Source: The official website of Vinnytsia City Council

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On May 24, 2018, Vinnytsia City Council hosted the final meeting of the working group on the development of the Vinnytsia Marketing Strategy. At the meeting, the draft version of the future strategy for promotion of Vinnytsia both across Ukraine and worldwide was presented.

Vinnytsia City Council managed to adopt best practices of international territorial marketing and branding. The marketing strategy for the city was developed in partnership with PLEDDG Project experts. Earlier, a content analysis was carried out to find out how Vinnytsia citizens and external audience viewed Vinnytsia, and later on, objectives, tasks and the vision for the city’s future were set out.

The objective of development and implementation of the new strategic document was to step up the pace of local economic development, create favourable conditions for external investors and local businesses, activate investment processes, introduce innovations, increase competitiveness of local undertakings, and raise living standards for city residents.

“The marketing strategy is a document which may help us promote Vinnytsia, increase money flows into the city’s economy through investment attraction and SME development”, – said Vitaliy Pogosyan, Director of Vinnytsia City Council’s Department of Economics and Investments.

Now cities are competing against each other for attracting investments and tourists, the measures foreseen in the Marketing Strategy will allow for parlaying the advantages of our city, raise its awareness and shape its own Vinnytsia-associated brand. Speaking about branding, one should realize that it is a combination of unique symbols, history, and culture, while a logo and slogan are only a part of the brand.

Kadie Ward, PLEDDG Senior Governance Advisor, noted that the Draft Marketing Strategy contained a clear action plan for city promotion, having added that: “Vinnytsia has a strong leadership team who are really capable to introduce and implement the strategy. However, the task team and a group of the parties concerned willing to ensure the success of this project are vital as well. After all, by working together we will be able to achieve a greater success”.

Joining efforts in the process of implementation of the project was also a matter of what Dmytro Konyk, PLEDDG Advisor, spoke. “The process of development of the Marketing Strategy has been rather long as we have tried to pull the opinions of different people together and consider as many ideas as possible. It is of high importance that everyone should understand: the implementation of the strategy is not just a matter to solve for the mayor and city council, it is the matter to consider for all city citizens. This is so because all Vinnytsia residents will gain essential benefits from increasing the number of tourists to the city and improving the business environment after an investor comes”.

Marketing and branding of cities is a widespread practice in the world. Now Ukrainian cities and the entire country are working on this, too. Shaping its own brand is one of the marketing tasks of the city. The Marketing Strategy calls for raising competitiveness of Vinnytsia due to efficient applying its power and professionally planned positioning.

The Marketing Strategy is a part of the “Vinnytsia 2020 City Development Strategy” and has been developed for achieving the objectives thereof, namely priorities such as “Economic Development” and “Social Life Quality”.

The Draft Marketing Strategy was developed with support of the international technical assistance project “Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance” (PLEDDG Project), which was being implemented by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and funded by the Government of Canada.

It should be reminded that in the process of development of the Vinnytsia Marketing Strategy, there were held 4 task team meetings, where 45 people took part therein, including the representatives of businesses, authorities, educational institutions, artists, and foreign experts.