The ‘ be Berlin’ campaign: old wine in new bottles or innovative form of participatory place branding? 1 Colomb, Claire (University College London - the Bartlett School of Planning) Kalandides, Ares (I NPOLI S Berlin, National Technical University of Athens) I ntroduction “The branding campaign is a first step to present ourselves in a clearer, more visible and decisive way. ‘ be Berlin’ means that we want to show Berlin as a casual and relaxed, international and open metropolis, radiating joy and creativity and where it is a pleasure to live in. it is the people that make up Berlin – the Berliners. They are Berlin. They are the ambassadors of our city… Berlin has 3.4 million facets, as many as there are inhabitants. Thus Berlin has many stories to tell. Stories of a successful change – despite all the difficulties that also characterise Berlin; stories of a change for the best. For as long as this city has existed, it has blossomed, lived and survived, because people came here to live their dreams and realize their plans” (Speech of the Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, for the launch of the ‘ be Berlin’ branding campaign on 11 March 2008) On 11 March 2008 the Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit publicly launched a new campaign for Berlin under the slogan ‘ be Berlin’ (in English), following a call for ideas launched by the Mayor’s office in search of a new ‘brand’ for Berlin. Why does it still matter for Berlin political leaders to search for a new image, a new slogan, a new ‘brand’ twenty years after the fall of the Wall and the reunification of the city? This need for a new ‘Berlin brand’ seemed to ignore what happened during twenty years of an intensive politics of image production, slogan making, city marketing and place branding which took place in Berlin post-1989. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, a complex network of actors were involved in various practices of place marketing and branding for Berlin, producing images of, and a discourse on, the city, urban change and place identity. In the early 1990s, as the centre of reunified Berlin became a giant construction site - around Potsdamer Platz, around the new government quarter and the Friedrichstrasse - a chaotic landscape of cranes and construction sites began to dominate the urban landscape of a city undergoing major transformations. The emerging landscape of the ‘new’ Berlin was not only being physically built, it was also imaged , marketed, staged 1 From: Ashworth GJ and Kavaratzis M (2009) Brand Management for cities: The theory and practice of effective place branding, London: Edward Elgar Publishers (forthcoming) 1