How cities sold themselves: Sweden's 1973 film reveals the messy reality of city branding
A new study of Gothenburg's 1970s promotional film shows that city branding wasn't always the polished, strategic exercise it is today—it was shaped by practical limits of film technology and unintended consequences. For modern cities investing heavily in their image, the research reveals how day-to-day tactical decisions matter as much as grand strategy.
Originaltitel: Local Media Tactics: Municipal Information, Audio-Visual Media and the Roots of City Branding in Gothenburg (1973)
<p>Throughout the last decades, city branding has come to be both an integral part of urban governance and policy-making in cities around the world as well as a growing academic field. However, what has been lacking in this research is both historical perspectives and a more thorough engagement with the everyday uses of specific media technologies. By analysing municipal communication practices in Sweden's second largest city Gothenburg, with a special focus on the 25-minute-long film Göteborg (Gothenburg, 1973) this chapter contributes with such historical perspectives. Furthermore, by mapping how the film was commissioned, financed, distributed and screened, the chapter moves beyond the strategic level of analysis. In this, the chapter shows how the municipality had to deal with media-specific, aesthetical and material factors of the filmic medium through momentary tactical decisions – sometimes with unintended outcomes. The chapter also highlights the ambiguity characterising the film. Although the early 1970s was characterised by a growing interest in public information as a way of creating more well-informed citizens and the film was produced by a newly formed municipal department of information, it has a commercial orientation which points at the kind of city branding that would proliferate in the following decades.</p>