(Re)Branding the Big Easy: Authenticity and Tourism Rebuilding in

Post-Katrina New Orleans

Kevin Fox Gotham, Ph.D., and Adele Benoit
Department of Sociology
Tulane University
220 Newcomb Hall
New Orleans, LA 70118
Phone: (504) 862-3004
Fax: (504) 865-5544
email: kgotham@tulane.edu
Abstract
Tourism scholars currently debate whether urban branding is a process of homogenization that
undermines local authenticity or whether branding accentuates local distinctiveness and
promotes new meanings of authenticity. This paper draws upon interview data, newspaper
reports, and secondary data to provide insight into the process and conflicts over efforts to brand
New Orleans as a historic city and entertainment destination from the 1990s to the present.
Urban branding is a process of attributing certain images, symbols, and motifs to a particular city
in order to motivate people to visit that place, support inward investment, and build local
identity. I identify the key actors and organized interests involved in branding New Orleans, the
rationale and logic of branding, and examine the key marketing strategies tourism organizations
have used to stimulate travel and enhance place distinctiveness. Finally, by way of conclusion, I
address the current moment, when a broad-based coalition of city leaders is attempting to
revitalize New Orleans tourism in the post-Katrina era. My goal is to explore how the
devastation and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina is leading to the re-branding of New
Orleans and the marketing of urban rebuilding. My analysis of authenticity and place marketing
provides an important opportunity for theoretical development and offers a unique perspective
for understanding urban branding as a contested and conflictual process of homogenization and
diversification.

Introduction

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of urban scholarship on the changing role of
tourism, place marketing, and entertainment in contemporary society. Scholarly treatments of
the subject of tourism, demographic analyses of tourist behavior, and studies on the increasing
proliferation of entertainment destinations now dominate the literature (Judd and Fainstein 1999;
Hoffman, Fainstein, and Judd 2003; Sheller and Urry 2004; Rath 2005). John Urrys (2002)
concept of tourism reflexivity suggests that we now live in a global society permeated by the
logic of entertainment and tourism whereby cities are increasingly developing procedures and
criteria for monitoring, evaluating, and cultivating their tourist potential. Mark Gottdiener and
colleagues (1999) investigation of Las Vegas, John Hannigans (1998) analysis of the rise of
fantasy city, Paul Chatterton and Robert Hollandss (2003) examination of urban nightscapes,
and Richard Lloyd and Terry Nichols Clarks (2001) concept of the entertainment machine all
draw attention to how cities around the world are attempting to redefine themselves as sites of
fun, leisure, and entertainment. These accounts reflect a broader interest in the political
economy of tourism, the transformation of public spaces into privatized consumption spaces,
and the latest attempts by urban leaders to provide a package of shopping, dining, and
entertainment within a themed and controlled environment - a development that scholars have
called the Disneyification of urban space (for overviews, see Sorkin 1992; Eeckhout 2001).
Yet despite much research and debate, few scholars agree on how analysts should conceptualize
tourism, what should be the appropriate levels of analysis for assessing the causes and
consequences of tourism, and what data sources researchers should use to measure tourism
empirically. Around the world tourism-oriented urban regeneration remains a source of much
debate and controversy. Some scholars claim that tourism is a global force of rationalization
and homogenization that hollows out the rich texture, spontaneity, and uniqueness of social
relations and their creations and thereby corrupts authentic cultural spaces.0 Others maintain that
0The view that tourism spoils, contaminates, or bastardizes a pure and authentic culture and place through the
processes of commodifcation and bureaucratic rationalization is shared by many scholars in diverse disciplines (for
examples, see Greenwood 1989; Britton 1991; Watson and Kopachevsky 1994; Alsayyad 2001; Ritzer 2004;
Bryman 1999; Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1998). For overviews and critical assessments, see Shepherd (2002), Olsen
(2002), and Fainstein and Gladstone (1999).

tourism can be a mechanism for preserving indigenous cultures and enhancing community life
(for an overview, see Rath 2005). Still others argue that tourism is a amalgam of global-local
connections that promotes both cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity but they disagree over
the form, process, and trajectory (Gladstone 2005; Teo and Li 2003; Chang 2000a; 2000b).
This paper has two goals. First, I examine how place marketing and urban branding have
become important elements in the development of tourism in New Orleans since the 1980s. In
the realm of place promotion, urban branding is the frequent use of a specific name, symbol,
logo, or design (or combination of these) in order to identify a place, to distinguish it from its
competitors, and to prompt tourists in their decision making (Greenberg 2003; 2000).
Successfully branded leisure spaces play on peoples desires for comfort and certainty and
provide a point of distinction and identification for consumers. New Orleans has long been
called The City That Care Forgot, The Big Easy, a destination where visitors can Laissez
Les Bons Temps Roule or Let the Good Times Roll. In recent decades, local tourism officials
and organizations have elaborated and extended these and other slogans through a series of
strategic branding campaigns that aim to define New Orleans as Americas most authentic city.
Today, city leaders and tourism boosters use a variety of themes, sophisticated marketing
devices, and other advertising techniques to enhance urban distinctiveness and differentiate New
Orleans from other destinations around the world. Themes such as authenticity, uniqueness,
and distinctiveness provide symbolic unity to diverse tourist attractions while also encouraging
the proliferation of a range of attractions, first to attract tourists and then to keep them occupied.
I identify the key actors and organized interests involved in branding New Orleans, the rationale
and logic of branding, and examine the key marketing strategies tourism organizations have used
to stimulate travel and enhance place distinctiveness in a rapidly changing global world.

Second, I explore how branding strategies and initiatives feed into local conflicts and
struggles over meanings and definitions of cultural authenticity. For decades, tourism scholars
have conceived authenticity as an a priori category or local attribute that motivates tourists to

travel to places to consume history, culture, and other local products and attributes. Recent
tourism research, however, has moved away from this static conception and explored the
processes of authenticity construction, conflicts over meanings of authenticity, and struggles
over building authenticity claims (Gotham 2005b; for overviews, see Shepherd 2002; Olsen
2002). Authenticity does not refer to some clear standard or essential element from a unitary
culture or heritage. Rather, authenticity is a reconstruction of various aspects of local culture and
heritage, elements that different groups and cultures continually select and craft to meet the
needs and conflicts of the present. This hybrid, negotiated, and constructed view of authenticity
suggests that we focus less on whether sites are authentic or not and direct our attention to how
different groups attempt to construct authenticity and create demand for the authentic. While
meanings of authenticity are socially constructed and mutable, these meanings cannot be
arbitrary fabricated and deployed at will. In contrast to prevailing conceptions that view
authenticity as either primordial and durable or malleable and fabricated, I characterize
authenticity as emergent, situational, and contested. On the one hand, I investigate how tourism
organizations and agencies in New Orleans have adapted, transformed, and strategically
deployed authenticity as a marketing device and advertising slogan to enhance tourism and
urban place building. On the other hand, I show how struggles over meanings of authenticity in
tourism are a conflictual and reflexive process of cultural dilution and cultural (re)invention
within the context of existing power relations. I address these issues using a combination of
historical and secondary data, and primary data.0
Finally, by way of conclusion, I will address the current moment, when a broad-based
coalition of city leaders and tourism boosters are attempting to revitalize New Orleans in the
post-Katrina era. Hurricane Katrina is a unprecedented disaster that has caused catastrophic
human suffering, economic disruption, and physical destruction. In addition, the disaster has
0The historical and secondary data come from archival collections, government documents, planning reports, and
newspaper articles. The primary data come from more than seven years of continuous participant observation, and
in-depth semi-structured interviews with thirty seven local residents, tourism officials, and neighborhood leaders
who have had first-hand knowledge and experience with the transformation of New Orleans over the decades. I
gathered these interviews through a snowball sample. To protect the confidentiality of interviewees I use
pseudonyms and/or initials for nonpublic persons quoted in the paper.

exposed to a global audience New Orleanss chronic poverty, strained race relations, and intense
inequalities. We have an image challenge throughout the country, according to Mayor C. Ray
Nagin. You ask what New Orleans is like today, and many people only have images of a city in
crisis. And thats a concern, that they dont see the rebuilding that is going on.0 Since the
disaster, local elites have attempted to counter negative images of destruction and advertise New
Orleans as a come-back city that is regaining its vibrancy, style, and confidence. At the same
time, city leaders and tourism officials have clashed over the role tourism should play in the city
rebuilding process. Elite efforts to attract corporate sponsors to underwrite the cost of staging
Mardi Gras 2006 are generating bitter conflict and opposition.0 Moreover, the uncertainty and
devastation unleashed by Hurricane Katrina has reinvigorated old debates and stimulated new
arguments about the meanings and definitions of local authenticity. New conflicts and struggles
are emerging between local groups and neighborhoods over what constitutes authenticity, who
should define what authenticity means, and how should authenticity be expressed. My goal is to
explore how the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina is leading to the re-branding of New
Orleans and the marketing of urban rebuilding.

New Orleans Tourism Before Hurricane Katrina

New Orleans confronts us as a city of paradox, irony, and contradiction. Long known as
the Crescent City, the metropolis has been condemned as a city of vice and decadence and
celebrated as a place of joyous culture and unforgettable charm. The New Orleans metropolitan
statistical area (MSA) is an eight county area that includes Orleans Parish, Jefferson Parish,
Plaquemines Parish, St. Bernard Parish, St. Charles Parish, St. James Parish, St. John the Baptist
Parish, and St. Tammany Parish. A county in the state of Louisiana is called a parish. Before
the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the metropolitan area contained approximately 1.1 million
residents with approximately 85,000 people employed in 2500 tourism related-companies,
0Thevenot, Brian. 18 December 2005. Nation Has Blurry Image of City. New Orleans Times-Picayune. P. 1.
0Eggler, Bruce. 24 November 2005. Carnival Plan Calls for 8 Days of Parades. Times-Picayune; Mowbray,
Rebecca. 8 December 2005. Mardi Gras To Seek Its First Sponsor. Times-Picayune; Mowbray, Rebecca. 8
December 2005. Tourism Chief Takes Nagin to Task: Mayor Impeding Rebound, He Says. Times-Picayune.

according to figures from the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau
(NOMCVB).0 Katrina has destabilized the metropolitan region and Gulf Coast and contributed
to major financial losses, business failures, and unemployment. Today, while people are
returning to the city of New Orleans, major neighborhoods and cities in the metropolitan area
remain unlivable and physical destruction is widespread. The process of rebuilding the
economic base, public school systems, legal and government infrastructures, and transportation
systems are likely to take years. The demographic and population consequences of the
evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people remain unclear. Some of New Orleanss tourist
attractions - the Vieux Carre and the Audubon Zoo - suffered little negative impact from the
hurricane while others such as City Park and the famed street cars and trolley system
experienced major damage. New conflicts are erupting over social dislocation, resettlement, and
the rebuilding of the city and metropolitan area. The long-term consequences of Hurricane
Katrina to the metropolitan region are likely to unfold over a period of years if not decades.
Tourism in the New Orleans metropolitan area has grown tremendously over the last
century. In the early 1900s, river-based commerce, cotton trade, and a growing market for
leisure and amusement dominated the New Orleans economy. During this time sections of New
Orleans became oriented toward leisure and entertainment: public parks, sports grounds, theaters,
art galleries, shopping and so. The citys red light district and jazz culture left an indelible
image in the minds of travelers and served for decades as a magnet to draw people to experience
the sin industry (Long 2004). The discovery of oil in the early decades of the twentieth
century spearhead a tremendous growth of the chemical and petroleum industry and by the
Second World War the city had established itself as a hub for military shipbuilding and
manufacturing. Throughout the decades, political and economic elites promoted images of New
Orleans as a charming city with beautiful and historic architecture, outstanding cuisine, excellent
music, and Mardi Gras. By the middle of the century, the economy had a tripartite base made up
0New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau. New Orleans Tourism Industry: Blueprint for
Economic Recovery and Emergency Funding Request Pursuant to Damage from Hurricane Katrina. Prepared by J.
Stephen Perry. October 17, 2005. New Orleans, LA: New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau

of the chemical and petroleum industry, the port industry, and the tourism industry (Lauria,
Whelan, and Young 1995; Whelan and Young 1991). During the 1950s, New Orleans city
officials and elites began devising strategies to increase tourist travel to enhance the economic
prosperity and fiscal status of the central city. Dwindling urban population and burgeoning
suburban development during the 1960s raised the specter of economic stagnation and created
the context for city leaders to accelerate the development of tourism in the city. From 1967 to
1977, manufacturing jobs in New Orleans declined in every year except one. By 1977, only 11
percent of the labor force was employed in manufacturing, a situation that placed the city among
the lowest in industrial employment in the nation (Smith and Keller 1986).
Over the decades, political and economic elites have forged close institutional links and
developed several public-private partnerships in pursuit of tourism as a strategy to encourage
inward investment and urban revitalization. The various components of this tourism strategy
have included the building of a domed stadium, a festival mall, a massive convention center, new
office towers in the Central Business District, a major theme park, and a World War II museum.
The city has also staged many mega-events, including the 1984 Worlds Fair, periodic Super
Bowls and (Nokia) Sugar Bowls, the NCAA basketball tournaments, the Jazz and Heritage
Festival, the Essence Festival, and so on. According to data gathered by the New Orleans
Convention and Visitors Bureau, there were 8.2 million visitors to New Orleans in 2003,
including 485,216 international visitors. Total visitor expenditures amounted to $3.8 billion with
$198.34 million in tourism tax revenues.0 The hotel industry has grown considerably over the
last few decades as indicated by the skyrocketing number of hotel rooms in the metropolitan
area. The number of hotel rooms increased from 4750 in 1960, to 10,686 in 1975, and 19,500 in
1985. In 1990, the metropolitan area had approximately 25,500 hotel/motel rooms. This figure
increased to 28,000 in 1999 and more than 33,000 by 2004
(www.neworleanscvb.com/new_site/visitor/visstats.cfm).
As the chart on the following page shows, the convention market has also grown
0Figures come from the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (NOMCVB)
(www.neworleanscvb.com/new_site/visitor/researchfacts.cfm)

immensely since the 1960s. The city hosted 172 conventions in 1960, 1000 conventions in 1975,
1453 conventions in 1990, 2485 conventions in 1995, and 3556 conventions in 2000. In recent
years, lackluster economic growth and the lingering effects of the September 11, 2001 disaster
have depressed the convention industry. Nevertheless, according to the chart, overall convention
attendance increased more than twenty times from 1960 to 2001, a development that reflects the
growth of a tourism infrastructure of hotel and motel accommodations, restaurants, festival
promotions, university programs in tourism management and service, professional sports, and so
on. Other tourism developments in the1990s include the legalization of gaming in Louisiana, the
creation of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, the establishment of the New
Orleans Multicultural Tourism Network, the creation of the Mayor's Office of Tourism and Arts,
and the expansion of Convention and Visitors Bureau efforts to market the region to
international tourists (City of New Orleans. Master Plan Issues Paper. December 2000).

The 1980s and 1990s represented the beginning of a new era of expanded tourism
development and place marketing in New Orleans. Five developments have been important.
First, in 1988, local business leaders established the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation to
attract and manage sporting events in New Orleans. Since this time the Sports Foundation has
grown to a year-round, full-time staff and has attracted sporting events like the Super Bowl, the
NCAA Final Four, and others to New Orleans. Second, in 1990, the State of Louisiana and the
City of New Orleans established the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation (NOTMC) as
a private, non-profit, economic development corporation to foster job growth and economic
revitalization by marketing New Orleans as a leisure destination. Through a program of
advertising and public relations the agency attempts to boost hotel occupancy when tourism is
slow, specifically during the summer and the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years day.
Third, in 1990, thirteen African American business owners established the Black Tourism
Network (BTN) to increase opportunities for African Americans in the tourism industry. In
1999, the BTN was renamed the New Orleans Multicultural Tourism Network (NOMTN) and
expanded its mission to promote the cultural diversity of New Orleans. Fourth, during the
middle 1990s, the City of New Orleans established the Mayor's Office of Tourism and Arts to
serve as a liaison to the tourism industry and arts organizations. Finally, in 1995, the state of
Louisiana and the City of New Orleans passed statutes earmarking a portion of the local hotelmotel tax to the New Orleans Metropolitan and Convention and Visitors Bureau (NOMCVB) to
expand foreign travel to the city and promote the city as a leisure and convention destination
internationally. All five of these legal-organizational developments have become central forces
in the expansion of the tourism industry in New Orleans and have played strategic roles in
increasing the volume of travelers that visit the city each year.
The creation of these new tourism agencies combined with the passage of state and local
laws to bolster the tourism industry in New Orleans have contributed to increased specialization
and differentiation of tourism organizations, agencies, and spaces. The growth of a plethora of

tourism organizations, entertaining attractions, and spectacular sights and sites means that
tourism is now a major component of how local people perceive the world around them. Before
the Katrina disaster, every county (parish) in the metropolitan area had at least one agency - a
convention and visitors bureau - devoted to attracting visitors to the area. The NOMCVB has
offices in several foreign countries and works with state and local governments to promote the
citys culture and attractions on a global scale. The legalization of gambling in Louisiana in the
1990s and the opening of a Harrahs casino in New Orleans have expanded the base of monies to
fund local tourism marketing agencies such the NOTMC. In recent years, the NOTMC and
Harrahs have established a synergistic marketing partnership of pubic relations, email
marketing campaigns, and direct marketing to generate awareness of New Orleans as a holiday
destination, and as a place of year-round and all-day and night entertainment. As a result of
these institutional transformations, metropolitan residents are now subject to strategic and
methodical promotional campaigns urging them to acquire the knowledge and visual orientation
characteristic of tourists. These campaigns have a long history and current forms aim to
encourage residents to be tourists in their own hometown. In short, tourism is not a set of
interactions and activities that occur at demarcated tourist sites. Reflecting Urry (2002) who
explores the dedifferentiation of tourism and other social activities, tourism has effectively
become part of the broader urban culture of New Orleans with its own set of rules, activities,
and spaces. Tourism is an amalgam of aesthetic sensibilities, technologies, cultural practices,
public policy, and modes of organization that span the metropolitan area and link New Orleans
with global processes.

Urban Branding and the Holy Trinity of New Orleans Tourism

Urban branding stands at the nexus of global forces of transnational flows and networks
of activity, and local forces of territorial embeddedness and place particularity. Unlike other
brands that people buy and sell in markets, a branded place is spatially-fixed, non-transportable,
and consumed by people at the point of production. On the one hand, branding is global process

of homogenization and standardization with numerous powerful corporate brands circulating in

the global market place. Economically, the most successful brands are extralocal, generic,
empty of distinctive content, and not constrained by local habits or idiosyncracies. Corporate
brands like Coka-Cola, Nike, and McDonalds are centrally conceived and lack locally-based
networks and communal ties. On the other hand, urban branding is a process of differentiation
and diversification whereby local tourism organizations, arts and cultural facilities, museums,
and historic preservation groups harness and construct place images and help produce tourist
sites to attract consumers and investment to particular locale (Sheller and Urry, 2004; Eade,
1997; Judd, 2003; Zukin, 1995). Around the world, Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs)
have embraced and implemented branding strategies to clearly define their local attractions,
differentiate them from competitors in the minds of visitors, and create a promise that frames
the destination experience for visitors. Slogans like Live Large, Think Big (Dallas), City of
Angels (Los Angeles), and Country Music Capital of the World (Nashville) are part of the
repertoire of local urban branding and represent strategic efforts to identify a citys image and
establish a singular personality.0 In contrast, to the homogeneity and standardized nature of
corporate brands, branded spaces and cities valorize cultural diversity and project images that
attempt to convince people that they are relatively unique, distinctive, and original. Grasping
that branding embodies these contrasting tendencies at once - that it can be a process of
homogenization and heterogeneity - is crucial to articulating the conflicts and struggles of
branding and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions.
New Orleans has always engaged in various forms of place promotion and marketing to
enhance local distinctiveness and project a favorable image to a global audience to attract
visitors. What is new in the 1990s is the scope and scale of place marketing and way in which
branding has moved from being one of several marketing strategies to becoming the most
0See Special Report from the International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus (IACVB). 9 May 2005.
Developing a Genuine Destination Brand in Nations Cities Weekly (http://www.iacvb.org/). See also Stafford,
Leon. 10 May 2005. Las Vegas: Gambling. Orlando: Disney. New Orleans Bourbon Street. Atlanta: Hmmm...
Hotel Online: News for the Hospitality Executive. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Knight-Ridder / Tribune Business
News.

important one. Over the last few years, the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation
(NOTMC) has established partnerships with the Louisiana Office of Tourism, the New Orleans
Metropolitan Conventional and Visitor Bureau (NOMCVB), and the New Orleans Multicultural
Tourism Network to launch several marketing campaigns that together attempt to brand New
Orleans as a place of authentic fun. Such campaigns are employed synergistically to maximize
exposure of New Orleans to a global audience. As the NOTMC Corporations 2002 Annual
Report notes:
The new comprehensive branding campaign focused on the food, music, ambience, and
good times New Orleans offers any time of the year. It marks a shift from the purely
direct-response approach of rior years by adding a strong image component. In our
creative testing in 2001, the concept of authentic fun and the message happenin every
day got very positive responses. In 2002, it delivered as tested. Our Summer Campaign
pushed traditional inquiries 10% beyond the previous years campaign.

The 2003 Annual Report of the NOTMC notes that their creative strategy is to expand upon
the New Orleans: Happen Every Day theme to highlight food, music, and history; show
the day with the night; reflect authentic, fun positioning; utilize photography; and have
images of family/children (conveys safety). This branding campaign connects with the
marketing efforts of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau
(NOMCVB). In 2003, the NOMCVB began disseminating a strategically crafted set of core
messages that brand the city as a the premier destination. As the 2003 Annual Report of the
NOMCVB tells it, The NOMCVB is branding New Orleans as a city undergoing an economic
and cultural renaissance, an energetic and vibrant city not only to visit but also in which to live,
work, and do business. The CVBs communication emphasizes New Orleans unique blend of
European, African, and Caribbean culture and its preeminence as a center for art, music, and
food. At the same time, the NOMCVB is branding itself as the national leader in best
practices and customer service.

Brand marketing campaigns and image building involve a mix of claims to distinction
and assurances of predictability and comfort based on homogeneity and standardization. In New
Orleans, this narrative of distinction is constructed around three themes - history, music, and
food - that constitute the holy trinity of New Orleans tourism. The quote below from one
official of the NOTMC describes this holy trinity of history, music, and food that connect and
unite the disparate elements of the city and region.
The images the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation uses to promote tourism
are evocative and emphasize the holy trinity of New Orleans tourism: food, music, and
history. All the cultures of New Orleans emphasize these elements and we use them to
promote the city and its peoples. We advertise in regional markets, consumer magazines,
and on cable television. Our emphasis is on the authenticity and heritage of New Orleans
(Interview with S.S.).

The holy trinity of New Orleans tourism - food, music, and history - represents pleasurable
experiences (eating, listening to music, and gazing upon historic buildings, art, and artifacts) as
consumption-based entertainment activities. Through urban branding, local tourism groups seek
to forge emotional linkages between the signifier New Orleans and potential consumers
(including residents, investors, tourists, and so on) in such a way that the name of the city will
arouse a whole series of pleasurable images and sentiments, and thereby stimulate the desire to
experience the city. John Urry (2002; 1995, p. 132) suggests that tourism is about the
accumulation of exotic experiences which are the anticipated outcomes of the tourist gaze
where places are chosen to be gazed upon because there is anticipation of pleasure than what is
normally encountered in everyday life. Branding is an important mechanism for pinpointing a
citys image, and focusing and rationalizing the tourist gaze. As a set of advertising slogans,
branding assists in reducing the uncertainty of the tourist experience by making exotic places and
cultural products transparent and understandable. As a major form of place promotion, branding
enhances the calculability, predictability, and efficiency of consuming places. Thus, the holy

trinity of New Orleans tourism - food, music, and history - carries a great deal of symbolic value
and utility because all three are broad and all-encompassing referents that lack specificity.
Indeed, the general nature of these terms suggests their easy application to other places to
valorize local culture and enhance tourism.
In New Orleans, branding campaigns embrace strategies of place differentiation and
image specialization to create commercial value, draw visitors to the city, and enhance local
pride. These campaigns provide travelers and locals with a ready-made language and vocabulary
of images for understanding and interpreting the city and its culture and history. Three
examples are noteworthy. First, in recent years local tourism boosters have attempted to brand
specific neighborhoods as tourist attractions. Tourism organizations and officials have long
advertised neighborhoods such as the French Quarter and the Garden District, among others, as
places to visit to gaze upon local history and culture. In recent years, however, tourism
organizations have defined a variety of neighborhoods including the Irish Channel, Mid-City,
Treme, Marigny, Holy Cross, the Lower Ninth Ward, and others as crucibles cultural creativity
and carriers of local tradition and heritage. Before Katrina, advertisements from the NOTMC,
for example, proclaimed that the Treme neighborhood is not only Americas oldest black
neighborhood but was the site of significant economic, cultural, political, social and legal events
that have literally shaped the course of events in Black America for the past two centuries0
Ordinary neighborhoods become extraordinary tourist attractions when tourism companies
redesign and represent otherwise mundane neighborhoods as special, spectacular, and
entertaining sites that have historical and cultural significance, thereby mobilizing travelers to
visit them. In addition, branding suggests the transformation of neighborhoods into abstract
representations, with viewers constituted as passive consumers and communities constructed as a
consumable spectacle. What is important is that the constitution of neighborhoods as tourist sites
reflects conscious and organized efforts to capitalize on the tourists desire for the spectacular,
extraordinary, and the unusual (Urry 2002; Judd and Fainstein 1999). Like other place
0New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. Faubourg Treme, Americas Oldest Black Neighborhood.
(Www.neworleansonline.com) (Accessed 8 September 2003).

marketing strategies, urban branding presents the urban landscape as a collage of frozen images
that are marketed and interpreted for tourists.
Second, urban branding involves organized efforts to brand major companies and their
products as institutional vehicles of New Orleans culture. Advertisements from the Brennan
family restaurants, for example, proclaim that they are responsible for fostering a culinary
tradition that many regard as the epitome of New Orleans fine dining ... and Brennan-branded
restaurants are now in business in Houston, Las Vegas and Anaheim, California.0 In addition,
Southern Comfort has attempted to market itself as an authentic New Orleans tradition by
emphasizing that the Southern Comfort secret formula was developed on Bourbon Street. In the
case of Brennans Restaurants and Southern Comfort, corporations employ New Orleans as a
floating signifier, a theme and symbol to stimulate further consumption. On the one hand, these
corporations view New Orleans theme advertising campaigns as key devices to shape their
brands images and identities. On the other hand, the term New Orleans contains a
multiplicity of meanings and images that offers free exposure and publicity for the city through
corporate advertising.
Third, the process of urban branding involves the reconfiguration of local rituals, musical
styles and genres, festivals and other celebrations into commercialized vehicles of staged
authenticity for boosting the tourist trade (MacCannell 1992). Over the last two decades, jazz
funerals and celebrations like Mardi Gras and the Jazz and Heritage Festival have become major
tourist attractions, performed for tourist consumption, and produced for market-based
instrumental activities (Gotham 2002; 2005a; 2005b). In recent years, city elites and tourism
boosters have attempted to brand jazz music as authentically New Orleans in an effort to
generate inward investment and stimulate the growth of a local music industry. In 2002, local
leaders established the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra as a non-profit jazz education and
performance organization that had as its purpose the celebration, proliferation, and structured
branding of New Orleans jazz and the development of a New Orleans based jazz tourism
0McNulty, Ian. The Brennans Family: A Luscious Legacy (www.frenchquarter.com/dining/brennans.php)
(Accessed 6 December 2005)

programming. Central to this initiative has been the emphasis on building national awareness
about the role New Orleans has played and continues to play in American culture.
Advertisements proclaim New Orleans jazz is a way of life for New Orleanians and New
Orleanss spirit created Americas only indigenous music
(http://www.thenojo.com/mission.html). These strategic efforts supplement a major branding
campaign launched by the Mayors Office of Economic Development in August 2004 to
facilitate future collaboration among the businesses and entities that promote Jazz. As New
Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin puts it, New Orleans is the birthplace of Jazz and Jazz is the
foundation for all music in America. We need to capitalize on this and begin branding the
world-wide appeal of Jazz as a uniquely New Orleans experience.0 Branding New Orleans as
the birth place of jazz is a major component of the cultural repertoire of urban place building.
Like all place marketing campaigns, branding jazz as distinctively New Orleans represents a
strategic effort to authenticate claims to originality that yield tourism investment. In short, the
significance of branding is that it involves the abstraction or disembedding of local products,
social activities and rituals from localized systems of meaning and interaction, thereby
reconfiguring them as commercial displays for expanding tourism.
Producing and circulating brand-values is a process of rearranging commodity-images
into chains of meaning and cultural signification to make New Orleans attractive and accessible
to the imagination. Branding imparts to tourists what to do, where to go, and how to feel. The
purchase and display of local souvenirs, for example, has long been a means to express and
authenticate the tourist experience. While the production of local souvenirs has a long history,
what is new in recent years is the adoption of mass production techniques and sophisticated
marketing strategies to stimulate consumer demand for New Orleans branded products and
images. Today, a variety of businesses specialize in selling New Orleans souvenirs and other
themed paraphernalia. In the case of carnival, for example, Mardi Gras specialty shops are open
year round and they design, package, and sell their commodities for mass consumption, primarily
0Mayor Builds Music Industry. C. Ray Nagin, Mayor, City of New Orleans. Mayors Office of Communications.
Press Release. 9 August 2004.

to tourists and nonresidents. Over the last few decades, local auction houses, art galleries, and
museums have begun to showcase New Orleans and Mardi Gras memorabilia and the Internet
has opened a burgeoning market for buying and selling souvenirs. Today, hundreds of Internet
sites sell New Orleans and Mardi Gras labeled paraphernalia, commemorative souvenirs, and
various trinkets. These products include posters, cakes, clothes and T-shirts, videos, music,
flags, furniture, beads, coffee and beer mugs, plastic cups, decorations, and dolls. With New
Orleans, advertisers and businesses attempt to persuade people that by purchasing a souvenir
they are buying a sign of social prestige. The purchase of a New Orleans souvenir is a means to
an end: a statement and presentation of taste, a demonstration of the possession of cultural
capital, and a signifier of status. The souvenir is a signifier, an indicator than one has achieved
(purchased) the New Orleans experience, and intimates the city as a branded commodity. More
important, it is the appearance of the New Orleans commodity that is more decisive than its
actual use value, and the symbolic packaging of otherwise diverse commodities - clothes, food,
music, history, and so on - generates a New Orleans image industry and commodity aesthetics
(Gotham 2002; 2005a; 2005b).
The above points draw attention to the importance of understanding branding as an
amalgam of both homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity and diversifying forces of
difference and variability. Critics often charge that branding is a form of serial monotony or
mechanical reproduction (Harvey 1989) that hides the powerful role of public policy, global
entertainment firms, and corporate interests in commodifying and homogenizing space for profit
and economic gain.0 Yet, against one-sided and reductionist views, we should view branding
dialectically as a reciprocal process that can help promote as well as undermine local differences,
0In their book Urban Nightscapes, Chatterton and Hollands (2003, pp. 24, 25) suggest that beneath the highly

branded nature of urban entertainment lurks an increased concentration and conglomeration of ownership by small
number of large corporate firms, a development also described by Naomi Klein (2000). In the Globalization of
Nothing, George Ritzer (2004, p. 180) argues that a major reason for the existence of brands is to deal with the
problem of nothingness which refers to a social form that is generally centrally conceived, controlled, and
comparatively devoid of distinctive content (2004,p. 3). Nothingness, according to Ritzer, involves the global
production of non-places (Disneyland), non-things (mass-manufactured souvenirs), and non-people (clerks at
souvenir shops). In this process, cities around the world increasing embrace simulated distinctiveness and pseudooriginality to produce tourist attractions and entertainment infrastructure.

local traditions, and local cultures. In the next section, I examine how the growth of place
marketing and branding are leading to new conflicts and struggles over local meanings of
identity and authenticity. Against views of an authentic place corrupted by tourism
development, I suggest that branding and place marketing efforts can be important mechanisms
for generating new definitions and conceptions of local authenticity. On the one hand, grassroots
meanings of authenticity feed into and provide the cultural resources for urban branding. On the
other hand, what tourism organizations and firms present and brand as tourist attractions for
outsiders can affect and transform local understandings of authenticity. My nuanced perspective
adjudicates between a top-down approach that stresses the role of extra-local processes of
standardization and rationalization in branding processes, and a bottom up approach that
focuses on the role of local influences and particularizing forces.

Conflicts over Authenticity and Tourism Development

Over the last few decades, as tourism has come to dominate more areas of social life
within New Orleans, meanings and definitions of authenticity, local uniqueness, and
distinctiveness have become contested terrain. Some local residents view tourism as a
harbinger of social instability, a threat to local culture, and mechanism for commercializing
heritage. Others view tourism as a potential resource for preserving local culture and heritage by
showcasing the city and its attractions to an international audience. Still others maintain that the
problem is not tourism per se but the management, regulation, and control of tourism. For these
people, the city government needs to safeguard the unique authenticity of New Orleans by
making sure the city does not become over-saturated with tourists and large entertainment
chains. This sentiment has become more forceful and provocative in recent years with the
expansion of chain restaurants and entertainment firms in the French Quarter and other
commercial corridors (for an overview, see Gotham 2005c). According to one French Quarter
resident,
All the entertainment clubs have pushed residents out. You cannot live in a block with

all night loud music every night of the week. Some of the businesses that claimed they
were going to open up as restaurants have, over time, become more and more like bars
and less like restaurants. They call themselves restaurants but only serve hot dogs and
popcorn. It is all part of the French Quarter losing its uniqueness. Who wants to visit a
place where you can see the same things in every other city. These large entertainment
corporations can bring a lot of pressure on the city. Individual business owners do not
have as much power as a big corporation and therefore cannot get as much. Weve
lobbied the city government to try to stop the intrusion of large corporations on Bourbon
Street and have lost. These bars are great donors to the politicians. We have fought
valiant battles but ended up losing the war (Interview with J.B.).

As another resident put it,

Right now, tourism is about the almighty dollar. In the name of the almighty dollar, city
leaders have dragged big corporations like Krispy Kreme donuts, the House of Blues, and
others into the French Quarter. Did we really need the House of Blues, the Hard Rock
Cafe, the Planet Hollywood? They all look the same everywhere you go. The one here
looks like the one in Los Angeles that looks like the one in New York. Do we really need
that? Commercialism drives it (Interview with L.R.).

Other local residents express similar anti-commercial viewpoints and maintain that tourism
generally and branded slogans specifically are mechanisms for undermining local culture and
authenticity, and promoting totalizing and stereotypical views of local people. As one person
told me,
The name Big Easy should never apply to New Orleans and has never applied to New
Orleans. They think were a bunch of lazy people. And do you know who started all this
stuff? These film people who come here. Same with the Mardi Gras saying, Greatest
Free Show on Earth. Film people have taken this and exploit it and then people who

come here pollute the city. All these kids come down here and sleep on the streets. This
takes away from the attraction of the city. All of these things that we have to deal with,
the people we have to clean up after, all this is part of the terms like Big Easy and
Greatest Free Show on Earth (Interview with H.S.).

According to another person,

I always tell people from out of town, hey, we have nice zoo, and they say, we have a
nice zoo too. Same with an aquarium and a domed stadium, every city has one of those
now or is getting ready to build one. But what nobody else has is a French Quarter and
tourism is destroying the French Quarter. I have this bumper sticker, it says, think
locally, act locally, and what that means is that we need to think about ourselves first,
not compare ourselves to San Francisco, Atlanta, New York City, or somewhere else
USA. Once we understand our unique assets and learn to appreciate and care for them,
then we can act in using them to help others, maybe show people how they are valued
and appreciated. The tourism industry cannot do this. Its all about entertaining people in
the most unenlightened and superficial way. And why? Because they are only interested
in generating money. Over the long-term, this single-minded focus on money will
destroy our unique culture and heritage (Interview with G.S.).

The above comments convey a view of tourism as a pathological force of cultural dilution that
corrupts social life. Expressing a discourse of loss and erosion of local authenticity, these
residents rail against the homogenizing effects of corporate tourism and entertainment chains.
According to some interviewees, tourism organizations and entertainment firms mine local
culture for symbols and icons to bolster corporate profits but they do not really give anything
back to New Orleans. Tourism advertisements, like all advertisements, create an exotic world
that is insulated from the reality of life on the street. These advertisements present the city in a
world that is hermetically sealed off from the reality (from real locals and the real consequences

of social inequalities) while playing up simulations of the real - consuming food, consuming
music, and consuming history. Rather than nurture local culture, corporations tap into, highlight,
and exploit the uniqueness and distinctiveness of the city for their own profiteering interests. In
this interpretation, tourism is hollowing out New Orleans creating a Disney-like infrastructure
that is empty of authentic content and communal value.
Yet it is important to note that the above sentiments are not monolithic but are varied and
contested. Other residents disagree with the view that tourism corrupts culture and argue that
commercialization helps broadcast local culture globally. For some residents, slogans like the
Big Easy distinguish the city and provide a focal point for fostering a sense of uniqueness and
community pride for local people. For others, tourism can be a mechanism for promoting and
reinforcing local authenticity and identity. In the quote below, one leader of a historic
preservationist group talks about her efforts to preserve the homes of old jazz musicians to raise
public awareness of history and local culture. According to this person,
What we do is to embrace the houses, and the places where jazz musicians lived. We are
educating people to the culture, to the music, to the neighborhoods. Since we are
preserving the site where the jazz musicians lived, we are, in fact, preserving their spirits
in that particular place. And it would not be the same if we picked that house up and
moved it to some other particular place. It would still be a house but not a place where he
actually lived and his spirit is there. So, our organization is about tourism and promoting
culture. We try to preserve houses. We also do lectures on neighborhoods, to raise
awareness of history and culture. We bring things back. And our younger generation
and older generation needs to be able to embrace it (Interview with A.A.).

Other residents I interviewed feel that tourism is an institutional vehicle for showcasing the rich
tradition and heritage of the city to other people who live in far away places. These residents
reject views that tourism promotes artificial and inauthentic attractions for inattentive tourists.
Tourism has forced us to realize that we have something that needs to be saved, according to

one leader of a local historic preservationist society, other people have made us realize that we
have something valuable, and there's a need to preserve buildings, cemeteries, and culture
(Interview with L.F.S.). Another person, a carnival historian, comments below that tourism can
generate public interest in local ceremonies, and help preserve local celebrations like Mardi
Gras. As this person told me,
I think visitors help us realized what we have. A perfect example of this is was in 1979
when we had the police strike during Mardi Gras. People came together and realized the
importance and the special nature of Mardi Gras. So, in that way, it is like when
someone comes into your house and says, that is a beautiful picture you have on the
wall, and you say, well, yea, I guess I am so accustomed to it that I had forgotten how
beautiful, pretty, and valuable it is. I think, perhaps, that is how residents of New
Orleans view Mardi Gras. Not all them participate in it and not all of them realize how
important it is all the time. But they do when visitors come to town. But we cannot
depend on visitors to preserve Mardi Gras that is our job, not visitors job. They may
make us realized that what we have is worth preserving but it is not their job to preserve
it (Interview with A.H.).

Other residents see tourism as a double-edge sword that can have corrupting effects while at the
same time creating the social conditions to grow and nurture new authenticities. In the following
three quotes, local residents reflect on how tourism has affected meanings and definitions of
local authenticity. These people reject totalizing views of tourism as a force of cultural erosion
or demise and emphasize the benevolent and positive aspects of tourism. Yet their views are not
singular, fixed, or uniform. These people fear that adhering to local sentiments and norms is
insular and myopic. By looking inward, residents fear that economic growth will bypass New
Orleans and lead to cultural diminution and a declining standard of living. According to one
leader in the local historic preservationist movement,
I think tourism can help preserve local culture but it can also destroy local culture. It

depends on how it is managed and regulated. Our neighborhoods are a cultural treasure.
When you have a historic commercial corridor coming back then that helps the culture.
But it can also be a problem. We can lose our history and culture if we are not careful,
they are delicate things and worthy of preserving and cherishing. Not just for us but for
our future generations. Take, for example, jazz. Locally we have not had much of an
interest in historic jazz. There are people who live here who are into it but it is not
exactly a cultural phenomenon in the city. In a way, tourism is helping us to create more
awareness among our residents of their heritage that they may have forgotten. We are
into it, we are getting money to create these plaques to put on houses and in the
neighborhoods where jazz musicians used to live. We are building neighborhood pride
and maybe some tourists will go to these places, it really depends on where it is, some of
them are in remote places and off the beaten track (Interview with P.G.).

As one leader of a French Quarter residents group put it,

I think that authenticity matters on its own. Maybe your average visitor does not know it
or care but I think it still matters. Authenticity and interestingness are related. A socially
diverse place adds to the texture of the interaction that people have in the neighborhood.
Take my block for example, I like that the people across the street are working people
and not day traders. We have different things to talk about because we come from
different occupational backgrounds. This is the culture that continues to animate the
French Quarter. It is a culture of residential life and community. It is not some place
without residents like Disneyland. People who come to New Orleans are interested in
authentic experiences. They want to see and experience the city and its cultures and
history. We therefore have a financial incentive to make the city more authentic. We
have to maintain our authenticity and create new authentic experiences (Interview with
N.C.).

Finally, one person who heads a grassroots neighborhood conservation organization told me how
he believes local people can appropriate the tourism for their own purposes, using tourism as
vehicle for not only preserving indigenous cultures but for creating new forms of local culture.
According to this person,
There is an element of tourism that corrupts culture and commercializes it. It does all
those things, it packages it for tourist consumption. But then if the locals are smart
enough, then they can take that product and repackage it and make it authentic. We have
plenty of artists who are constantly representing the city in different ways and redefining
it through their paintings and art. All the stuff of the city, its art, culture, history, and
heritage becomes recycled again and again to create new things for locals and tourists to
see, appreciate, and think about new things. That is what is important, by representing
culture and history in new ways, building on the old to create the new, we can create new
culture and heritage and we dont freeze the past in time, as if it is some unchanging and
static thing. So, I dont think that we will ever run out of creative ideas (Interview with
G.C.).

The above comments draw attention to the importance of understanding authenticity as

plural, conflictual, contested, and emergent. Rather than making the case that tourism
undermines authenticity, the interviews suggest that tourism redefines the discourse of
authenticity and helps promote the invention of authenticity. Reflecting MacCannell (1992, p.
1), tourism is not just an aggregate of merely commercial activities but also an ideological
framing of history, nature, and tradition; a framing that has the power to reshape culture and
nature to its own needs. In this sense, tourism shapes and constrains meanings of authenticity,
generates local struggles and conflicts over authenticity, and helps create and legitimate new
forms of authenticity. In contrast to viewing authenticity as a static category inherited from the
past, authenticity is socially constructed through local peoples engagements with tourism
sites, sights, and discourses. Petersons (1997) study of the historical development of country

music suggests that authenticity is a renewable resource that people construct and reconstruct
all the time. Yet it is important to note that authenticity claims are not arbitrary, capricious, or
spontaneous creations. Neither are these claims consciously planned or strategic and intentional
creations. Authenticity claims flow from assertions of place distinctiveness, which is at the core
of urban branding (Hannigan 2003, p. 354). The powerful forces of standardization and
homogenization that characterize branding do not destroy places but cultivate and call forth new
conceptions of authenticity that, in turn, mobilize people to reaffirm place distinctiveness and
uniqueness. My empirical examination suggests, following Urry (2002), who examines the
dedifferenentiation or implosion of tourism and other social activities, that authenticity in New
Orleans is itself becoming touristic, in the sense that the ones engagement and interaction with
others in debates about community, identity, and place distinctiveness is associated with tourism
sites and sights, and leisure practices. Today, urban branding frames local debates over
competing authenticity claims and serves as a basis for constructing new authenticities.

Conclusions
Debates and conflicts over branding, tourism, and authenticity are likely to intensify as
New Orleans rebuilds in the aftermath of Katrina. Hurricane Katrina has destabilized the
tourism industry, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and problematized meanings of
community identity and urban authenticity. Major debates are erupting over who will lead the
rebuilding, how the city be rebuilt, which neighborhoods be revitalized, and who will be allowed
to return to the city to reclaim their former homes and neighborhoods. Currently, there is a mix
of promise and opportunity juxtaposed with fear and anxiety among people in New Orleans. On
the one hand, the website of the NOMCVB proudly proclaims that New Orleans is open for
business and advertisements celebrate The rebirth of New Orleans: Ahead of Schedule,
Youll Love the New New Orleans, Welcome to Americas most romantic, walkable, historic
city, New Orleans.0 Yet city leaders and elites recognize that the ongoing competition for
0The New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (http://www.neworleanscvb.com/) (Accessed
December 9, 2005).

tourist dollars and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina complicate efforts to attract tourists and
revitalize the city. Several challenges and opportunities face city leaders in their efforts to
redevelop tourism and (re)brand New Orleans. First, branding requires the development of
institutional synergies with art, sports, and entertainment industries (Hannigan 1998; 2003).
These synergies and other tourism networks have unraveled and will require extensive rebuilding
in the coming years. Second, like other place marketing efforts, branding attempts to strike a
balance between the security of the familiar and recognizable, and the adventure of the eccentric
and strange. At present, New Orleans is a place of unpredictability, instability, upheaval, and
discontinuity. Third, a major component of urban branding involves advertising and marketing
aimed at local residents to build support for tourism development. Tourism organizations have
long argued that tourism and leisure can bring people together across social and economic lines,
enhance quality of life, and reinforce community. In the post-Katrina era, tourism agencies and
cultural organizations will likely attempt to strategically deploy terms like community,
uniqueness, and place distinctiveness to unite disparate groups of residents, create value, and
galvanize support for tourism development as expedients to metropolitan rebuilding.
One of the irrationalities of urban branding is that as city leaders increasing build similar
tourist attractions, they are forced to expend greater public resources for commercial
development and advertising to convince people that their attractions are more entertaining and
more authentic than what other cities have to offer. In the 1990s, the Mayors Mardi Gras
Task Force, the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation (NOTMC), and the Metropolitan
Visitor and Convention Bureau (NOMCVB) have teamed to brand New Orleans as the home
of the Essence Festival, Mardi Gras, and Jazz Fest. An essential element of this marketing
strategy is convincing the rest of the world that New Orleans is the authentic place for these
and other festivals. Yet jazz festivals and Mardi Gras celebrations have been copied and imitated
by many cities and the images of jazz and Mardi Gras are now widely produced and consumed.
Indeed, jazz festivals are happening in many U.S. cities and Mardi Gras celebrations are
occurring throughout the world in places such as Rio de Janerio, Brazil, and Sydney, Australia,

among other places. In this context, city-after-city attempts to out perform the other using ever
changing forms of advertising hype, glitz, and theming. Indeed, the future success or failure of
New Orleanss branding strategy lies in convincing tourists that New Orleans is the most
authentic city in the United State, the real home of Mardi Gras and jazz, and therefore worth
visiting. Thus, we can expect an escalation of branding efforts and greater appropriation of
public resources for the development of spectacular entertainment projects and corporate-driven
tourist attractions. In the post-Katrina era, city leaders will likely attempt to rebuild New
Orleans to fit a series of carefully crafted branded images that reflect a highly selective reality.
The real city - with its problems, inequalities, chaos, and so on - will likely be eclipsed from
view by the shadow of the branded city.
The empirical analysis I have offered in this paper challenges celebratory tourism-philia
accounts that emphasize the positive and beneficent aspects of urban tourism and urban
branding. While tourism advertising for years has proclaimed and branded New Orleans as a
lively and entertaining city of charm and romance, neighborhoods outside the French Quarter
paint a different picture of the city - an image of poverty, housing and school segregation, and
urban disinvestment. Tourism investment in the pre-Katrina era did little to ameliorate urban
problems. Today, urban elites argue that tourism and place marketing can be the engine that
drives metropolitan rebuilding, stimulate urban investment, and revitalize neighborhoods. Yet,
as many scholars have recognized, local leaders and elites design and organize tourism to deflect
attention away from social problems and to direct visitors to carefully surveilled and protected
spaces of consumption and entertainment, the tourist bubble, as Dennis Judd describes (1999;
see also Harvey 1989; 1988; Kearns and Philo 1993; Ley and Olds 1988). Branding is not just a
form of place marketing but a two-pronged political strategy to legitimize the entry of large-scale
entertainment chains while providing a discourse that attempts to silence and undermine
grassroots resistence to corporatized tourism. One tactic to silence and pacify resistence is to
encourage residents to adopt the visual orientations of visitors, to be tourists your own
hometown. Another tactic is to use the idealized image of New Orleanss food, music, and

history to frame contemporary tourism rebuilding as a choice between urban disinvestment and
economic stagnation and urban revitalization and prosperity. Still another tactic is to emphasize
family-friendly tourism and build tourism attractions that attempt to attract families. What
unites all these place marketing strategies is the effort to develop more specialized, more
differentiated, and more diverse tourist sights and sites within a commodified and rationalization
system that attempts to homogenize the tourist experience.
Finally, this paper provides a challenge to condemnatory tourism-phobia accounts that
denounce tourism as a monolithic process of homongenization and standardization. Scholars
have long maintained that a major developmental trend of tourism is the replacement of real
authenticity with a staged authenticity in which local cultures and traditions become
manufactured or simulated for tourist consumption. Despite their diverse work, early
conceptions of tourism by Daniel Boorstin (1964), Dean MacCannell (1992; 1976), and others
drew attention to tourism as a process of cultural erosion and debasement that transforms
indigenous and authentic places into saleable items (commodities) that are devoid of authenticity
and collective life.0 Yet in spite of trends toward commodification and homogenization, we
should also recognize trends toward the diversification of places and the accentuation of place
distinctiveness, trends highlighted by sociologists such as Lily Hoffman (2003), John Urry
(2002), and Harvey Molotch and colleagues (2000). The empirical account in this paper offers
support to the view that branding is a conflictual and contested process of homogenizationdiversification. Parallel processes of standardization-distinctiveness, rationalization-uniqueness,
and globalization-localization are not independently given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but
represent a duality, neither can exist without the other (Giddens 1984, pp. 25, 26, 163). Branding
is neither a final end-state nor a completed project. Instead of talking about branded cities and
places, we should examine urban branding as a dialectical process that involves the
intersection of global forces and localized actions and organizations. Future research needs to go
0In recent years, however, scholars have challenged the validity of this cultural erosion model of tourism and
attacked it as factually incorrect and self serving (for overviews, see Barthel-Bouchier 2001; Cohen 1988; Shepherd
2002)

beyond assertions that local groups and locally constituted relationships mediate processes of
homogenization and rationalization associated with branding. Research needs to demonstrate
empirically how exactly urban branding processes are articulated in the everyday social
behaviors and cultural practices of local people in particular places at specific times.
Understanding branding as a process of both homogenization-diversification can help to shift
analytically from the global level and its accompanying macro-dimensions to the local, the
specific, and the microlevel of everyday experience.
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