June 2006 · Volume 88 · Number 5

Putting Communities at the Center of Branding

by Don McEachern

Read the related articles:
ICMA Builds Momentum with Brand Update of Its Own
Brandstanding: Four Cities Share Their Success

Imagine for a moment you're not a local government manager. Instead, picture yourself as your locality's brand manager. Don't relax just yet. This is anything but a cushy position.

Since it's your first day on the job, here's a simple task. Collect the marketing and communication materials from all the players on your team, including the convention and visitors bureau, the economic development group, the chamber of commerce, any arts alliances, and, of course, your own local government. Also take a minute to determine what the private sector is conveying about your community when it speaks to the outside world.

Spread out these materials on a table. Do they have a similar look and feel? Are they integrated at some level? Are they relevant? Are they distinct? Do your private sector companies give an appropriate nod to your locality's brand? Do you recognize your brand? Is there even a common theme?

If you answered yes to all these questions, stop reading. You're light years ahead of most places and probably have a good handle on your brand. But if you were surprised by the incongruity of your community's marketing materials, you're not alone. The vast majority of local governments are in the same boat. In the words of a client who was recently given this assignment, "What a mishmash!"

DON'T PANIC

This exercise illustrates why a local government should be at the center of a branding initiative. The various entities that make up your community operate with distinct agendas. They speak in their own unique voices. That's their job. But when a brand is launched, it is advantageous for a community to speak in one voice, and what is spoken needs to be strategic.

Branding efforts of various groups, although individually well executed, often work against each other with counter messages if they are not coordinated. Only a local government operates in an umbrella fashion, with an eye toward making sure all entities thrive. When a brand is managed by the local government, the brand stands a significantly greater chance of working for the locality as a whole.

This means a brand has a greater chance of working, period. An added bonus: following the branding process, the diverse organizations and entities that worked on the initiative often find themselves appreciating the other groups more and working with them on additional projects.

By now a lot of managers may be panicking: "I'm willing to take this position hypothetically, but I've got too much on my plate to take it literally!"

Some communities may choose to have their managers handle their branding, but many of the governments that I work with are successfully elevating the public information officer, the communications manager, or the director of marketing and communications to the role of brand manager.

Forward-thinking communities may even want to consider being the first on the block to hire a brand manager. As the branding wave continues to grow in acceptance and importance, it's only a matter of time until the significance of branding demands a specialized position.

MANAGE BUT NOT OWN

Notice that when I talk about local government's role in branding I say "manage," not "own." A number of problems are inherent in the idea of a locality wholly owning and controlling its brand. First, that type of control may affect buy-in from the bigger group, including the private sector. And buy-in is mandatory, from the perspectives of both implementation and financing.

In addition, every four years or so a local government may experience a turnover in elected officials. I've had more than one client implement a dynamite brand, only to have it abandoned by newly elected officials looking to make their own marks.

Ideally, ownership of your community's brand platform and brand identity should be held by a sizable and inclusive marketing partnership comprising local government as well as big and small players from the public and private sectors. And, although the amount of resources each group brings to the table can impact each group's influence over the process-big fish will be big fish-all should be invited.

Gainesville, Florida, for example, recently launched a branding initiative backed zealously and financially by an alliance of marketing professionals from 46 organizations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including such heavy hitters as the University of Florida and Shands HealthCare. This alliance will "own" the brand, making it invincible to political pressure.

According to Bob Woods, Gainesville's communication and marketing manager, the alliance did not happen overnight but has been well worth the wait. He credits City Manager Russ Blackburn with supporting the effort.

"We have literally put together a team of emissaries for the brand," says Woods. "For this to work, we needed buy-in from the major institutions like the university and the city and county governments, as well as the nonprofits, the major industry associations, and groups like the artists' associations that contribute to Gainesville's social fabric. We have recruited members from every social level and demographic strata that make up our city. This is truly a citywide effort."

A team approach such as Gainesville's furthers the buy-in and adoption of the resulting work. It keeps in mind the big picture for the community, and it weathers changes in administrations.

FROM INSIGHT TO INSPIRATION

Let's say you accept the premise that branding begins with a local government (which you should). And, for the purposes of this article, you are still your community's brand manager. The next step is to review the process of branding, beginning with a definition of a brand. Contrary to common thinking, a brand isn't a logo, a mission statement, or even a positioning platform. Your brand isn't something you produce or provide to others, like an ad, brochure, or radio spot.

Your brand rests in the minds and hearts of other people. It is what they say about you when you're not around. It can be influenced and shaped by marketing materials. What has more influence over the things people say about your community: Your logo or someone's experience in your community? Your positioning line or what a prospect hears from a friend?

Although there are several approaches to building a brand (some more complicated than others), the process I advocate involves four steps:

Understanding. Research is conducted to understand your community's physical attributes in relation to the competition, to glean the opinions of the stakeholders, to determine the perceptions of current and prospective consumers, and to identify demographic and psychographic information about consumers.

In other words, knowing your audience and knowing what your audience thinks of you are two basic laws of persuasive communication.

This stage is a lot of hard work, but it should be a lot of fun too! Researchers should talk to elected officials, residents, visitors, and business owners. They must test your community's attractions, dive into its history, and explore its economic development opportunities. They should visit neighborhoods, schools, museums, and traditional town squares. They should explore and fish (if that's what you offer!) and attend local meetings. They should eat and shop and check out your hotels.

Insight. The most successful brands establish an emotional-not just an intellectual-connection. In other words, you now need to translate all those fascinating facts gathered during the research phase into emotional sparks that can bring your brand to life. Your brand strategy must be relevant to your situation while it differentiates you in the competitive marketplace.

Imagination. During this phase, you breathe life and character into the understanding and insights that the process has revealed. For most communities, this is the most exciting stage. Here all the data and high-level strategies are transformed into tangible creative products that embody your brand. The results are consistent communication concepts (positioning lines, logos, ads, public relations, Web sites, outdoor boards, and so forth) and strategic initiatives (civic awards, architectural guidelines for redevelopment, way-finding systems) that support the strategy.

Evaluation. Finally, take time to make sure your brand is working for you. Put in place measures that track how your community's brand is perceived in the marketplace, and determine whether these changes in perception have worked to achieve the desired objectives of the brand.

Just as I advocate placing local government at the center of branding, I am adamant about the benefits of integrating research, strategy, and creativity into a single process. Piecemealing the process opens up too many opportunities for disconnection. How many of you, for example, have a thick book of research results sitting on your shelf right now? Ultimately, research is useless without strategic and creative shaping to bring it to life for the consumer.

It is just as problematic to proceed with a clever marketing campaign if research has not been conducted to determine the relevancy of that approach (or, as often happens, if research conducted by one company is being ignored by a creative agency because the creative types didn't conduct it and they don't find it relevant).

Marketing is merely a promise to the consumer of fun or creativity or safety or charm, and none of it means anything if the destination can't deliver.

Finally, energetic, exciting, and relevant outcomes result more often when there is interaction among the people who conduct the research, the people who develop the strategy, and the people who cook up the creative. Countless times I have seen our research people confer with the creative teams, and even take them to focus groups and interviews, in an effort to further their understanding of a certain quality a community may possess.

USE YOUR COMMUNITY AS A CANVAS

As brand manager, you are responsible for identifying your local government's brand and bringing that brand to life. Clearly, this will involve marketing, so you will be accountable for the effectiveness and the return on investment of your community's marketing efforts to both residents and the outside world.

But it doesn't stop there. The brand must be represented in your community's architecture, in its events and attractions, in its public art and signage, in the aesthetic overlays to development and redevelopment, in the attitudes of residents and public servants, in the community's approach to entrepreneurs, and in its educational offerings. In other words, your community must do more than advertise its new brand; it must wear it like a second skin.

Columbus, Indiana, for example, has just launched its branding campaign and is currently in the process of inventorying all city property that can serve as a canvas for the brand, including water towers, storefronts, buses, police car doors, and signage. I encourage you to take it a step further and leverage relationships with communication providers. In exchange for the lease on cell and radio towers, ask for time on the airwaves to promote your brand. If you provide a cable company access to public institutions like hospitals and prisons, demand a little time on their channel.

Of course, your community will never become a branding canvas without its local leadership. Because most of what we're discussing is local property, your message will never make it to the storefront, the water tank, or the airwaves without government approval.

In London, Ontario, Canada, this point was illustrated when the city launched a massive metamorphosis initiative to become a "creative city." According to Gord Hume, city controller, the city needed a state-of-the-art entertainment complex downtown in order to attract the entertainment and sporting activities that would create a buzz about London. But building the entertainment complex was not without controversy and could not have been accomplished without government leadership.

CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY MARKETING

The four Ps of marketing are product, place, price, and promotion. The four Ps of community marketing are politics, politics, politics, and politics. By their very nature, cities and counties are composed of different groups with different interests, agendas, and turfs to protect. How can you manage your community as a cohesive brand?

Further complicating the problem is the fact that a single community can mean so many different things to so many people. Communicating effectively in today's cluttered marketplace will require you to hone that tangle of feelings and thoughts to a single distinct point.

All of this requires strong government leadership to keep branding from becoming bogged down "in committee." Solicit input from your entire alliance but give actual decision making to only a few. Try to make the ultimate decision makers reflective of your community's makeup. Include, for example, representatives from the public, the private, and the nonprofit sectors.

Stress early and often that branding is not about compromise or even consensus. Branding is about determining the strong singular message that will define your community. It is about creativity and, yes, even risk. When all the subvoices within a community clamor to contribute their two cents regarding the brand message, the result too often is watered-down pabulum.

Finally, have fun with the process. I've heard community branding referred to as a science, and in some ways it is. But despite all its scientific principles, at its core branding is about eliciting an emotional reaction. All the research, all the strategizing, all the logos and positioning lines and advertising are working toward one goal: the tiny reaction in someone's head or heart after an encounter with your brand.

When the group charged with branding a community actually enjoys the process, when group members are excited or even challenged by the research findings, when they are willing to take risks creatively and think like consumers rather than politicians, the resulting brand is almost always a winner. PM

Don McEachern is president of North Star Brand Strategies, Nashville, Tennessee (don@northstarideas.com).

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