The concept of urban marketing has been introduced since the local self-governing system was put into force with the advance of internationalization and globalization in the 1990s. Since the system began to be activated in 1995, competition between lo...
The concept of urban marketing has been introduced since the local self-governing system was put into force with the advance of internationalization and globalization in the 1990s. Since the system began to be activated in 1995, competition between local self-governing bodies has rapidly been keener to improve the quality of living for citizens, and make a differentiated and attractive city; as a result, they are now trying to be differentiated with others through urban brand strategies to commercialize a city from the perspective of corporate marketing.
Advertising and public relations activities to let these local self-governing bodies known play important roles and functions to allow those bodies to perform independent management and activate local economy as well as improving local identity and image of today. However, those activities are just limited to roles of simple public relations without any differentiated strategy. Advertising strategies of local self-governing bodies are different from those of companies. They need PR strategies to provide on-the-spot information in order to improve local image and recognition and provide tourists with travel convenience rather than advertising activities necessary to sell goods to consumers directly as companies do. Since they have strong functions of administrative service to indirectly support residents and firms that deal with, produce, and sell special products or tourism goods within a region, the purpose of self-governing management or managerial administration is to improve efficiency in administrative service, not to maximize profit-making as firms do. As for advertising strategies for local self-governing bodies, therefore, it is necessary to make proper structure and approaches.
In this context, this study aimed to consider the present condition and strategies of advertising campaigns with the purpose of improving image of local self-governing bodies and activating local economy from the comprehensive point of view and, on this ground, to present a strategic direction for creativity and appeal of brand advertising campaigns for the bodies.
In this study, 57 TV commercials of brand advertising campaign for local self-governing bodies and 250 ads in newspapers and magazines were sampled from January 2007 to December 2008, followed by analysis. On the basis of 307 pieces in total, the present condition of creative strategies of brand advertising campaigns for local self-governing bodies was considered, along with contents analysis of TV commercials and ads in newspapers and magazines to play a useful role in establishing an advertising communication strategy for the bodies in the future. For printed advertising and TV commercials with different analysis items in terms of creative style, 250 pieces of printed advertising were coded with 41 analysis items, and 57 pieces of TV commercials with 34 analysis items; consequently, contents analysis was carried out with creativity and appeal in five measures. They included advertising appeal, creative strategy, advertising model, information content, and creative style.
To put the results together, urban brand advertising campaigns performed by each local self-governing body were based on rational, emotional, and realistic information, using no model; in other cases, ordinary consumers or heads of local self-governing bodies were providing information about cultural tourism goods or investment industry attraction through a headline based on insistence, suggestion, or conclusion and in the form of realistic visuality for presenting goods.
This demonstrated that advertising campaigns for local self-governing bodies were still standardized by providing simple information and informing facts in terms of creative strategy despite clear local properties while they were becoming specialized and activated. This implies that properties unique to each local self-governing body fail to be reflected well in advertising or to present a creative strategy properly.
Since each local self-governing body has limitations in attracting customers with the existing methods, such as simple notification, while there is a flood of brand advertising campaigns for local self-governing bodies, including similar events, festivals, and similar benefits to investment firms, it is necessary to implement a differentiated creative strategy from others to induce customers' participation; this study hopes to provide a strategic framework for establishing an ultimate goal of advertising campaigns for local self-governing bodies to activate local economy through capital investment and job creation within a city (economy-centered goal) and integrate communities through security of local identity (goal centered on politics and culture), that is, to crease sale of local special products and develop cultural tourism goods with focus placed on external shareholders, promote investment, attract industries, win fame and status of the city, and manage residents and immigrants.