KOMMUN-IKATIONEN : En studie om kommuners externa kommunikation och varumärke.

Sammanfattning: Abstract Title: External communication and brand strategies in Swedish municipalities
 Author: Philip Hagne & Einar Svensson
 Tutor: Jessica Gustafsson
 Purpose: The aim of this thesis was to study and obtain greater understanding on how Swedish municipalities use external communication and branding strategies to gain and attract more residents. The key questions to be answered in this thesis were: What does the external communication look like in the selected municipalities? Are the selected municipalities trying to establish their own brand? What does the work on creating the brand look like?
 Method/Material: This thesis is based on material collected trough interviews with people working with external communication in eleven swedish municipalities. The selected municipalities where divided into two groups based on their negative or positive population growth between 2005 and 2012. All of the selected municipalities where in the same population range between 20,000 and 40,000 citizens. The theoretical framework used in this thesis consists of David Aaker’s theories on Brand Equity along with Graham Hankinson’s, Gregory Ashworth's and Mihalis Kavaratzis theories on Place Branding.
 Main results: The main results show that the external communication is rather similar in all of the eleven municipalities regardless their population trend. The study could not show any definite correlation between the use of external communication and branding towards gaining new inhabitants. However this thesis sugests that municipal councils have changed their attitudes in prioritizing the external communication. The attitude from municipal councils today are more positive than earlier research has shown. Furthermore this thesis has shown that the financial issues and low communication budgets still are the main reason for limited work on external communication, though this is solved with collaborations with local actors in the public sphere.
 Number of pages: 64
 Course: Media and Communication studies C
 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University
 Period: Fall 2013
 Keywords: Brand, external communication, municipalities