Successful single-industry towns and a new brand for the Karelian city of Segezha

In 2018-2020, a finnish-russian cross-border cooperation project carried out a study, the main goal of which was to determine possible ways for the development of singleindustry towns (or monocities) in the Republic of Karelia on the basis of russian and foreign experiences. The research methodology included interviews with representatives of single-industry towns, a review of relevant literature, and an analysis of development plans and annual reports of single-industry towns in Russia, Finland, the United States and Canada. This study has found that karelian single-industry towns seldom apply branding as an instrument for economic development. At the same time, international experience demonstrates that branding is a widespread and effective tool for attracting investments, tourists and new residents to single-industry towns. This article presents several examples of successful branding of monocities and, on the basis of their experiences, proposes new ideas for creating a new brand of Segezha – a karelian monocity specializing in the production of paper and timber. In particular, it is proposed to make Segezha the founder and coordinator of the International association of pulp and paper cities, as well as to hold annually a number of original cultural events related to the topic of paper, such as a paper art festival, a paper mask carnival, the project “Segezha – the city where Buratino lives” and pageant “Miss valuable paper”. According to the authors, these events will be able to attract the attention of russian and foreign mass media to Segezha and to create a new attractive image for it, which should contribute to the city’s economic diversification and its further development.