Pamplona City Branding

Plural by nature, true by choice

Problem

Pamplona/Iruña City Council had no city brand of its own: institutional communication relied solely on the council’s coat of arms and corporate identity, with no shared narrative to bring together a plural citizenry (two official languages, neighborhoods with very different identities, diverse economic and generational sectors) or to project an external image that went beyond San Fermín. Any solution had to avoid two risks: replacing or competing with the council’s own institutional identity, and falling into a contrived, touristy, or empty-slogan tone, in a city that sees itself as discreet and not given to «selling smoke.»

Result

Through a participatory process (interviews with key figures, sector roundtables, sessions with community groups, benchmarking against other city brands) eight key findings were defined, and from them, a complete brand platform: vision, mission, values, personality and narrative. The chosen territory — a proud city with a will to let its hair down — crystallized into the tagline De verdad / Bagara, conceived not as a translation but as a real interlocking of Spanish and Basque.

A brand architecture was also designed with six legitimate use cases, allowing the city brand to coexist with the institutional identity rather than replace it, along with a relevance test to decide when it should apply to third-party initiatives. The strategy further recommended giving the brand its own typeface, a recommendation that led to commissioning the «Pamplona» typeface family.

Authorship note: this work was carried out at Errea, where I work under contract.