Interesting look at city brands: The best way to brand a city? With architecture and food
Raleigh does have that chicken place downtown, and southern comfort foods as well as food trucks? Raleigh has an eclectic food scene to be sure. And maybe, just maybe we can get an iconic building/structure from John Kane. 
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I don’t think a city can brand itself. I think it’s more of an outsiders perspective sort of thing, and something that just happens. Detroit=cars, Nashville=music, New Orleans=mardi gras, french, criole, Cape Canaveral=NASA, Seattle=grunge, amazon, starbucks, liberal. These are words that come to my mind when I think of these cities. This thread really needs an outsiders perspective. You can’t just choose how others perceive you and a lot of this thread feels like advertising ideas. Like “Virginia is for lovers.” Sure that sticks in my head but doesn’t make me want to visit or live there. I don’t think it’s a good idea to try force a perception either through policy. “We want to be known for food, so let’s make it easy for food businesses to thrive here.” Eh, I don’t think that’s the most effective way of creating a world renowned reputation.
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@Lucius
I’ll give you partial credit…lol 
A city may not be able to “in theory”, but you’re comment about a city making it easier for food trucks and restaurants “IS” the city actually deciding to brand itself. IMO
Jeff is saying that just pushing for policies to prioritize specific industries (like what y’all are saying for restaurants) is not enough. It may indirectly contribute to a certain image through a daisy chain of cause-and-effect, sure. But if you say it’s a linear system where what you get out is what you put into that piece of legislation, you’re oversimplifying things.
Case in point: Jeff’s own words (emphasis mine):
I think you’re mostly right, Jeff. It’s just like the Detroit issue I’ve mentioned before on this thread: it’s much harder for most of us (who are locals and have skin in the game) to come up with ideas that outsiders would be receptive to. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s impossible for a city to find and take advantage of an effective brand for itself, but it does demand some serious self-awareness and introspection that’ll be hard for a lot of people and places.
This does run into an issue that we keep implying on this thread and the Amazon/Apple topic, though: we don’t have much of an outside reputation to begin with… any ideas for that, @Lucius?
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While It’s clear that iconic architecture makes a big impact on a city’s brand & perception, I think it’s equally important to create many and sometimes small and intimate experiences through engaging “placemaking”. This can be done anywhere. Examples of this will be those places that we like to go to because they make us feel good. We all personally know where these places are because we’re drawn to them regularly, and they make us feel good when we’re there.
The aggregate of many of these experiences is a worthy and attainable goal for Raleigh. That said, these experiences often include food. 
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Food scene is great but very much lacking and spread out. I think that has very much to do with the high cost of retail rent and lack of demand from people. If it isn’t trendy it won’t make it in Raleigh. Portland’s food stall scene is unbelievable and amazing and a place where yet-to-be-trendy food becomes noticed. Current Wake and Raleigh regulations will ensure that Raleigh is never competitive in that scene.
THAT BEING SAID: Raleigh punches way, way above our weight class. We have some of the top restaurants according to several food culture publishers such as Bon Appetite, Eater, OpenTable. Accolades that escape cities bigger than Raleigh, such as Charlotte. But keeping that competitive edge is a continuous effort.
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Right but I don’t see that working. In other words I feel like this thread is an exercise in pointlessness. Using the food example, the city pushes for food trucks and restaurants and attempts to attract famous chefs through policy and regulation. But Raleigh is a small little nothing compared to NYC or Paris or London. It would take a millennium for Raleigh to be world renowned because of our food culture because that space is very much taken already. The only way for that scenario to play out would be someone out of Raleigh coming out of nowhere and becoming something huge, and staying based here. Which would then attract other top chefs to open up here and suddenly, when it comes to food, we’re in the same conversation as cities way out of our class.
Every major city has some great food, with a unique style. This isn’t anything that would work as a branding without a unicorn. Look at the food shows that travel around, EVERYWHERE has great food places. Likewise breweries. Sure we have great breweries, but so does Denver, CO, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh etc etc.
I think what I’m getting at here is this, is Raleigh oatmeal? Do we have a unique feature or attraction that anyone would recognize us for? Do we have an art, music, culture scene that’s a cut above other average joe cities? Or is Raleigh just like any other city of this size?
Obviously no 2 cities are exactly alike, but if there is nothing different about us vs the other guys, then we will remain unmemorable. Of course all this will depend on the target audience. If it’s attracting business or new residents, I think we are doing fine; although landing a big fish could completely turbocharge in that area. If Amazon had come here, we would suddenly be known as Amazon’s HQ2 city (because there isn’t anything better to know us for) and that would end up our branding to everyone else for a long time, for better and worse.
I think this thread should be asking first for outsider’s opinion of Raleigh and what they think of. (Any outsiders here?). Secondly, what do we have that nobody else has. I think if those two can combined, we’d have a brand.
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Well we’re the biggest city in the Eastern Carolina BBQ region. We just need in exemplary BBQ restaurant within city limits. We don’t.
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The Pit meets that need for anyone interested in what Raleigh’s “brand” is.
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Exemplary. The Pit is not. Oh course opinions vary.
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There’s a lot of self promotion in here for Seattle, but it shows Raleigh as #4 in the nation with a college degree at 51%.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-is-most-educated-big-u-s-city-and-8-in-10-newcomers-have-a-college-degree/
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Yeah, I never got why The Pit got so much press love. I’d rather go get a BBQ plate at Cook Out.
Since the topic is branding Raleigh to the world, not to Raleigh I won’t share my opinion of The Pit but I will say anybody I take to The Pit from out of town loves it or at least likes it. Local BBQ snobs might say they don’t know what they’re talking about but in context of this topic I’d say their opinion is what matters most.
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Yep completely agree. Some folks can’t believe it’s popular while A LOT of other folks can’t believe there’s some that don’t like it. Just had my family in town and we went there for brunch and everyone loved it.
I mean the Cheesecake Factory is popular but let’s drop this subject. Food culture is subjective anyways.
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You would be amazed what some people will do to get a cheesecake factory https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/eagles-landing-cityhood-vote-atlanta-stockbridge/571990/
Can’t make this up, from article below
And the reason for tearing Stockbridge apart to start this new city? It has something to do with cheesecake. Or at least cheesecake is what was emphasized in a conversation with Vikki Consiglio, the chair of the Committee for the City of Eagle’s Landing, held at the Eagle’s Landing Country Club.
“I serve on the Henry County zoning board,” said Consiglio, “and so I kept seeing all of these places like Bojangle’s, Waffle Houses, dollar stores, and all this going up in our county. And I was like, why can’t we get a Cheesecake Factory, or a P.F. Chang’s or a Houston’s? We have areas that have high incomes, so what’s the deal?”
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Let me try to pan this back to the branding topic. I feel like people, probably Americans in general, are very brand-conscious. First example that comes to mind are Beats headphones. From my reading, they aren’t particularly the best or even near the best sounding headphones out there but they have a cool factor associated to them so therefore having them makes you cool and in the know. Real audiophiles probably don’t use them or look past them.
Real foodies look past the cheesecake factories of the world but to be considered cool, generally, a city might need it to feel like they are with the “in-crowd”
We’ll always have this brand-conscious thing going on, but we need a sub-layer that looks beyond that and is really creating something unique among the enthusiasts.
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A prime example of this would be Austin and its food truck culture.
Anyone who works in Brand will tell you that brands need to be managed and reinforced. There also needs to be simplicity and clarity of message and imagery. Take the new Raleigh font and that half&half tree; that needs to be reinforced over and over and over. If we were serious, it (or referenced parts of it) would be on our city flag. The graphic elements would be on wayfinding, festivals, etc. Anything to do with Raleigh’s brand should tie back to it. In my opinion, we have to start with the city flag. Our current flag is so ordinary and typical that it doesn’t stand out at all.
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