Advertising with the argument at origin. An exploratory approach to the Porto city brand and Port wine brand

Abstract

The effects of globalisation and economic changes in recent decades have intensified academic reflections on the development of branding strategies aimed at promoting places: countries, territories, cities. An effective brand adds positive identity traits by building emotional bonds, shaping consumer perceptions about reality and influencing their behaviors. In place marketing or city branding, a brand «is a powerful mediator of culture, communities, and people, and if it has positive reputation it will make it easier to compete for attention, resources, people, jobs, and money.» (Morgan, Pritchard and Pride, 2011:5). The intensification of competition between cities, in a progressively more global market, has increased the need to develop organized marketing strategies and the constant updating of dissemination campaigns (Kavaratzis, 2005; Kavaratzis & Asworth, 2006) since, currently, if a place does not meet the requirements valued by its target audiences, elsewhere, another place, somewhere in the world, will do so. In this context, we consider that the issues of identity have assumed an increasingly preponderant role in the construction of brands, since identity is a crucial tool in creating values of uniqueness and authenticity. These traits are being increasingly valued by the targeted audiences and represent strong competitive advantages that are also very difficult to reproduce by competition. The identity of a brand is something unique that represents an irreplaceable value for its publics. Alongside place branding or city branding, brands associated with a place of origin have also proved the strategic value of the place dimension in brands’ identity. This article proposes to analyze how this identity dimension - of territory and the imaginary associated with it – is operationalized in branding strategies when brands are typically associated with place, such as city brands, and brands that develop their indentity around historical associations or a certain geographic space. In the context of our analysis, we were particularly interested in reflecting on the coexistence of city brands and brands which are strongly associated with a city, as is the case, here under analysis, of the city brand Porto, whose historical identity is inexorably associated with another brand with very strong identitary traits, largely coincident with those of the city’s own identity, which is the Port Wine brand.