City Branding: Historical Culture and the Making of ‘Hanzestad Zwolle’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2021
Summary
Abstract
This chapter focusses on the topic of iconicity in city branding. By analyzing the way in which the Dutch city of Zwolle is ‘made’ into a successful brand – an iconic Hanseatic town –, general characteristics of the cultural icon, in particular the pre-eminent visual nature of the icon and the supposed universality of the icon, are put into question. Clearly, when it comes to iconic cities, few will think of a middle-large Dutch town like Zwolle. That the branding of Zwolle as an iconic Hanseatic city is deployed with such apparent ease is telling for the hyperinflation the concept of the icon has undergone in present culture. Still, as is demonstrated, a closer analysis of such an ‘un-iconic’ icon can tell much about the construction of icons in present day commercialized culture. More broadly, this analysis sheds light on the ways in which history is revived and remodelled in contemporary culture.
Keywords: city branding, historical culture, construction of icons, virtual presence, mediated experience
Introduction
In 2017 and 2018, the Dutch city of Zwolle introduced itself on national radio via a frequently broadcasted commercial as an old, but lively and highly attractive place to visit:
Welcome to the city of Zwolle, a vibrant Hanseatic town, where life is celebrated in our historic city centre. A city populated by creative students, inventive entrepreneurs and opiniated free-thinkers. Here we believe that life becomes better being together. Within the confines of the old city walls there is a wide range of cultural and culinary discoveries on offer. Countless festivals, the culinary top of the Netherlands, striking exhibitions, the most beautiful bookshop of the country, all this can be discovered within the setting of the medieval scenery of the old Hanseatic town.
Zwolle presents itself as a Hanseatic town, and the historical period of the Hanseatic League apparently plays an important role in the self-image of the city and its iconization. Not only in this commercial but in most of its communications, the city council uses the expression ‘Hanzestad Zwolle’, or ‘dynamic Hanzestad Zwolle’. Here, the coupling of the old and the lively becomes particularly visible when the adjective ‘dynamic’ is added to the expression ‘Hanzestad3 Zwolle’. However, the presentation of Zwolle as an iconic Hanseatic town is only of very recent date, and it seems to play a specific role in constructing Zwolle as a recognizable ‘brand’.
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- Information
- The Construction and Dynamics of Cultural Icons , pp. 129 - 148Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021