Cardiff Launches City Brand

Cardiff has launched its first ever city place brand as it moves towards taking its place among the elite cities of the world. On Monday 18 February, teams of performers – from opera stars to up-and-coming singer/songwriters – take to the streets of the West End and Canary Wharf to give Londoners a taste of what Cardiff has to offer. The brand is being simultaneously launched in Cardiff at the world-famous Wales Millennium Centre.

The launch of the new place brand for Cardiff is a departure from the stereotypical dragons and daffodils of the past. It takes its inspiration from the palette of colours that represent the city – from the greens of its parks to the blues of its waterfront. It has been designed for use as both a static logo and also in an animated digital format for the Internet.

Developed in consultation with the private and public sectors, the brand will act as a promotional umbrella under which the city can show itself to be an attractive, healthy and sustainable place to live, a leading short-break and shopping destination and a progressive and creative place to work, invest and study.

Bill Savage, chairman of Cardiff & Co, the public private body set up to promote the Welsh capital, said he was looking forward to showing the rest of the world what Cardiff has to offer. "We have created a distinctive brand for Cardiff that has the potential to give the Welsh capital a competitive advantage that will stand out on the world stage.

"The place brand is a banner under which the city can rally to spread our message to the world – our ambitious, young capital can compete with the great cities of the world as a place to live, work, visit, invest and study. The brand has been developed after extensive research and consultation to ensure that it is a tool which the people of Cardiff will be proud to use," he said.

Research conducted by Professor Michael Parkinson and Jay Karecha of John Moores University as part of Cardiff Council’s recent report Competitive Capital, shows that Cardiff has come a long way in a very short time economically and it has reinvented itself as a service sector based city. Although Cardiff is a small city, it is one of the fastest growing cities in the UK (1996 -2004). Cardiff is also one of the most competitive cities in the UK, coming third in the UK Competitiveness Index (2005) out of 12 UK cities in the UK. Professor Michael Parkinson says:

"Our research shows that Cardiff has achieved a remarkable economic, social and physical renaissance in the past two decades. It has also shown that the journey is not complete - there is more to come. It is working to build upon this very successful first act of regeneration as it joins the league of economically successful European cities and initiatives such as this, which bring together the key partners in the city, will play an important part," he said.