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The processes of decentralization, marketization, and globalization of socioeconomic reform in the last few decades have promoted the transformation of local governance in China. City marketing has become one of the most typical local governance activities. This article examines the mechanism of city marketing and urban scaling-up in Xuyi County, which is marketed as “Lobster Capital” for its lobster production and festival, from urban awareness, economy, and governance. It argues that the effective combination of city marketing and local resource endowment is a very important tactic for the development of small- and medium-sized cities. The key point in this combination is the branding of local production. Moving from city marketing to city branding means not only a long-term development strategy but also an endogenous development model. Rather than simply focusing on attracting capital, continuous city marketing based on endogenous sources of power, such as political, economic, and cultural power, can effectively integrate local resource endowment to overcome the shortcomings of externality and the short-term nature of single city marketing and maximize the social benefit of city marketing, which will in the end promote the urban reputation and economic growth. Hence, the continuous city marketing mode can express the urban ability and actual strength in a clearer and better way. Local government and its effective governance system is the core of city marketing, in which the main governor’s impact plays a particularly important role. This is a typical pro-growth model of urban governance in China. This article uses Xuyi as the case of continuous city market to analyze the success of a reasonable local endogenous governance system promoted by the main governor through taking full advantage of local resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]