In my last blog post on city branding, I explained why developing a branding strategy for your city is a critical first step in the city-branding process. Based on information from CEOs for Cities' Report "Branding Your City," I suggested gathering information on what your city's business and community leaders think your city's brand is or should be. Once you have compiled and processed these responses, you can dig into the next phase of city-branding - initiating a place branding strategy - which the CEOs for Cities' report breaks down into the following eight-step process. Read on to learn more about the steps and why each one is important for implementing a city brand.

1. Define Clear Objectives
Although this step plays a role in defining a city-branding strategy, it is important to address this question in greater detail, because it's crucial everyone involved in the branding process has a clear understanding of the goals and objectives of the brand. Is it to attract new residents? Change its current reputation? Increase commerce? By answering these questions, you can define the scope of the project and give everyone involved a clear direction on the task at hand.

2. Understand the Target Audience
Find out who your audience is and what their current feelings are of your city. Discover what they need and want out of your city. Coordinating in-depth focus groups with members of the business sector, residents, tourists, political leaders, media and students will allow you to tap into what your target audience is and will also help you with the next step.

3. Identify Current Brand Image
"The ultimate goal of this step is to understand how the target audience views the place today, so that the gap between the current state and the desired state or aspirational state can be assessed. It is the gap that the positioning must close." Here is where the focus groups come into play again. Consider how the target thinks the city has changed over time in comparison to its current personality. Tap into what people associate your city with. Does your city evoke any images? And what do they think the city's pros and cons are? 

4. Set the Aspirational Identity
An aspirational brand identity is based on what you want people to think of your city. It is the city's ideal reputation and personality, and it is determined by what type of experience you want people to have when in the city. The aspirational identity is the desired state and is a on a long-term basis. It also impacts future business and community decisions. 

5. Develop the Positioning
"Positioning is a promise or a benefit that a place wants to own in the minds of the audience." It differs from brand identity in that it's shorter. It is more relevant to the near-term than aspirational, and it focuses on providing a specific attribute to the audience. Not to mention, it's necessary to further communication about your brand. Positioning communicates the primary benefit your city is providing.

6. Create Value Propositions
Some of your city's messages will appeal to all audiences. But in most cases, messages will be of different importance and relevance to each individual audience. So cater key messages to each individual audience, making the messages more effective in influencing perceptions and actions.

7. Execute the Brand Strategy
Consider every point at which your target audience may be exposed to your brand. The environment, airport, street signage, advertising, websites, events, media, residents' attitudes, etc. are all avenues in which the target can be exposed to your city's brand. Every interaction is an opportunity to improve your brand. CEOs' report suggests categorizing these opportunities into three areas: pre-visit (advertising, PR, brochures, websites), during a visit (parks, clean streets, night life) and post visit (comments from colleagues, newspapers and other media, photos, personal experiences). Then, prioritize these opportunities based on what has the most impact, because effective executions depend on how you utilize these opportunities to enhance your brand's credibility. And don't forget the power of organic efforts such as word-of-mouth.

8. Measure Success
When measuring success, look at your efforts in terms of how it has affected your audiences, how branding activities have developed over time and how the brand has impacted businesses. Evaluation tactics are most helpful when they are consistently measured the same way over time and are measured in coordination with the economic and community developments. It is also helpful to share results with political, economic and civic organizations, so they can make decisions based on results. 

Can you think of any other steps that would be helpful in the development of a brand? Are there any cities that you think have implemented this process effectively?