Blog post n°4: Branding nations:

This week lecture was focused on nation branding, it appears that is one of the most contentious political concept of time.
At first that we have looked at the stereotype that we affiliate to the countries, we take for example the United States the most common stereotype that came to us were: no gun control, violence, celebrities, Cinema industry, artificial.
Stereotypical perception can be harmful for some countries it affected it on every aspect: tourism, trade, investment… for example after the terrorist attack in France on 15 November 2015 the number of tourist in the French capital have dropped, people from other country were not coming because of the risk of attacks.
We can relate that a good branding/ Communication of City/ Country has an impact on everything, as the first case study we did the city Hull in the north of England. One of the poorest cities in the late 80s and 90s, Hull is an old industrial city, after this period of time being one of the major capital of the industry in the UK Hull became the poorest city in the UK. Those last years we have assisted to a Rebirth of the city of Hull, with the city rebranded itself as « city of the culture », with this rebranding the newspaper Guardian estimates that this campaign will boost about £60M in the economy.

The study case chosen was the London 2012 olympic games, specifically how they branded their image and sold it to the entire world, demonstrated that it was an opportunity for London for a major development, a regeneration for some parts of it, specifically the East part of London, where they build all the olympic installations. The selling/branded image they gave for the development agency was: London is ready. But in truth this regeneration (East London) had a second effect on the living population of the area, with the new construction of infrastructure and of propriety development, the companies had to buy off the local people to rebuilt, but the construction rebuilt behind where luxurious apartment that the local population couldn’t afford.
This redevelopment had a direct impact, before the announcement of London being the next city for the olympic games Hackney Wick was the largest community of artist in Europe, but with this major development in this area it pushed the local population out.

My personal conclusion, is that every cities that rebrand themselves know that they will loose local population, because rebranding had one and unique goal: attract investment and tourisme, so money.