Introduction

There is a small but rapidly growing body of literature pertaining to place branding. Many
streams of research have provided input to the creation of knowledge in the domain of place
branding. This diversity of sources encompasses many disciplines that rarely, if ever, attract
attention in the marketing and branding literature. For example, the fields of sociology, history,
national identity, and politics may be regarded as having a potentially important contribution to
make to the practice of place branding. Practitioners and academics involved in place branding
should therefore be prepared to scan horizons far wider than those associated purely with
conventional brand management and brand strategy. The country-of-origin literature offers
valuable insights into the effect on consumer behavior that the provenance of a product or service
can have. However, it has traditionally been beyond the scope of the country-of-origin literature
to analyze the historical and cultural dimensions of which nations are constituted. It is this
breadth of scope that characterizes place branding. This overview of the literature highlights the
multifaceted nature of place branding and identifies some of the landmark texts and emerging
avenues in the place branding literature.

FROM PLACE MARKETING TO PLACE BRANDING

Places have long felt a need to differentiate themselves from each other, to assert their
individuality in pursuit of various economic, political or socio-psychological objectives. The
conscious attempt of governments to shape a specically-designed place identity and promote it
to identied markets, whether external or internal is almost as old as civic government itself.
Thus, any consideration of the fundamental geographical idea of sense of place must include the
deliberate creation of such senses through place marketing.

Problem Statement
The goal of the study is to gain an insight and understanding on how Rawalpindi is branded
to attract tourists to the destination. Through this understanding gain further light as to how
Rawalpindi can be branded to meet the international tourists expectations, especially Pakistani
tourists

Research Question
How can we use Rawalpindi city as a brand, in mechanism of tourism, culture, artifacts and
economic development?

Objective
Place branding creates value for a city, region or country by aligning the messages that the place
already sends out, in accordance with a powerful and distinctive strategic vision; by unlocking
the talent of the people who live there and stimulating investment to reinforce and fulfil this
vision; and by creating new, powerful and cost-effective ways to give the place a more effective
and memorable voice and enhance its international reputation.

Literature Review
The debate relating to branding and its inception is extremely active and intriguing. Brands have
been used as marks of identification at some time in all countries and civilizations. McNeill &
McNeill (2003) believe that branding was developed as a result of humans [being] drawn
together in patterns of interaction and exchange, cooperation and competition since earliest
times. Keller (2003) considers that the origins of branding relate to craftsmen and their need to
identify the fruits of their labor from others. However, Low and Fullerton (1994) believe that the

origins of modern branding can be traced to the late 19th century with the development of
branded consumer products such as Gillette and Quaker Oats.
Destination and place branding however, is considered to be a relatively new field of study
(Hankinson, 2001, Kavaratzis, 2004), in which there remains an apparent lack of empirical
research (Caldwell and Freire, 2004) and little clarity or agreement about terminology or
definitions (Anholt, 2004). Nevertheless, it is generally recognized that concepts of place
branding are grounded in corporate branding and marketing theories that have been modified for
the purpose (Kavaratzis, 2004). Many authors have acknowledged the multiple dimensionalities
of brands and there are a plethora of models and metrics which attempt to classify and measure
the various brand components.

Some of these models seek to explore the more fundamental nature of brands, for instance,
focusing on the functional and emotional/symbolic attributes (Cooper, 1979; de Chernatony and
McWilliam, 1989). This concept has been further developed through application of the Brand
Box Method (de Chernatony and DallOlmo Riley, 1997) and specifically applied to destination
branding where it has been
used to explore areas such
as city brand image
attributes (Hankinson,
2005), organic (historical
and cultural heritage)
images (Hankinson, 2004)
as well as country and
regional differences
(Caldwell and Freire, 2004). Others (e.g. Goodyear, 1993; de Chernatony 1993) have developed
brand typographies which explore the evolutionary nature and developmental sequence of a
typical brand, starting as an unbranded commodity and developing through a brand icon, and a
brand culture, into a policy driver or even a brand religion (Kunde, 2000).
At the same time, a range of multifaceted models have been developed, many of which tend to
measure aspects such as brand equity, brand esteem and brand potential. Rubenstein (1995), for
instance, developed a model for Brand Chartering, which presents key dimensions of a brand,
against its communication, management and implementation objectives. Kapferer (2003)
introduces a range of models to explore different brand facets, for instance, a brand prism,
exploring such questions as why? When? , for whom? and against whom (Kapferer, 2003; p97)

and further presents a model to identify positive and negative, latent and patent brand
associations (Kapferer, 2003; p119), and has also developed a brand hexagon which seeks to
explore more nebulous brand dimensions such as personality, reflection, self-image and
physique. Keller (2000) introduced the Brand Report Card in which brand managers are asked
to score their brands against 10 pre-determined facets, and later presented a Brand Tracking
model, which provides a practitioner approach to brand building (Keller, 2003; Kotler and
Keller, 2006). This model consists of a brand pyramid which starts with salience at the base (to
define awareness and identity), and moves through performance, imagery, judgments and
feelings towards resonance, at the apex, denoting the relationship with the brand.
The destination brand literature has complimented these typologies, often with more specific
brand attributes that include the physical environment, weather and food (Embacher and Buttle,
1989), or the creation of a geographical marketing mix (Ashworth and Voogt, 1989) focusing on
promotion, spatial-functional measures, organizational measures and financial aspects, whilst
Kotler et al (2002) have developed a model of place improvement which embraces place as a
character, the fixed environment, service provision and the entertainment or recreational value.
Hubbard and Hall (1998) further include aspects such as cultural regeneration, large-scale
physical redevelopments and mega events.
The purpose of this study is not to re-examine the extensive literature on corporate and product
branding but to focus specically upon the self- conscious application of branding to places as an
instrument of urban planning and management. The application of place marketing is largely
dependent on the construction, communication and management of the citys image, because, at
its simplest, encounters between cities and their users take place through perceptions and images.
Marketing therefore cannot other than be the conscious and planned practice of signication and

representation (Firat & Venkatesh 1993, p. 246), which in turn is the starting point for
examining place branding. One of the cornerstones of marketing thought is undoubtedly
consumer orientation; thinking about the product, the company and the way we do business
from the consumers viewpoint. In city marketing and especially in the case of the citys existing
residents, consumers orientation would have to be how the residents encounter the city they live
in, how they make sense of it, which physical, symbolic or other elements they evaluate in order
to make their assessment of the city. The eld of cultural geography has dealt with such matters
and has developed an understanding, which is useful at this point. In general, people make sense
of places or construct places in their minds through three processes (see e.g. Crang 1998;
Holloway & Hubbard 2001). These are rst, through planned interventions such as planning,
urban design and so on; second, through the way in which they or others use specic places; and
third, through various forms of place representations such as lms, novels, paintings, news
reports and so on. It is generally acknowledged that people encounter places through perceptions
and images. As Holloway & Hubbard (2001, p. 48) describe, interactions with places may be
through direct experience or the environment or indirectly through media representations.
However, what is critical is how, this information is processed, via mental processes of cognition,
to form stable and learned images of place, which are the basis for our everyday interactions with
the environment. It is the mental maps that individuals create that allow them to navigate through
complex reality, because our surroundings are often more complex than the sense we make of
them. Branding deals specically with such mental images. Place branding Centres on peoples
perceptions and images and puts them at the heart of orchestrated activities, designed to shape
the place and its future. Managing the place brand becomes an attempt to inuence and treat

those mental maps in a way that is deemed favorable to the present circumstances and future
needs of the place.

Conclusion
This study, which sought to clarify the application of Place and its associated vocabulary by
discipline and in relation to geographical entities, is considered timely as the discipline of Place
Branding has become increasingly important for practitioners and is receiving more attention
from researchers. Researchers have emphasized the need for an agreed vocabulary in the placebranding arena.
The research has revealed that the focus of discussion for place branding has shifted from
tourism to business and marketing; case studies in the discipline of Branding and Business (65.2
per cent) were double that in Tourism (34.8 per cent), with the majority of case studies relating to
countries (52.8 per cent) and cities (32.6 per cent).
The content analysis of paper titles and abstracts affirmed that the term Destination is used
predominantly in the tourism literature, articulated in various geographical entity forms and
accounting for the majority of case studies, second to which is Place. Place and Location are
the most dominant terms used in Branding and Business. The absence of Town as a possible
place brand term has been noted (town was generally identified as Location), as was the lack of
case-study research relating to towns (6.7 per cent), second to which were regions, states and
counties (7.9 per cent), respectively, calling for supplementary research. To describe a city the
terms most used were Destination and Location, region was mostly described as a
Destination and a Place' while a country was most described as a Destination, Place and a
Nation but not as a Country.

Theoretical Framework
Within the context of rising competition between territories, identity has become the most
important element of recognition, differentiation and commodification in the communicative
process within which cities, regions and countries position themselves. Geographical spaces
thus compete in terms of this identity, which is then subjected to fierce comparison and
competition (Nogu, 1999; Anholt, 2007a). The territorial brand thus entails the reinvention
of places through a process of brand construction (branding) based on the promotion of
the individual and collective identities of geographical spaces; these identities, in turn, are
imbued with the intangible factors associated with their respective territorial identities.

THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF BRANDS ASSOCIATED WITH

GEOGRAPHICAL SPACES
It is difficult to put a date on the origins of the place brand, as there are two principal reference
points on the timeline of the development of this concept. One the one hand, we should consider
the hidden branding that nations and countries have implicitly carried out throughout history.
Anholt (2008a) contends that the link between brands and territories dates back as far as the
times of Alexander the Great (356 B.C. to 323 B.C.), who was one of the first people to consider
that the success or failure of places depended largely on the image they projected beyond their
borders.
Within the literature, the first examples of explicit documented references to the brand territory
dyad in which the significance of the concept of the brand is real rather than token, as occurs
within the ambit of promotion are found at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s. In
this period, Bartels and Timmer published their work City Marketing: instruments and effects
(1987), Ashworth and Voogd published Selling the City (1990), and 1993 witnessed the
appearance of one of the fundamental reference works within the academic literature linking

brands, marketing and places: Marketing places: attracting 468 Boletn de la Asociacin de
Gegrafos Espaoles N. 62 2013 Jordi de San Eugenio Vela investment, industry, and tourism
to cities, states, and nations, by Philip Kotler, Donald H. Haider and Irving Rein.
FROM THE COMMERCIAL BRAND TO THE PLACE BRAND
Corporate branding has become established as the point of reference for the branding of places.
The dichotomy that this creates corporations versus places within the context of branding
allows for the development of a comparative analysis from which it is possible to specify the
basic differences encountered in the application of a process of brand construction in both cases.
Although there is a convergence between the end goals of corporations and places that is, the
creation of a positive image and reputation the path followed in the achievement of these goals
differs substantially. Divergences appear, however, due to the inherent public-domain nature of
places, this meaning that the two spheres have working environments with social implications
which are radically different. The sphere of place involves management which crosses into
politics, domain and public goods, whereas the sphere of corporations involves business
management and private ownership

Variables
Brand Knowledge Brand knowledge refers to brand awareness (whether and when
consumers know the brand) and brand image (what associations consumers have with the brand).
The different dimensions of brand knowledge can be classified in a pyramid (adapted from
Keller 2001), in which each lower-level element provides the foundations of the higher-level
element.

Brand Awareness
Brand awareness measures
the accessibility of the brand
in memory. Brand awareness
can be measured through brand recall or brand recognition. Brand recall reflects the ability of
consumers to retrieve the brand from memory when given the product category, the needs
fulfilled by the category, or some other type of probe as a cue.

Brand Recognition
Brand recognition reflects the ability of consumers to confirm prior exposure to the brand
(i.e., recognize that it is an old brand that they have seen before and not a new brand that
they are seeing for the first time). In a recognition task, consumers see a stimulus (e.g., an ad for
the brand, a brand name) and must say whether they have seen it before (e.g., last night on
television, in magazine X, etc.).

Methodology
As mentioned earlier, the case under scrutiny, here is the place branding or city branding , and
data on this event is mainly derived from the website of one of its organizers, Pindi.com and
different sources includes interviews and questionnaires since its qualitative research. This
naturally entails certain limitations as Pindi.com or Facebook pages has an interest in presenting
their activities in a favorable light, thereby justifying their actions. Attention was also given to
the short documentaries of the place, which did not, however, add any perspective to the data

available on the other sites and published papers. Peoples observation at the focused places hae
been great advantage as the actual execution of the branding Idea and level and nature of the
visitor involvement could have been registered. This would also have facilitated direct contact
with visitors in terms of investing toward city Rawalpindi.

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