Following a lengthy process the Ville de Luxembourg has unveiled its new brand.

Multiplicity – the brain child of Brussels design and strategy consultants Minale – is the result of a series of workshops involving city departments as well as market analysis during which criteria were established and the values of the city were clearly defined. “If you want to sell or promote a product, you have to be fully aware of what the characteristics of that product are. And a city is no different,” says City Manager Geraldine Knudson.

The goal was to create a brand in the form of a “claim”, in modern marketing parlance, that would express the very idea of the capital and that could be used for a multitude of marketing purposes. The multiplicity idea was enthusiastically welcomed by everyone involved – and most importantly by the mayor and the college of aldermen. “The fact that we have chosen multiplicity as our claim is both an acknowledgement of and support for the diversity of the city,” says mayor Paul Helminger. “It is also recognition that it is essentially what we are…and, equally importantly, what we want to be.”

Ambassadors of the brand

As Pascale Kauffman, head of public relations at the Ville de Luxembourg, points out, it was also important that those who live, work and visit the city accept the values defined by the new slogan. “Because once they do accept them as being the true values of the city, they become ambassadors of the brand.”

Local communications specialist Binsfeld then developed the visual identity. “We fairly quickly decided that we would have to develop the visual aspect of the claim, of the word multiplicity itself,” explains Marc Binsfeld.

The Binsfeld team eventually selected a logotype that would be distinctive, but that could also be easily married with the existing Lion logo of the Ville de Luxembourg.

“Multiplicity describes the atmosphere of the city and allows us to create a very strong brand,” says Geraldine Knudson. “And the new visual reflects on the people, the colourful aspect of Luxembourg. It is the city’s ‘leitbild’ encapsulated in one word.”