City branding literature began to develop during the 1990s, with its starting point in the theoretical settings of branding products and services. Like corporate brands, cities meet functional, symbolic, and emotional needs, and the attributes that meet those needs need to be aligned into a single city offer. Seen from the point of branding, the identity of a city consists of values, expectations, cultural heritage, natural beauty, in summary it is made up of everything that makes a certain city recognizable and unique. On the other hand, the image of a city represents the totality of impressions gained by the public, and is a consequence of the experienced, not the actual quality of a city. In fact, branding is conceived as a form of communication in which brand identities mediate between brand owner activities and consumer perception, while the brand should be managed and communicated based on different visions of different recipients. Generally, rebranding is adopted when cities are not satisfied with the current situation and want to create a new name, term, symbol, design or their combinations for an existing brand with the intention of developing a differentiated (new) position in the minds of stakeholders and competitors. Associations arising from art, history and the media point to the fact that city branding is primarily a rebranding exercise that seeks to strengthen, change or enhance images that have developed organically, just as the town of Lepoglava is trying to move away from the negative perception of the Lepoglava penitentiary and turn to new tourist attractions based on local culture such as lace. For the initial steps in the rebranding of the city of Lepoglava can be taken activities envisaged by the Development Strategy of the city of Lepoglava 2014-2020. Opinions and attitudes of the population as bearers of identity about the peculiarities and values of the city represent the strongholds of the city identity. Media analysis has shown that most media coverage of Lepoglava is related to the penitentiary. Despite the neutral city image towards the outside public, the citizens of Lepoglava do not have so many positive attitudes and opinions about the city. Having in mind the above, it can be concluded that the activities undertaken by the City in order to rebrand and implement the desired image are not sufficient and the first step should be changing the negative perception that the local people have of the city.