Image Strategy in the Semantic Space of Regional Policy

The article discusses the role of universities in the formation of the regional and city brand. The authors reveal a whole range of problems showing step by step that the traditional marketing approach to branding, transferred from the commodity sphere to the sociopolitical one, even when equipped with extensive marketing research and presentations, is doomed to failure. The reasons are as follows. Today, the modern economy is inscribed in the "knowledge" paradigm. As for universities and university cities, they are (or are to be) on the front line of the socioeconomic frontier. Since their inception, the few universities have been a distinctive feature that elevates the city above others, an important support for the urban economy, a special lifestyle; they took an active part in the formation of meaning. The university has since become an indicator of wisdom, enlightenment, and knowledge. In the era of the Third Industrial Revolution, Ford's approach to the sociopolitical sphere turned not only cities, but also universities into an appendage of the production site, and reduced knowledge to the applied one, inscribing its share in the cost of goods. The contemporary "knowledge society" and the global economy are built on the ruins of the previous era, and universities are becoming not only centers for the export of knowledge, but also arbiters in the development of a branding strategy for "unpromising" regions (Italy), the core of the "living cities" of the devastated industrial belt (USA); they seek recognition and set networks within EU projects (Hungary). At the same time, there remains a contradiction that raises the question of the timeliness of referring to the city as a "political idea" that would allow uniting the leading forces - science, government, citizens (civil society), and the media - in the development of the city branding strategy. Undoubtedly, the number of stakeholders is much larger, but it is these forces that are capable of giving meaning to empty slogans and unreadable images - far from both the brand identity and the necessary residents' loyalty to it - that are so often found in the practice of regional strategies.

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