Marketing-urbanism: 'marriage of convenience'?

"Brands get to make meaningful contributions to society and the governments get to leverage the ingenuity and consumer centricity of the marketing world," Knight pointed out. According to him, governments which have less money to spend are now turning to world-leading companies for financial support to take care of their primary tasks.

Increasingly sophisticated messages

"Brands that are willing to pay for it are increasingly able to sophisticatedly show their message in public space," he said. "We are starting to see this trend in South Africa - Outsurance pointsmen, the pothole fixing that's going on now. Brands need to look for ways to engage communities and adding value.

"We are becoming less interested in their superficial promises and more interested in them delivering value, and creating a better environment and a better world."

However, some argue that many governments around the world, hit by bad planning, financial crisis, mismanagement and red tape, are taking advantage of the new trend to dodge their constitutional primary task, which is to deliver services.

But Jason refuted this theory, saying: "I think that we are getting into situations around the world that we can't always rely on governments to solve problems. This trend is a continuation of people taking the power and responsibility back and not waiting for the authority to solve everything."

"Being useful in urban environments"

He added, "Marketers are turning to large-scale, low-cost and ultra-viral mediums like projected billboards. I think the shift that needs to happen is that brands need to evolve from being present in urban environments, to being useful in urban environments."

As the marketing-urbanism 'marriage' forges ahead and redefines the rules of the game, Jason believes it will grow from strength to strength. "It's a relatively unoccupied yet very powerful space for brands to explore. It's about brands getting less selfish and more positively involved in communities," he said.

Cities in general are hot these days and a lot is written about cities and urban spaces, according to the Amsterdam-based Pop-Up City.

"Brands look for involvement in urban spaces, not in the first place to approach and impress passers-by and locals, but also to find a huge audience on the Internet, since all remarkable projects are featured," Pop-Up City's Joop De Boer has written.

"Develop further in the next few years"

"Inhabitants are not the only consumers of urban space any more, but brands take the urban space into the cloud. We strongly believe that this trend is going to develop further in the next years."