همکاران در کافی شاپ ها، کانال ها و تجارت : بازاریابی شهر آمستردام

The position of Amsterdam as an international centre of business, culture and tourism has recently been threatened by increasingly fierce inter-urban competition. The desire to improve Amsterdam’s attractiveness to local and international audiences, and to retune the city’s international image, has led to a fundamental strategic marketing exercise involving a far-reaching examination of stakeholders, goals and competitive positioning. This article discusses this new approach towards marketing in the city, critically evaluating the marketing effort of Amsterdam in an attempt to further understanding of the application of marketing to cities. The article includes an assessment of the reasoning behind the various actions and a comparison with theoretical suggestions.

City marketing has been employed in most cases as a response to certain economic, political and social changes in cities and their operational environment (Ashworth and Voogd, 1990). Its use has been accelerated in an attempt by cities to position themselves strongly in the fierce competitive arena for finite and increasingly mobile resources, whether investment capital, relocation of companies, visitors and residents. The concept and methods of branding are also employed by cities as an instrument of place marketing in order to associate the place with wider desirable qualities in the perceptions held by relevant target audiences (Kavaratzis and Ashworth, 2005). This article describes the process followed in the city of Amsterdam to create and implement the city’s new marketing strategy, based on a series of expert-interviews undertaken in the city. The choice of respondents was based on the conceptualisation of city marketing as an ‘action net’, because “… city management consists of many collective and interconnected actions, which can be conceptualised as an action net and engage many and varied organisations…” (Czarniawska, 2002, 4). The effort was to identify the organisations involved in marketing with additional importance attributed to the ones with coordinating roles.1 A second part of the research involved the examination of various policy documents published by the authorities in Amsterdam. The various projects and undertakings in the city are critically evaluated and contrasted to the theory of city marketing and city branding, in order to extract valuable lessons from the experience of Amsterdam. City marketing is a complex endeavour that demands a wide view on its goals, effects and general approach. This article adopts a view clearly oriented towards city branding, which is suggested as an effective strategy in order to create the common ground necessary for the whole marketing endeavour. Branding is a process by which attempts are made to influence how consumers interpret and develop their own sense of what a brand is (Chandler and Owen, 2002). Furthermore, “… looked at in terms of effects rather than intent, marketing comprises everything which can potentially communicate about a brand and which can in some way be controlled by the brand owner or its agencies” (Chandler and Owen, 2002, 45). Anholt (2006) makes the key observation that “… a brand is not a message, but the context in which messages are received” (2006:22), which means that branding is best understood as an attempt to influence the context in which messages are communicated. Kavaratzis (2004) suggests a framework (Figure 1) which describes the communication of the place brand through the appropriate treatment of different variables with both functional and symbolic meaning in two distinct types of controlled communication. In the light of this simple framework, we now turn to the description and evaluation of marketing Amsterdam.

This article has presented the new approach towards city marketing that was adopted in the city of Amsterdam. It identified the various stages followed as the city formulated its marketing strategy aiming to evaluate critically its marketing effort, in an attempt to further understanding of marketing application in cities and to assist in bridging the gap between the theory and practice of city marketing. To that aim, the description of the various actions undertaken by the city included an assessment of their reasoning and a comparison with theoretical suggestions. It is clear that Amsterdam has avoided two common but serious pitfalls of city marketing. First, they did not start and end all marketing efforts with an advertising campaign. Second, they have chosen a strategy that addresses, or intends to address, the needs not only of the tourism sector, but a wider base of economic activities and target groups. It is apparent that city marketing in Amsterdam has now reached a stage of more refined implementation, in comparison with the past and shows signs of a demand-oriented approach, which is, of course, one of the major characteristics of marketing as a city-management philosophy. This new approach has managed to gain agreement and consensus from many parties and cooperation is carefully encouraged. Of course in a subject as complex as city marketing and in a city as varied as Amsterdam, it would be impossible not to find negative aspects of the marketing effort. The main criticisms that are highlighted in this article revolve around three major points. First, the selection of 16 dimensions thought to represent the city and their translation first into six priority dimensions, then to three core values and, finally, to one slogan is unclear and demands a more thorough examination. Second, the selection of target groups is rather vague and might lead to difficulties of refining and targeting messages. Third, the role assigned to city branding is not exploiting its full potential, but it is used solely as a promotional tool. There is perhaps a question arising from these points of criticism. Could Amsterdam have chosen a better strategy or a more refined implementation? This is related to the wider question of how to evaluate the efficacy of city marketing and branding efforts? One way is through various rankings – some of which are mentioned above – but the methodologies used and the implicit goals of the organisations undertaking them is a matter of dispute. If, as accepted in this article, city brands are constructed in peoples’ minds, then the only way to identify and measure changes and the efficiency of strategies should be research on the city’s target audiences: visitors, investors and residents. Also if the common, but rarely proven, statement that “the people make the city” is true, then additional attention should be given to the city’s residents and stronger efforts should be made towards their participation in city marketing. Perhaps worth mentioning here is the initiative “We Amsterdammers” (www.wijamsterdammers.nl), which is an open communication platform for residents of the city. The initiative provides financial support to various activities that cater for contact between the diverse groups of residents, organises events, like the ‘Amsterdam Day’ and develops campaigns with the same goal. As already stated, cooperation between the parties involved and consistency in actions can prove to be the most critical success factor. Only time will reveal the success and effectiveness of marketing Amsterdam.