Destination @-Branding of Ten European Capitals Through the Institutional Stems and Commercial Logos

The research compares the social representations evoked by brands of the ten European Capitals (Rome, London, Paris, Helsinki, Vienna, Warsaw, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels and Lisbon) among potential first-visitors. The associative network technique has been applied using as iconic stimuli both the institutional stems and the commercial logos of each of the ten Capitals. Moreover, a grid has been created ad hoc to identify the distinctive elements of the institutional stems and the commercial logos. The analysis of the institutional stems resulted in detecting some elements that many cities have in common: textual elements (words written in Latin) as well as royal, military and symbolic elements, evoking especially mythological and historical aspects, narrating the history of the cities since their foundation. On the other hand, the commercial logos always include the names of the cities and as iconic urban narratives they use abstract signs to recall modern aspects and topicality of the brand. They meet the city's identity-related needs of “distinctiveness” and “recognition”.