infrastructures—in schools, technical institutes and universities, all sends messages to the population, potential residents (e.g. talent) and investors.
   The culture of the place communicates a great deal about its values its arts, literature, traditions and heritage. Its heritage and how it is valued communicates how the population values its past. And the way in which landmarks are cared for and used says a lot about how the population values and cares for its environment. Investment in education and training says a great deal about how a place values its people as does the extent of private sector investment in the development of the workforce.
   Finally, the population of the place communicates to visitors, as they interact with them, how much they value visitors, investors and each other. Community groups and NGOs demonstrate the role of the civil society in their community.

Some examples of place brands
   There are a variety of place brands in the world, each emphasizing one or several elements of their offer of value to consumers in order to distinguish themselves from their competition. For example, Spain has built its brand strategy on a combination of evolving and distinguishing characteristics commencing with being a new democracy, on its tourism, its culture, on sports (e.g. the Barcelona Olympics), and now on the development of new technologically advanced businesses, especially in the computer gaming and virtual reality sectors. In contrast, Ireland has built its brand on the creation of opportunities for foreign direct investment (FDI) supported by a favourable fiscal climate and the development of the skills and knowledge of its people and its Diaspora around the world. A similar variety can also be observed in city brands: for example, the port city of Southampton in the UK is building a brand based on its role as a magnet for innovation, reflecting the reputation and expertise of its universities and key sectors, such as marine engineering; and the downtown area of Washington DC, its Business Improvement District, is building a brand as America’s meeting place, recapturing and updating its heritage as a place where the public, private and not-for-profit sector come together for the common good.

What is place brand strategy?
   A place brand strategy helps the key stakeholders of the place to chart a route towards realizing their shared vision for the development of the future offer of the place. It helps to define the value that will be created for those stakeholders, for example through increased income generated by sports events or from retail sales, from increased investment in land and buildings, from job creation and from the creation of new services. It provides a decision making tool for shareholders to identify really “on-brand” investments from among the many possibilities and opportunities on offer to them. And, it provides a set of guiding principles for everyone who is involved in bringing the brand alive, principles that help to determine the right actions, programmes, investments and communications about them.

Place brand partnership
   To implement a brand strategy places need to create an effective partnership of their key stakeholders from the public, private and community sectors: national, regional or local governments, developers, investors, major employers and their business associations, further and higher education institutions, foundations, charitable organizations and community representative bodies, and the media. These people and the organizations they represent are crucial for the development and implementation of the brand strategy. Not only do they need to “own” the process, they need to be willing, individually and with others, to invest in the implementation of the resulting strategy.
   In all too many places, our experience is that many stakeholders fail to understand that partnerships and their leadership are complex and need to be worked at if they are to be effective. Good leadership is central to the success of partnerships, especially those uniting the public, private and community sectors. The leadership of partnerships dealing with place brand strategies is different from leadership of private companies and public organizations. Place brand partnerships are not like central government departments, or local government or private companies or voluntary, community and charitable organizations. They are a hybrid form of organization. Their characteristics are determined by those who set them up, the purpose for which they were created and by those who form the team that leads the work of the partnership, the key stakeholders of the place. The form of partnership organization and operation is rarely a given. It has to be negotiated and agreed by those who are going to be involved. Brand partnership has to be worked at. If partnership is “the glue that knits” diverse interests together to undertake projects that they cannot do by themselves, then the way they are led and who participates in that leadership is of profound importance.
   A place brand partnership is commonly composed of a Brand Leadership Team—senior top level decision makers drawn from the place’s key stakeholders—government politicians and civil servants, private sector CEOs, directors of community and not for profit organizations and senior representatives of the media, and a Brand Development Team—action takers drawn from the same key stake-holder’s organizations who take responsibility for implementation.

Creating a place brand strategy
To create a brand, the key stakeholders need to undertake a rigorous and robust process of strategy creation and implementation. This is not like an advertising campaign of a short duration. It can take between six and nine months to create a brand strategy depending on the size and complexity of the place. And the resulting strategy can be for a period of between five and fifteen years depending on the nature of the scale of ambition of the place and how much needs to change to realize it.
   The process commonly consists of three stages: initiation, vision and strategy, and marketing and implementation:

• stage one, initiation, consists of identification of the key stakeholders and their formation in to a brand partnership—a brand leadership team and a brand development team, and their developing a good understanding of what place branding involves and its potential benefits;
• stage two, vision and strategy, consists of an assessment of the status quo of the place to create an understanding of the current, de facto brand, and the creation of an agreed vision for the future development of the place. To understand its current brand the partnership needs to analyse the internal factors that contribute to and shape the brand’s manifestations, and then conduct an analysis of the external factors that shape the way in which the place is experienced, perceived and recognized by specific target audiences around the globe. In parallel, the stakeholders need to create and agree a shared vision of the future planned offer of value of the place to consumers and investors, internal and external. This needs to be followed by the development of alternative scenarios for a brand strategy to help realize the vision, the selection of a scenario for detailed development and then its testing in target markets;
• stage three, marketing and implementation, involves the creation of a detailed marketing strategy consisting of on-brand actions (investments, developments, events, programmes, etc.) that bring the brand alive and communications about them; a detailed implementation plan—costed and scheduled; proposals for brand strategy management—designing the most suitable form of organization, its staffing and its activities, and its monitoring and evaluation—determining and tracking the key indicators of the brand and acting on them.

The case study—Overhoeks North Amsterdam
Just a few hundred metres across the river IJ from Amsterdam Central Station lies a large area which until recently was occupied by Shell Research. Shell’s New Technology Centre (NTC) is currently under construction and will require some 20 ha less space than the old facility. The surplus land has been sold to the city of Amsterdam. A consortium consisting of ING Real Estate (the world’s second largest real estate developer) and Ymere (a local housing corporation) have been awarded the contract to redevelop the area to provide, housing, offices, cultural and entertainment facilities. Vesteda (a private sector rental housing company) and the Dutch National Film Museum have also committed themselves to the area.
   This eclectic group of stakeholders, while all having their own specific goals, needs, ambitions and plans for the area, realized that they had a common interest in seeing this regeneration succeed—its size and location make it of national as well as local importance. Placebrands was appointed by ING Real Estate to work with the stakeholders to form and run a Brand Partnership, consisting of a Brand Leadership Team of senior decision-makers and a Brand Development Team consisting of their key managers, which is responsible for implementing strategy and management.
   The objectives agreed for the project were:

• to position the area as more than just a successful construction project—rather the birth of a new quarter of the city of Amsterdam with its own distinctive character;
• to provide the area with sustainable competitive advantages over other parts of the city;
• to change current perceptions of the area to being an appealing, pleasant and lively part of the city;
• to take the first step towards establishing North Amsterdam as a valued and integral part of the city;
• ensure that the area and its activities are seen as a contribution to the life and appeal of the whole city.

   Working closely with the Brand Leadership Team, we formulated a shared vision for the future of the area as a lively,