From canada.com:

The world already knows the Montreal region as the home of the Cirque du Soleil, Leonard Cohen and Céline Dion. The city’s fertile soil also fosters many festivals, a prominent video-game industry and vigorous art, theatre, dance and song.

To be any good, a brand has to correspond with reality. Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s suggestion that the opening of the Quartier des spectacles would allow Montreal to attain the "very first ranks of cities in the world of culture" does not meet that test. Rozon said that for that to be true this city would have to present world-class shows almost every night of the year. To think one can compete in this with New York and Paris is delusional.

Not much better was the Tremblay administration’s promotion of Montreal a few years ago as "Knowledge City." When I mentioned this at the time to a British expert on city branding, Simon Anholt, he snickered, "Boring – only 763 other cities are trying to position themselves that way."

Creativity encompasses both knowledge and culture without sounding pretentious about either.

Source

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Tags: cirque du soleil, Gérald Tremblay, Knowledge City, montreal