Using Social Media To Re-brand A City
Posted by Sam Schuurman on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 View Comments
Maybe you’ve heard that Dunedin (NZ) is rebranding, perhaps you were part of the #NewDunedinSlogan hype on Twitter, or maybe this is the first time you’re hearing about it. Regardless of whether you’re in the know or not, this is a campaign you should be following – it’s city re-branding with a difference.
Firstly, there’s no search for a gimmicky tag line.

Many cities re-branding efforts only go as far as creating taglines like…
Hamilton: City of the Future or Timaru: Feel the Heartbeat
You’ll see no such tagline in Dunedin. Like all good things in social media, it starts with getting the concept right. Prior to embarking on their quest to re-position the city the DCC (Dunedin City Council) sought out wisdom from branding experts from all over the country.
The advice was simple, the brand is “Dunedin” – not the tagline underneath. This is quite a big step for city branding. Especially as Dunedin was the first NZ city to introduce a tagline – now it’ll be the first city (in NZ) to remove it.
But the big difference in this campaign is the community engagement…
The Insiders Dunedin Community site was launched just under a month ago…
The concept is simple, share your Dunedin stories and go in the draw to win a whole swag of great prizes. Continue Reading »
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This post was written by Sam Schuurman (aka SocialSammy). You can connect with him on both Twitter and Linkedin. |




