Probably you’ve run across Monocle magazine by now and decided you love or hate its metrosexual persona, but if not, try one out next time you pass the newsstand; you can tell the periodical (now in its 15th issue) is pulling it off because each number is thicker with ads than the last.

For their summer double issue on the world’s cities, they asked me for a cheat sheet of city brand fixes. I told them there are no quick fixes, and provided this readable but real list instead.

City Branding ticketsheet:
For the metropolis on the make, here’s your to-do list
Monocle magazine, Issue 15, vol. 1, July 2008

01. Stop running ads. They’re too expensive and unless they’re pitch-perfect, they make you look second-rate.
02. Call Frank Gehry—and hang up on him. Great architecture is splendid, but the “we hire a famous architect” gambit isn’t the infallible branding play it once was.
03. Put your anomalies to work. Just because you’re unhappy with an aspect of your city’s history or landscape doesn’t mean tourists feel the same way.
04. Create a sense of place on the ground. Rio’s black and white pavements or Norman Foster’s metro entrances in Bilbao are constant reminders you couldn’t be anywhere else.
05. Become the centre of something. Build on something true to you that locals can get behind, even if it’s bizarre. Rakvere, Estonia will hold the 2008 world sumo championships. But then Kaido Hoovelson, one of the world’s top wrestlers, is a local.
06. Synchronise tourism and investment promotion. This stops tourism officials from getting folksy and reminds the investment bureau there’s more to foreign business than hard numbers.
07. Get a movie filmed in your ’hood. It doesn’t even have to be that flattering: Strawberry and Chocolate showed Habaneros raising pigs in their homes and still made Havana look sexy and interesting. And interesting, after all is what you want to be.
-JH: Jeremy Hildreth is head of place branding at Saffron

(Note: I posted this first to Saffron’s website.)