Strategically Marketing Florida’s Cities: An Exploratory Study Into How Cities Engage in Public Marketing

• Author: Frances S. Berry,M. Blair Thomas,Daniel L. Fay
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074019897599
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Date: 01 April 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074019897599

American Review of Public Administration

2020, Vol. 50(3) 275 –285

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074019897599

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Article

Introduction

On an average day, citizens encounter numerous branding

images ranging from golden arches to green umbrellas.

Story (2007) reported that individuals encounter as many as

5,000 images daily. This does not even consider the recent

emergence of social media and the ease of advertising

across all mobile platforms that have developed in the past

decade. The way that citizens view the world and the

images that they connect with those perceptions are influ-

enced by marketing and branding. At its core, marketing is

a humanly intrinsic activity. Organizations communicate by

projecting messages to achieve various goals, including,

but not limited to, building group comradery, earning trust,

and increasing customer engagement.

Most often, the private sector comes to mind when we

think of marketing: Nike’s “just do it,” BMW’s “the ulti-

mate driving machine,” and Maxwell House’s “good to the

last drop” highlight marketing campaigns that stand out

over the past few decades. Each of these messages is

designed to identify the uniqueness of the brand and to rein-

force the positive relationship the customer has with the

firm. As private sector practices have increasingly entered

the public sphere, several outlined goals of marketing have

followed suit. City managers and other public administra-

tors seek to develop meaningful relationships between citi-

zens and the jurisdiction they represent. Despite the

ubiquity of these activities in citizen engagement in prac-

tice, scholarly exploration of these activities remains

nascent in the United States. With the idea of marketing

infiltrating local governance lexicon, exploring the use of

marketing among public officials carries values today and

into the future for both theory and practice.

The purpose of this research is to answer the following

three questions: Why do city governments engage in

marketing? Do city governments engage in marketing from a

897599ARPXXX10.1177/0275074019897599The American Review of Public AdministrationThomas et al.

research-article2020

1Valdosta State University, GA, USA

2Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

Corresponding Author:

Frances S. Berry, Reubin O’D Eminent Scholar, Askew School of

Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University, 649 Bellamy,

Tallahassee, FL 32306-2250, USA.

Email: fberry@fsu.edu

Strategically Marketing Florida’s

Cities: An Exploratory Study Into

How Cities Engage in Public Marketing

M. Blair Thomas1, Daniel L. Fay2, and Frances S. Berry2

Abstract

Over the course of this decade, Florida has emerged as one of America’s fastest growing and most visited states. As many

of the state’s municipalities compete for opportunities to expand their tax base and achieve other municipally centered

goals, they are faced with the challenge of needing to strategically differentiate themselves from their peers to attract

opportunities. One way to accomplish this is through using marketing as a tool of strategic management. While literature

shows that marketing engagement is happening in cities throughout the world, we lack a clear understanding of what

American municipalities are doing about marketing and why they are increasingly choosing to participate in the activity.

This work provides a glimpse into how a sample of Florida cities are strategically using marketing and what city managers

and communication officials are specifically hoping to accomplish with marketing activity. The purpose of this research

is to answer the following three questions: Why do city governments engage in marketing? Do city government officials

engage in marketing from a strategic management perspective? How do city governments engage in marketing? Utilizing

surveys and interviews from city managers and communication officials at the municipal level from across the state,

this exploratory study sheds a light onto how several cities using marketing as a strategic management tool to achieve

articulated goals. We provide recommendations for practitioners exploring strategic use of marketing and practitioners

seeking to expand marketing engagement within their municipalities.

Keywords

marketing, branding, local government, strategic management