Oslo focuses on city branding

Thursday February 7th the city of Oslo started the process of looking at their brand by running a one day workshop with Julian Stubbs, the Englishman who was behind the branding of Stockholm as the Capital of Scandinavia. Stubbs organisation, *UP There, Everywhere, organised the event held at the Barcode buildings in Oslo and the session was attended by key stakeholders from the city and region. In November last year Stubbs ran a 'Deep Dive' session in the city with other members of his *UP team, which resulted in last Thursday's session.

The workshop was covered in the Norwegian national daily newspaper Aftenposten (see weblink) as well as by other media. Stubbs said 'I really enjoy coming to Oslo. The people are great, the restaurants and food very high quality and the city has a lot of style.' He continues 'People keep asking me about a slogan, but we point out that a slogan is not the key thing. Firstly we need to build a solid proposition and strategy.' He finishes with 'Our job is to help put Oslo on the world map.'

Stubbs has worked with place branding assignments for both cities, such as Stockholm, as well as municipalities such as SIgtuna. Most recently he has been involved with Haarlem, in the Netherlands and the Faroe Islands. He has also worked with many larger corporate brand and identity projects such as for the Hollywood movie brand Technicolor.