Posted: 22.03.23
What’s in a city’s strapline?
This was my 20th MIPIM, I think, with my first way back in 1997.
Over the years I have always been interested in the straplines that cities, regions and countries use to try to encapsulate their USP.
Their success varies… considerably, but to be fair it’s not an easy task for their authors. I mean how do you capture a place of that size in a few words?
My earliest memory of this kind of bite-sized attempt at branding a place was an advert I saw in an inward investment magazine back in the mid 90s which proudly stated Ogwr - gateway to Europe alongside an image of a plane heading west to east over Wales towards Europe. Now, with respect to this district of mid Glamorgan in Wales, that's a bit OTT, but it’s not all that uncommon.
So, as I wandered around the exhibition stands at MIPIM 2023, with my old friend Nick McKeogh of the NLA, I was on the lookout for more hyperbole. And here's what I found.
First let's do the good.
If a strapline is anything it should, ideally, have legs and by that I mean last. Just think of Audi - Vorsprung...enough said.
Robert Gordon Clark,
Senior Advisor for both LCA and NLA and seasoned MIPIM veteran, runs his eye over City straplines from MIPIM 2023