The Big Apple: Sin City: Taranaki Like No Other: Wondrous Wellington?

Famous cities are usually associated in people’s minds with a single quality, promise, attribute or story. Paris is romance, Milan is style, New York is energy, Washington is power, Tokyo is modernity, Rio de Janeiro is fun, and so on.

A city brand needs to capture the spirit of what makes that city unique. It needs to be catchy, memorable, evocative, original, capturing the stature, strengths and spirit of our city. This will differentiate it from other cities around the world.

A successful brand delivers a strong and consistent message thereby providing useful information to the consumer. Like companies and products, places can also have distinct brand identities. Thus, a successful city brand requires us to determine our city’s identity, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, and communicating winning characteristics through a catchy brand or slogan. However, the brand needs to be authentic as it is customer’s experience that builds a great brand

Since its creation in 1995 as Wellington’s official tourism marketing organisation, Positively Wellington Tourism has been instrumental in changing people’s perception of Wellington from a city with a reputation of being a dull place of bureaucrats and bad weather, to an exciting and dynamic city that offers arts, culture, vibrant urban and nationhood experiences.

The “Absolutely Positively Wellington” tag line imparts a sense of energy - compared with the pedestrian “Christchurch, The Garden City” slogan or the elitist “City of Sails” favoured by Auckland. However, it does not tell the audience anything unique about Wellington.

So, what is unique about Wellington?

Clearly our location - 41º 17.00S (latitude) and 174º 47.00E (longitude). Unfortunately, someone has already made a name with the below 42 concept. How about the compactness, beautiful harbour, and the surrounding forest-clad hills and town belt? Unfortunately “Walkable Wellington” does not have sufficient pizzazz. Our creative style and technically savvy movie industry? While “Wellywood” may be catchy it is not particularly original.

Wellington has a vibrant café scene and award-winning restaurants making it a gourmand’s delight. We cannot forget the packed entertainment schedules, night life, art, music and cultural and sporting festivals. The popularity of our city and such events is endorsed by the number of tourists who drop in. According to WellingtonNZ.com’s Wellington Visitor Strategy 2015, our little city has more than 8 million visitor nights per year. Just slightly over half of these visitors are from overseas, and contribute $1.4 billion to the regional economy each year, an average of $3.8 million every day! This has got to be good for business.

Wellington has a disproportionate population of young adults (25 to 35 years old) who are educated, well travelled, and affluent. This in combination with the full and varied entertainment schedule, lends to us being “Sophisticated Wellington”. True, perhaps but not very inspiring.

In the NZ Quality of Life survey which issued on 6 April 2009, just under 95% of Wellingtonians ranked the quality of life in Wellington as extremely good or good (in areas including health, crime and safety, and public transport) making Wellington the No. 1 city out of the 12 surveyed.

Kerry Prendergast has described this result as “fantastic news” and went on to say that it “confirms what Wellingtonians already know, we live in the best little capital in the world”. Is there a message we can take from this – “Wellington – the lifestyle capital”?

Often the most effective location brands are the short punchy by-lines that involve alliteration or that rhyme. Think “Incredible India” or “Malaysia, Truly Asia”. Such brands are catchy, easy to remember, evocative of the location and strong marketing hooks.
Many well known city brands emanate from an occurrence in history the true context of which may be long forgotten. Think “The Big Apple”, “The Windy City” and “The Big Easy” for New York, Chicago and New Orleans.

Others allude to the eccentricity of a city – think “Sin City”, “La-La-Land” and “Tinseltown” for Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Hollywood.

Others still captures the spirit of what makes the region unique for example “Taranaki, Like No Other”, Dannevirke’s “Take a liking to a Viking”, Wairoa’s: “New Zealand the way it used to be” and Timaru’s “Feel the heart beat”.

It cannot be denied that Wellington is Wonderful – we are blessed with wonderful views, wonderful fashion, wonderful bars and restaurants. Here’s to Wondrous Wellington!

By Elena Szentivanyi. An edited version of this article appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of IN Business Wellington