Renaming as a tool of city-branding

The name is one of the most important elements of branding. That stands for city branding too: the name of the city defines a lot of things. Just like with “classic brands” it’s good if it refers to the product (the city)it raises positive feelings, it’s short and easy to pronounce, and most of all it makes it unique – so there are no other cities with the same name. There is no reason to surprise that sometime mayors are changing the name of the city. In the past this had political reasons: the Soviet Union’s big leader’s names were often used in the cities’ names. Nowadays the changes have marketing reasons: with the new name they want to attract more tourists or potential investors. It happens that a company buys itself into the city’s name and becomes its sponsor. Of course the local people don’t like this; the names are usually really old, and changing them can harm the historic roots. This article looks at a couple of name-changing and sums up their experiences.