City branding in Indonesia: The urgency of public communication, involvement, and inter-sectoral collaboration

Abstract

Contemporary cities are facing various challenges, both internally and externally. Indonesian cities are not exempted from this phenomenon. In light of this, city branding has become a widespread practice undertaken by most city managers to attract visitors, tourists, and investors. This study is trying to capture the city branding implementation in Indonesia and suggests several improvement strategies in tourism development. This study is using content analysis to explore existing literature on city branding implementation in several cities in Indonesia over the last ten years. A summary of more than thirty studies is provided along with the content analysis. The finding of these studies gives a significant contribution to the field of city branding that focuses on practical operational in social and governance dimensions in the local context. It shows that the limitation of understanding on city branding concept from the local authorities in many cities has resulted in less efficient and effective branding. City branding in most cities in Indonesia was trapped merely in making slogan and logos with less consideration in public aspirations and local identities. In addition, the common problem of lack of intersectoral coordination has resulted in a situation where branding has been undertaken solely by the tourist management sectors without proper support from other sectors. This study emphasizes the urgency of public involvement and inter-sectoral collaboration in ensuring city branding successfulness.

Branding Kota, Upaya Terstruktur atau Hanya Gagasan Konseptual: Evaluasi Terhadap Dokumen Perencanaan di Kota Bandung

“…Pada konteks pertama, branding berbicara mengenai kemajuan penggunaan teknologi dalam tata kelola untuk meningkatkan citra pemerintahan dan kota, yang mana dalam kerangka transformasi digital untuk perencanaan melalui smart city, hal tersebut melampaui branding kota, melainkan sebagai upaya terstruktur untuk meningkatkan pencapaian pembangunan berkelanjutan (Sutriadi et al, 2023). Pada kasus Indonesia, branding kota dalam tata kelola yang cerdas seringkali terjebak dalam pembuatan slogan dan logo, dengan sedikit pertimbangan terhadap aspirasi publik dan identitas lokal (Lestari et al, 2020). Padahal konteks cerdas juga harus diiringi dengan pemahaman beberapa perspektif perencanaan seperti kemauan masyarakat, sejarah dan budaya, konteks spasial dalam perspektif perencanaan kota dan wilayah, sektor ekonomi, ekosistem kecerdasan, kesiapan teknologi, dampak teknologi, serta proses teknis dan politik .…”

Negotiating City Identity through Creative Economy

“…Successful city branding is built on a consensus of the city identity and core values of the city between city authorities, policymakers, and various stakeholders (Lestari et al 2020). Just like the symbolic interactionism concept.…”

Reinventing Indonesia’s City Branding Strategy Through Conceptual Frameworks: Providing Ready to Use Tools for the Municipal Governments

“…Many researchers around the globe have been under rising hype about building such a measurement system (Florek et al, 2019) to cope with regional and area diversity (Belabas & Eshuis, 2019). Literature reviews on the Indonesian context the city branding has been cited on various implementations and showed the classic vulnerability of coordination mismatch between implementing agencies (Lestari et al, 2020). This classical problem creates a detrimental effect on the objective of city branding (Lestari et al, 2020).…”

“…Literature reviews on the Indonesian context the city branding has been cited on various implementations and showed the classic vulnerability of coordination mismatch between implementing agencies (Lestari et al, 2020). This classical problem creates a detrimental effect on the objective of city branding (Lestari et al, 2020). The convex views on comprehensive city branding benefit resulted in limited logos and jargon, not exceeding its benefit on societal perception of regional pride and even benefitted the industries (Govers, 2013).…”

“…Moreover, the demand for a macro-level strategy for promoting city branding implementation policy is expected to establish a more prominent solution for national regulators (Guler, 2017). In the Indonesian context, the vast sociogeographical diversity creates a challenge in formulating such applicable strategies in nurturing and supervising the municipal government to build city branding effectively (Lestari et al, 2020). The existence of prior regulations concerning city branding in Indonesia is formulated, mandated, and obliged in such a way for the municipal government to build their city branding, but those regulations set were not entitled to such nurturing feature -allowing the flexibility to the autonomy system to creates their challenge -forming discrepancies among municipal city-branding (Rining & Herlina, 2019).…”