The Gurus of City Marketing are coming to Colombia

Thursday, 30 July 2009 00:00

The authors of the successful urban transformation of Barcelona (Spain), and Curitiba (Brazil) will share the most advanced techniques for transforming Colombian cities and municipalities into more competitive, prosperous, and attractive locations for investment and tourism.

The event will be held on September 1, 2009 in Bogota’s Virgilio Barco Library.

The encounter will take place in the framework of the City Marketing International Seminar that the Grupo 13 Communications Agency will organize in alliance with Caracol Televisión, Caracol Radio, Escuela Superior de Administración Pública (ESAP), and La República journal.

Toni Puig Picart, known as the “Guru of Cities” and considered the mastermind of the successful Barcelona case, will share with the Colombian public his experience and his great concept: the city brand.

Thanks to a process of City Marketing, Barcelona attracted 6.6 million tourists in 2008, and Curitiba has the highest indexes of environmental sustainability In Latin America. These experiences will be explained by their main actors.

Fabio Duarte de Araújo Silva will bring from Curitiba the details on how that city was able to consolidate itself as one of the five most attractive cities in the region for its economic and social development and its environmental sustainability.

On his part, Gildo Seisdedos, Director of the Forum on Urban Management of the IE Business School in Spain, will propose a new model of urban government that integrates City Marketing with urban development strategies.

Virgilio Barco Isakson, Director of the successful Invest in Bogotá agency and known as “Bogota’s Ambassador”; Nubia Stella Martínez Rueda, Proexport’s Vice President for Tourism; and Mario Sigfrido Huertas, consultant and international professor of strategic marketing complement the group of experts.

The event will be extremely useful to public administrators, political leaders, leaders from private institutions, businesspeople, scholars, students, and the general public, considering, as Seisdedos points out, that “Globalization has given way to competition to attract tourists, investments, and even residents.”