What Cities Can Teach Marketers About Marketing

This article is by Andy Levine, president and chief creative officer at Development Counsellors International.

If you are like most consumer marketing professionals, you probably vie with three to six direct competitors on a regular basis.

But what if you had more than 30,000 competitors? That’s the number of cities and towns in the U.S. alone that are competing every day to win new corporate investment, attract both group and leisure travelers, and draw new residents to their community. Yes, it’s a tough battle.

While it may seem counterintuitive, I decided to ask the following question: What can consumer marketers learn from the people who successfully market their communities?  Put another way, what can “smart cities” and the men and women who promote them teach the private sector about marketing? As I pondered the question, six key learnings emerged: More here.