Vem fortalezear: imaginários urbanos, estratégias de comunicação e representações da identidade de Fortaleza em uma campanha publicitária

Abstract

This dissertation, titled “Vem Fortalezear: urban imaginaries, communication strategies and representations of Fortaleza's identity in an advertising campaign”, investigates how the institutional tourism campaign "Vem Fortalezear", promoted by the Fortaleza City Hall in 2022, during the administration of Mayor José Sarto (2021–2024) constructs representations of the city by articulating discourse and imagery to disseminate and reinforce a particular identity. Cities, as both symbolic and material spaces, are also cultural products mediated by narratives (HALL, 2016). Contemporary place marketing appropriates these cultural products to transform territories into brands, producing meanings that go beyond the field of communication and directly influence how inhabitants and visitors perceive and relate to the city. Based on this premise, the study analyzes how the campaign uses communication tools and place branding strategies to craft an “imagined” Fortaleza that blends symbolic and market-oriented dimensions. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative approach grounded in content analysis (BARDIN, 2011) and in the image-discursive analysis of a 10-episode web series released on Youtube in 2022, complemented by a literature review that interweaves the fields of communication, geography, history, sociology, and cultural studies. Historical elements and public policies that contextualize the promotion of the city as a touristic and cultural product were also taken into consideration. The analysis revealed that the campaign employs idiomatic expressions, stereotyped imagery, and elements of local performance culture—such as humor, playfulness, and informality—to construct an idealized image of a welcoming, vibrant, and authentic city. The results also show that, although the campaign dialogues with culturally authentic aspects of urban life in Fortaleza, promoting a sense of local identity, it operates under the logic of city branding by emphasizing an idealized narrative suited to tourism and consumption. This reinforces processes of territorial commodification, identity homogenization, and the simplification of complex cultural realities to the detriment of more critical or nuanced representations of the city. Ultimately, the dissertation concludes that the "Vem Fortalezear" campaign is more than a promotional effort: it is a discursive practice that shapes meanings about what Fortaleza is and who represents it, contributing to the production of urban imaginaries and to the configuration of visibility politics in public space. In this sense, the study questions the ethical and political limits of cultural instrumentalization in the touristic promotion of cities, highlighting tensions between authenticity and spectacle, belonging and market logic.