Abstract
Recent city branding efforts in Japan have generally employed brand associations utilizing the historic heritage and other elements of the local background. Typically, the local community executes these branding campaigns. This report focuses on the Murasaki River in the city Kitakyushu as a case study about the potential disincentives of using a particular, local identifying feature in a community for the city's brand. For the brand formation of Kitakyushu, the Murasaki River flowing through the central city area is the local resource from which one would expect rich imagery. However, among the citizens, the Murasaki River is a resource that lacks an emotional connection. As a result of this study, the present lack of emotional ties to local resources was shown in the context of the local “success experience” and “civic pride”.
