Resonance Consultancy – they do brands and strategies for places and products – has just released a new report called: World’s Best City Brands – A Global Ranking of Place Equity.
With all of these sorts of rankings, it really depends on the research methodology being used and the rigor in which it is being applied. In this case, they evaluated each city based on “six pillars of equity”:
Place: Perceived quality of a city’s natural and built environment
Product: A city’s key institutions, attraction and infrastructure
Programming: The arts, culture and entertainment in a city
People: Immigration and diversity of a city
Prosperity: Employment, GDP per capita entertainment in a city and corporate head offices
Promotion: Quantity of articles, references of a city and recommendations online
What’s perhaps unique about this study is that it combines measurable statistics with “visitor perception metrics” – data that they mined from social media. Here’s an excerpt from the methodology page:
“Our team became interested in the way visitors and citizens themselves influence the identity and perception of cities. Increasingly, they do it through their evaluation of experiences on social media and via the comments, images and reviews they share with family, friends and people around the world. These opinions and attitudes, much more than traditional marketing, influence the way people perceive places today.”
This is a fascinating shift for city brands and is something that we have discussed before on this blog. All of us are now involved in telling the story of the places in which we live and visit.
The entire report is well done and worth a read. It’s also a free download (you’ll need to enter your contact info). But below are the top 10 world’s best city brands. Not really any surprises for me. What about for you?
Marketing guru Seth Godin recently published this value triangle on his blog:
No matter what business you’re in, it’s worth giving some thought to this. What do you offer?
At the bottom of the triangle is function. A hotel room functions as a place to sleep. A smartphone functions as a device to make calls, send text messages, and download some apps. A condominium functions as a place to live, eat, sleep, have sex, and so on. But all functions being equal, most of us will buy whatever product is the cheapest.
That is until there’s an emotional connection. I love the way Seth frames it: “Where do people like me do things like this?” It is about defining who you are. Am I the kind of person who buys A or am I the kind of person who buys B? If I care deeply about the environment and B promises to respect that, I am likely to buy B.
But then, moving even further up the triangle, if two items offer the same function and the same emotional connection, many of us will go for the one that appears sexier, shinier (the new iPhone 7 is very shiny), and more stylish. It just deepens the connection.
Finally, at the very top of the triangle is now. This is about scarcity. What’s hot right now? Think of that new restaurant that just opened downtown that you haven’t been able to get a table at. It’s now and you want to Instagram the food so badly so that you can show everyone you were there. You want to be now.
The point of all of this is that we consume things for reasons that go well beyond simple function. That’s just the start of it all. One could argue that all of this is simply smoke and mirrors, but that’s a topic for another blog post. This is our reality.
To relate this topic back to architecture and real estate, I am curious how many of you have made a housing decision that you believe went beyond function. How much of it was based on connection and style?
Not surprisingly, for me, architecture and design matter a great deal.
Earlier this summer I was driving around the city with my father and he was pointing out to me all of the new build single family homes that were sprouting up. He then asked me what I thought of them. I responded: “They’re shit.”
What I was really saying with that glib remark was that those homes – no matter how expensive – didn’t reflect my own belief system about the world. Sure they served their function, but they didn’t offer the connection and style that “people like me” like to praise. To borrow once again from Seth: we are all part of a certain tribe.
What tribe do you belong to? And does your housing choice reflect that?
A new “transparent offer platform” called Haus has just launched in California to serve the residential real estate market. The way it works is that all offers are submitted online. And once an offer has been confirmed, it – along with all of its terms – gets revealed to every other potential buyer. See image below.
I’ve seen a number of different iterations of this same idea, which tells me that this is a well-identified problem in the real estate market. Here’s a snippet from a recent TechCrunch article announcing Haus:
“We think the openness will create a more efficient market and that the number of offers and price will ultimately be dependent on demand,” said Haus GM Sarah Ham. “Bidding wars are a common, almost accepted, part of the real estate process today. But with our approach, buyers know where they stand. Buyers will know what they need to offer to make their offer competitive, but they also won’t negotiate against themselves.”
I completely agree that this is a problem that needs to be solved. It will create a more efficient marketplace. However, in this market, I suspect that the current information asymmetries largely benefit sellers, to the detriment of buyers. So I wonder if the supply-side of the marketplace will be willing to participate at scale. What’s really in it for them?
Side note: Haus is the latest project from Expa, which is a “startup studio” that works on its own ideas, as well as partners with other founders. I am very interested in this approach to creation because I think you have to try and make a lot of things if you want to do truly innovative things.