The Role of Personal Narratives in City Branding

Abstract

This research report is an exploratory study into the role of authentic personal narratives in city branding, which is a new field of academic inquiry. This research expands upon city branding by looking at the role of residents and their authentic personal narratives in contributing to city brands. This research report drew upon studies of storytelling projects Humans of New York and The Moth to examine the roles of authentic and personal stories and how they impact city brands. The re-search set out to explore whether authentic personal narratives could have an impact on the field of city branding, with a special emphasis upon brand Cape Town. The researcher believed that the role of the personal and authentic roles of citizens could lead to more authentic city brands. The da-ta that was gathered for this report was collected through in-depth participant interviews which was then analyzed using a thematic analysis which was correlated with the core themes identified in the literature review—namely narratives, personal narratives, authenticity, and city branding. The im-portance of this paper, and for future researchers, lies in the findings that it is the collective narra-tive, a summation of individual narratives, has the most profound impact on city brands. The impli-cation of the collective narrative renders a new field of inquiry for research to build upon.