Tasks | Goals

Stadtmarketing Halle (Saale) GmbH (SMG) was founded on 25.06.2003 "to raise awareness of the enormous potential of the city of Halle (Saale) nationally and internationally [...], to develop the city of Halle into a brand, to work out a brand essence and to communicate it consistently both internally and externally".* SMG's corporate mission is the "conceptualisation, positioning and marketing of a distinctive profile for the city of Halle in a national and international context".* This includes the development of tourism packages, projects and thematic fields with potential for the city, the development of mission statements, the coordination of high-profile campaigns and the sharpening of internal and external perceptions based on a holistic, cooperative approach. SMG uses the instruments of destination, city, event and congress management as well as marketing and public relations for this purpose.

SMG is a municipal holding company with the City of Halle (Saale) as majority shareholder (55 %) and 45 % shareholder shares of private interest associations and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (5 %). The associations combine the interests of business (Pro Halle (Saale) e.V.; 25 %), tourism (Förderverein Region Halle (Saale) e.V.; 10 %) and trade (City-Gemeinschaft Halle e.V.; 5 %) in the interests of city marketing and make a considerable contribution to the financing of the company.

SMG raises further funds in the future through models of pool formation and cooperative marketing as well as through partner-financed realisation of individual marketing measures.

* Excerpt from the SMG shareholder agreement, 2003

City marketing: moderator in cooperative marketing

The SMG can point to a number of successful networks that involve exchanging ideas, sharing budgets and focussing on nationally significant highlights for external communication. Tourism, too, and especially tourism, needs drawing cards to tell and recommend. SMG does not see itself as a service provider of an institution, but rather bundles, filters, initiates and prepares according to target groups. Examples of this in the area of cultural tourism are the campaign "Kulturhäuptlinge - nurbeiuns.de" and the cooperation with the Leipzig Book Fair and publishers in the city of Halle (Saale).

Since 2008, Halle's leading cultural, educational and scientific institutions have been presenting themselves with seven coloured feathers - symbolic of the seven cultural chieftains of Halle, the city of Handel: the Händel-Haus Foundation, the Francke Foundations, the Moritzburg Art Museum in Halle, the State Museum of Prehistory, the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy and the Theater, Oper und Orchester GmbH Halle. They are all united by the USP and the competence statement "only with us". Active cooperation, pooled budgets and the collective marketing know-how for national marketing are what give the cultural and knowledge network the advertising presence, the clout and the attention that each individual institution could hardly achieve on its own.