Marketing strategy for branding Hyderabad city

Abstract

In the globalized world today with all the economic complexities it has become a common practice to view cities as corporate entities competing globally to attract the scarce resources. In this process it has become a common phenomenon to build the city brand in order to distinguish themselves from other global cities. This is primarily to woo the global investors and large MNC?s willing to invest in cities which would be the avenues for future growth. This evolving area of study is known as place marketing and is gaining a lot of attention in the recent times and this is what interested us in the study of Hyderabad city. The city Hyderabad is the capital city of the state Andhra Pradesh. With a rich and unique cultural heritage and diverse population, the city is one of the fastest growing cities in India. In the recent times it has been facing some issues internally like the state division problem of which the city Hyderabad has been the bone of contention. Such recent happenings in the city have had an adverse impact on city image and resulted in erosion of confidence in the residents as well as the external world in the city which has seen many investments and global companies moving out of the city to other close competitors with the fear of political instability. Thus the need to reinforce the trust in the residents and the external world in the erstwhile city of pearls of India “Hyderabad” is more relevant than ever today. To suggest a marketing strategy for Hyderabad city we have undertaken a study of relevant literature on place marketing to understand the existing frameworks available to aid city branding. We also studied the branding of three cities Paris, New York and Singapore which are well known and highly branded cities in the world. The study of these cities and the evolution of their brands gave us the understanding of different situations faced during branding of cities. This understanding was used while crafting the branding strategy for Hyderabad. Finally we studied the various strengths and weaknesses of Hyderabad by conducting a SWOT analysis of the current city and identifying the needs of different stake holders of the city. Then we proposed recommendations such as various public policy decisions required in the process and few promotional events that need to be carried out in order to create a strong brand and the communication strategy to internally and externally communicate effectively the brand image of Hyderabad.