Story of Spanish Place Branding

Have you ever got into trouble finding a name for a product? Seat found an easy way to find names. They chose to name their products after Spanish cities or monuments. For example, Leon and Cordoba.

This is also good way to do place branding, Seat cars provide free(?) attention to the places. Seat is quite known car brand, but not necessarily the most admirable brand. But still the name provides attention to the places which are not that known. There are also some risks, if Seat goes bust or something negative happens, it will provide negative image for the place. 

Controversy: Capital of Scandinavia

Which city comes to your mind when thinking of Capital of Scandinavia? Most likely people get different cities in their minds. Someone might even think about Helsinki, Finland, even if it does not situate in Scandinavia geographically. Scandinavia consists of three countries: Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Apparently, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden is using "The Capital of Scandinavia" as it´s slogan. One could ask, where from visitors come to Stockholm? As invest Stockholm statistics state, Danes and Norwegians form one of the biggest visitor groups in a category of commercial overnight stays in Stockholm (source: Invest Stockholm statistics).

How would you feel, if your "rival" country would state that they are the best of the region?  It could be argued that understanding customer is vital! And in the case of Stockholm, marketers have alienated big part of their customers. Article on thelocal, Swedish newspaper tells the story how Danes infuriated due to the branding campaign.

This campaign could be said to be big fail in destination branding. Within this emerging field and in any other marketing field customer is the king, and Stockholm Branding team did not evaluate the situation well enough. Now it is expensive to stop the campaign.

Stockholm city has been even sued for the brand name (thelocal). What are the damages to Stockholm, in the minds of other Scandinavians. It could be argued that arrogant branding does not bring anything good for a place. Close neighbours are big supporters in many instances, due to close cultural ties. Sharing and good diplomatic relations should be put first, not any kind of show off. Everyone knows how to annoy other people! It is children´s play, not for branding professionals.