https://500px.com/embed.js

I have been thinking a lot about city branding lately. It’s a topic I’m interested in to begin with, and all of the Blue Jays mania going on in Toronto right now has got thinking about our own brand.

Because at the end of the day, yes, it’s baseball. But it’s also something much larger. It’s about civic and national pride, and it’s about who we are as a city. That’s why city branding has become a global industry and why it’s so closely connected to tourism, media, sports, and entertainment.

Still, great city branding is incredibly difficult to do. Lots of cities have tried and lots of cities – from Adelaide to Toronto – have failed. Anyone remember the “Toronto Unlimited” brand of the mid-2000′s? It had absolutely zero stickiness.

But in reality, cities are brand building all the time whether they realize it or not. Here in Toronto, our biggest brand builder right now is probably Drake. That might sound silly to some, but I believe it to be true. And next to that, you have people like Jose Bautista with his bat flips and his support of local brands like Peace Collective. In addition to their day jobs, these people are helping to shape the identity of the city.

What, then, is professional city branding supposed to do?

Well, in my opinion, it is their job to mine a city for the things that already exist. A city brand, no matter how great it may be, cannot be expected to create something from nothing. There has to be something there to begin with.

But once you identify that something, a great city brand can tie it all together; create a cohesive and collective identity; and serve as a guide for future decision making. And when that’s done effectively, you actually begin to enhance the things that you initially started out with. The associations become even more powerful.

So today I thought we could have a discussion in the comments about city brands. How would you describe the brand of your city in one sentence?

For me, I would describe Toronto along the lines of being the most livable and multicultural 24/7 global city. And when you think of it this way, you can probably see why I think a 2AM last call at the bar is laughable.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/190951409" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

More so than any other genre of music, there seems to be a longstanding tradition in hip hop of promoting the city in which you’re from. From Los Angeles to Atlanta to New York, I’ve always admired the way that hip hop artists promote and showcase their cities.

For a long time in Toronto we didn’t have that. Our hip hop scene was too embryonic and we just didn’t have artists who were both big enough and willing to take the lead. Or at least, that’s what I was lead to believe as an outsider who candidly doesn’t really follow the scene.

But all that has changed.

Earlier this month, Pitchfork published an interesting article by Jamieson Cox called: Views From The 6 – Inside Drake’s Toronto. It talks all about Drake’s love affair with this city and it even has a map of all the areas of Toronto that have been featured in his videos.

But at one point in the article Jamieson argues that – like many hip hop cities – Drake’s depiction of Toronto is more fantasy than reality:

His mythological Toronto is a metropolis where everyone knows your name and exes are always lurking around the corner, a forest of penthouses with a panoramic view, a park-studded playground where the skies are free of ambient light and the highways are always clear. Like many hip-hop locales, it’s a city closer to the realm of theory—and fantasy—than reality. 

However, at the end of the day, I don’t think that matters. Similar to how your mind actually believes that wine tastes better out of an expensive glass, I think a big part of city branding has to do simply with how you’re supposed to feel. What is Toronto supposed to be like? How am I supposed to experience this?

I love what Drake is doing. Because if everyone thinks it’s supposed to be a certain way, eventually that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

https://500px.com/embed.js

I have been thinking a lot about city branding lately. It’s a topic I’m interested in to begin with, and all of the Blue Jays mania going on in Toronto right now has got thinking about our own brand.

Because at the end of the day, yes, it’s baseball. But it’s also something much larger. It’s about civic and national pride, and it’s about who we are as a city. That’s why city branding has become a global industry and why it’s so closely connected to tourism, media, sports, and entertainment.

Still, great city branding is incredibly difficult to do. Lots of cities have tried and lots of cities – from Adelaide to Toronto – have failed. Anyone remember the “Toronto Unlimited” brand of the mid-2000′s? It had absolutely zero stickiness.

But in reality, cities are brand building all the time whether they realize it or not. Here in Toronto, our biggest brand builder right now is probably Drake. That might sound silly to some, but I believe it to be true. And next to that, you have people like Jose Bautista with his bat flips and his support of local brands like Peace Collective. In addition to their day jobs, these people are helping to shape the identity of the city.

What, then, is professional city branding supposed to do?

Well, in my opinion, it is their job to mine a city for the things that already exist. A city brand, no matter how great it may be, cannot be expected to create something from nothing. There has to be something there to begin with.

But once you identify that something, a great city brand can tie it all together; create a cohesive and collective identity; and serve as a guide for future decision making. And when that’s done effectively, you actually begin to enhance the things that you initially started out with. The associations become even more powerful.

So today I thought we could have a discussion in the comments about city brands. How would you describe the brand of your city in one sentence?

For me, I would describe Toronto along the lines of being the most livable and multicultural 24/7 global city. And when you think of it this way, you can probably see why I think a 2AM last call at the bar is laughable.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/190951409" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

More so than any other genre of music, there seems to be a longstanding tradition in hip hop of promoting the city in which you’re from. From Los Angeles to Atlanta to New York, I’ve always admired the way that hip hop artists promote and showcase their cities.

For a long time in Toronto we didn’t have that. Our hip hop scene was too embryonic and we just didn’t have artists who were both big enough and willing to take the lead. Or at least, that’s what I was lead to believe as an outsider who candidly doesn’t really follow the scene.

But all that has changed.

Earlier this month, Pitchfork published an interesting article by Jamieson Cox called: Views From The 6 – Inside Drake’s Toronto. It talks all about Drake’s love affair with this city and it even has a map of all the areas of Toronto that have been featured in his videos.

But at one point in the article Jamieson argues that – like many hip hop cities – Drake’s depiction of Toronto is more fantasy than reality:

His mythological Toronto is a metropolis where everyone knows your name and exes are always lurking around the corner, a forest of penthouses with a panoramic view, a park-studded playground where the skies are free of ambient light and the highways are always clear. Like many hip-hop locales, it’s a city closer to the realm of theory—and fantasy—than reality. 

However, at the end of the day, I don’t think that matters. Similar to how your mind actually believes that wine tastes better out of an expensive glass, I think a big part of city branding has to do simply with how you’re supposed to feel. What is Toronto supposed to be like? How am I supposed to experience this?

I love what Drake is doing. Because if everyone thinks it’s supposed to be a certain way, eventually that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.