The Glasgow City Marketing Bureau asked the world "What makes Glasgow?" Brittany Golob visits the Strathclyde city for the answer

"It's a brand for everyone," Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB) chief executive Scott Taylor says. It's also a brand about, by and for everyone. The people of Glasgow contributed to, helped decide and are applying the city's new brand. The 'People Make Glasgow' brand was first conceived of only this spring, just seven weeks later it was borne into being through the contributions of thousands and the support of even more.

The city's nine-year-old brand 'Scotland with Style' had served its purpose, but was not fit to see the city through a revolutionary era of new business investment and world-class sporting events. The GCMB began to mull its options. “We wanted to get a brand that actually helps position the city for its next decade and do so before the Commonwealth Games,” Taylor says. The Commonwealth Games will open about a year after the 28 July 2013 brand launch. The event will introduce Glasgow to the world as a modern, innovative and thriving city. The games are themselves preceded by a series of individual sporting championships – including gymnastics and track and field – that have been held in Glasgow since the end of the London Olympics.

With an expected rise in tourism, alongside the city’s consistent push for investment, a rebrand was a good investment for the city. Glasgow, once known for its shipyards, factories and role in the world's tobacco trade, has undergone a transformation over the past few decades. What were once the city's dockyards have become engineering labs, broadcasting studios and creative spaces. The old Merchant City, home to textile factories and warehouses, is now the thriving hub of Glasgow's creative industry. Strathclyde universities are churning out highly-qualified graduates who are well-placed to fill the ranks of the city's businesses.

Scottish Enterprise has supported this growth through its Creative Clyde division – the moniker for both the physical community within Glasgow and the marketing body for the creative industry. Gordon Beattie, the chairman of Glasgow-based communications agency Beattie Communication says, “In its strictest sense Creative Clyde is a creative business hub on the waterfront of the River Clyde. In reality, Glasgow is much more than that. It’s a pioneering city where our people operate at the cutting edge of innovation. The city is alight with creativity.”

The GCMB and the Glasgow City Council (GCC) sought to emphasise that through the city’s communications.

In determining what direction to take the new brand, unique choices were made. Taylor says the traditional model in which a small group of people determine a brand was dispelled with in favour of engaging the city in the branding exercise. He says “As a city we wanted to look at a more engaging way and a more transparent way of rebranding Glasgow. Of course, there is an inherent risk of developing a brand behind closed doors and there is an equally sizable risk when you’ve got open doors.” He says they took Tesco Bank’s CEO Benny Higgins’ maxim of “What people say about your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” to heart. “What we wanted to do is create the largest room for people to tell us what they think the brand should be and what they think about Glasgow, and that room became a digital room.”

Thus a crowdsourcing campaign was launched in late April. Submissions were solicited through social media as well as at physical comment boxes located around the city. The comments streamed in telling stories, offering slogan suggestions and relating anecdotes about individual perceptions of Glasgow. The whatmakesglasgowgreat.co.uk site was moderated around the clock so contributors could see their comments posted nearly instantly.

With the goal of eventually developing one of these concepts into a brand, the GCMB not only had to determine which concept to choose, it also had to ensure it could obtain the intellectual property rights for that idea.

“We developed the legal framework around it so that anyone leaving their ideas were agreeing to give us their intellectual property,” Taylor says. He adds that branding agencies had been contacting the city in the hopes of designing the new brand. Taylor says they were referred to the crowdsourcing campaign. The result was an egalitarian and transparent process, because contributions were posted to the website. Taylor says this was intentional, as was the next stage.

“We were really determined not to then take all of these suggestions from that research before it had completed,” he says of the crowdsourcing stage. “We weren’t going to disrespect people who were leaving their suggestions and already come up with a brand.”

Through the crowdsourced contributions and about forty meetings with stakeholders in different industries across the city, the Marketing Bureau found the silver bullet: people.

People were posting their ideas. People were the heart and soul of the city. People contributed their thoughts and love and passion for Glasgow. People make the city welcoming, open, funny, thriving. People make Glasgow.

And it turned out to be as simple as that.

“We genuinely and honestly can say that the brand was made by people,” Taylor says.

With the guiding strategy in place, the GCMB turned to Tangent Graphic, a Glasgow-based creative agency, to implement the design. “We came in to visualise the brand and how it would work in the city,” David Whyte, director at Tangent, says. “We all live and work in Glasgow. One of the things that’s really recognisable is it’s this really bold, direct place. One thing Glaswegians would say about themselves is that is that they are friendly and direct. We wanted to make the brand look and feel like that.” Tangent was also responsible for the stark, bold 2014 Commonwealth Games logo and accompanying sport pictograms, the Edinburgh Book Festival, the UEFA Cup Final and a number of other high-profile public projects.

Thus, Tangent took what is essentially a simple concept – people – and infused it with the life and personality of the city itself, and simultaneously embraced this stated boldness.

The official logo is an all-cap, sans serif, white wordmark stating “PEOPLE MAKE GLASGOW” on a Rubine Red background. Taylor says its subtle quirkiness, with varied letter size and an unusual left alignment, are representative of different aspects of Glasgow itself. It is intentionally understated. It is bold and direct, just as Tangent intended, and flexible and representative of many, just as the city itself intended.

If the logo is somewhat underwhelming visually, the brand’s applications are anything but. The cornerstone of the project was commissioning young Scottish photographers to capture the essence of the city. The brief put to the group was, according to Whyte, to “capture energy, real expressions and real moments.”

Whyte likens the photographic style to Instagram. It is intentionally natural, at times out of focus or imperfect. In a decision not often made in tourism or the public sector, models were not used in the image library; each person captured on film is a real person going about his or her life as usual. Highlighted shots feature a boy leaning out the window of a terraced house at twilight, a band playing in front of a packed crowd, a young woman working in a creative industry office. Whyte says, “We didn’t want posed model shots and we didn’t want the kind of things that most cities would use in their marketing armoury.” He says the photos make the brand, and in turn the city, relatable. Taylor points out that this style imbues the brand with a sense of honesty and serve to create a sense of place.

At the end of the seven-week rebranding marathon, PEOPLE MAKE GLASGOW was launched at the Glasgow Film Theatre by GCMB chair and leader of the GCC, councilor Gordon Matheson to city-wide support and nation-wide media attention. The launch itself, Taylor says, cost virtually nothing. The entire process was, relative to most rebrands of this scale, markedly inexpensive – the total rang in at about £82,000 – largely due to the social media activity already taking place by the brand’s built-in advocates: those who participated in the crowdsourcing campaign.

While the photography, branding and popular engagement were the most dynamic features of Glasgow’s rebrand, the project effectively revolutionises the positioning and perceptions of the Strathclyde city on the world stage.

The tobacco, industrial and shipping history for which Glasgow has been most known, is increasingly being replaced with a perception of a modern, creative and innovative international cosmopolis.

From a cultural standpoint, Glasgow is bursting onto the global scene. “There are so many things starting to kick off and there’s a lot of modernisation going on,” Whyte says. “It feels like the Commonwealth Games will be a bit of a showcase for Glasgow. It really feels like this city’s time.”

In terms of the economy, Glasgow’s creative industries are burgeoning and its trading and industrial history has evolved into a valuable bio and life sciences expertise. During the research stage, the GCMB’s brand team met with about 80-100 marketers across five sectors to both introduce the brand and gain insights into the needs of the business community in Glasgow. “No one knows the bio life sciences industry better than the people in bio life sciences,” Taylor says.

PEOPLE MAKE GLASGOW allows the array of businesses in Glasgow a sense of ownership over their own branding. The photographic application allows for individuals, companies and sectors to choose their own adjective in the sentence “People make Glasgow _______.” Already, the GCMB has seen the branding appropriated by different industries and events, all maintaining the spirit of the rebrand. “We’re creating a brand that everybody can use,” Taylor says. “We’re creating a brand that everybody wants to use. People are shaping the brand. People are choosing their adjective and running with it.”

This not only creates a sense of brand empowerment for the new positioning, but encourages Glasgow’s business community to promote itself alongside the city and within the existing ecosystem of city communications relating to other industries, cultural developments or tourism. “If you’re trying to convey why you should do business in Glasgow or why you should visit Glasgow, it’s ultimately going to be based around the experience you’re going to get while you’re here,” Taylor says.

That experience is derived from all of those industries, businesses, individuals and characters that make up Glasgow. And, of course, the people. People make Glasgow, and its brand.

Peer review

Hannah Brady, image executive, Uffindell Group

After spending a few years in Scotland, Glasgow was never the jewel of Scotland in my mind, I always thought of Edinburgh. However, I have to admit this brand has really sold Glasgow as a city to me. While I like the identity and creative platform it’s not exactly unique, but it’s the story behind the brand that really engages me.

The use of social media and public engagement to inform the brand gives the final concept authenticity and depth. The opinion is not just that of a small design team but the collective opinion of residents, visitors and advocates of the city. You can see the story behind the new brand;
how they got from the brief to the launch.

As I said the logo itself is not the strongest point here, but it does counter the ‘grey’ image of Scotland and shows the vibrant side of the city. The confident typeface reflects the pride its people have. The subtle imagery of people, matched with simple, yet effective, statements of how they ‘make Glasgow,’ provides a powerful snapshot and strengthen the whole concept of the brand. People make Glasgow and they have made the new brand.