Cities for Sale: Municipalities as Public Relations and Marketing Firms

Chapter Six: Implications for Citizen Participation and Democratic Governance

79 SIX implications for Citizen Participation and Democratic Governance in my explanation of the cities as PR and marketing firms metaphor, I have devised a parallel between the practices employed by municipalities to present information to the public and those used by private sector firms engaged in the same promotional enterprise. The parallel is made possible by an ongoing increase in the importation, eager adoption, and embrace of market and business models within the public sector. Today, every level of municipal government seems to house an entity that utilizes a market model of some kind. Ideally, the metaphor provides another lens through which to explore and study public organization theory, development, and behavior. The tactics cited within the framework given in chapter 5 were intentionally left broad enough to capture the major ways that cities are transforming organizational communication practices, which leads to the question: Is every city acting as if it were a PR and marketing firm? The answer is no. The key, specific distinctions may be found in the degree and regularity to which cities adopt and implement the tactics within the framework. The metaphor is predicated, first and foremost, on the assumption that a city acting in this matter utilizes a market model of governance , not the “old” model of government. In other words, the city relies on business planning, strategic planning, customer service, “doing more with less,” competition, contracting, privatization, or related business principles . It is natural, then, that self-promotion, another necessary business technique, has been imported into the public sector. For cities, the need to 80 Cities for sale generate revenue via tax or tourism dollars is a core guiding principle, and promotion enters the picture when a city comes to view itself as a product in addition to a service provider (Kavaratzis, 2004). Therefore, the degree to which cities self-promote comes into play. Some cities might not undertake promotional activities at all, but stick with presenting information in a plain manner—a fine practice. Cities might embrace one or two tactics within the framework, usually the “simpler” ones such as press releases or publications such as brochures and pamphlets. If a city, though, does not undertake these activities regularly (daily, or at least weekly in the case of press releases, for example) then it should not be considered a PR and marketing firm. A press release here and there, as any marketing or PR expert will attest, does not a campaign make. (For example, Albany, New York, sent out only a handful of press releases during each of the years studied, indicating that this is not a regular practice on the part of the city—at least not yet.) Promotional activities have to be done with regularity, conveying a consistent , sustained commitment to image creation and self-promoting tactics. A city that regularly utilizes all six tactics in the framework may be termed a fully realized PR and marketing firm. In cities such as these, all practices go toward building the brand, which is why branding is, purposely, listed first in the list of tactics. Looking at cities that act as fully realized firms (such as Roanoke, Virginia , and orlando, Florida, as shown in chapter 5), one sees a constant and consistent commitment to the brand, the use of all available promotional tactics, a market model of government, and sales-based, personalized (“you”) language aimed at projecting and fostering the derived brand image and feelings. Contrast these cities with those that do not embrace all of the tactics and instead stick to the more information-driven route (Albany, New York; Las Vegas, Nevada; Frankfort, Kentucky), and one sees plain language, perhaps an emerging or nascent business model, and irregularity in the dissemination of promotional communications. A visit to the web sites of Roanoke and orlando, for example, illustrates the point through visual details; one finds bright, vibrant pictures and brand imagery, versus the plain color schemes, uninflected information, and heavy link usage in the latter cities’ sites. Roanoke and orlando illustrate the movement from information to imagery (not that either practice is wrong). Simply put, the practices have different implications for defining citizenship and democratic governance. implications for Citizen Participation and Democratic Governance 81 implications of the Metaphor The metaphor of cities as PR and marketing firms provides another way for scholars to study and understand organization theory, development, and behavior. Municipal employees might see reflections of their own personal...