Cypress County brand initiative: Planting the seeds of our future
Often, when at a crossroads, facing new horizons, or simply sensing disconnect between where they were then, where they are now, and where they want to be in the future, communities pose the question: Should we rebrand?
- To answer a question with a question, what we should be asking ourselves as a community is:
- What do people think of us?
- What do we think of ourselves?
- Are we accurately expressing who we are as a people, and representing our spirit as a community to others?
- What message do we want to share with the world?
- What parts of our past do we want to preserve and protect?
- Where do we want to set our sights for the future?
- Who are our audiences, and are we preventing the people we want or need to attract from coming here or investing in us?
- What kind of a legacy are we building and leaving behind for our children and grandchildren?
- And, most importantly, what if together as a community, we could reach our highest goals and aspirations, and achieve the exceptional as a desired destination for living, visiting, and working?
Because these are all in fact, questions answered by definition of our Community Strategic Brand Direction.
Why brand? Why now?
Today, Cypress County can be appreciated for its small-community connectivity, agriculturally-advantageous climate, and rural lifestyle living with easy city amenity access. Proximity to major transportation corridors and borders presents many economic and community development opportunities. This said, Cypress County’s population is roughly the same as it was 20 years ago, and its main economic driver–oil and gas extraction–is volatile at best. In vision and goal setting for the future, the County would be remiss not to explore additional, alternate, and attainable sources of community growth and prosperity, and strongly declare that it is indeed “open for business”.
However, those who appreciate Cypress County for its atmosphere and enablement of rural lifestyle living can be fearful that growth will diminish what they love about the community. On the other hand, many in the community will believe that new residential growth and the attraction of new business and industry equals new opportunities to enhance community vibrancy. This is a good time to ask ourselves if we can bring these perspectives together, establishing dynamic vision for the future while being fiercely protective of traditional community values.\
Here we ask such questions as: What roots us in terms of our core values? What guides us in terms of strategic priorities? What do we want for the future of our community?
Brand development has four key benefits for Cypress County:
Brand serves as an expression of the community's highest hopes and aspirations.
- Brand can work to resolve the paradox of community growth and change in tandem with concern about the impact of growth by carefully selecting and pursuing targeted development activity that enhances quality of life.
- Brand is a creative representation of community direction that is reflected in any number of ways (marketing communications, advertising, social and web presence, etc.) that can cut through competitive clutter to connect with those you want and need to attract to your community vision and strategic direction.
- Brand effectively communicates to those outside the community in the language of investment and resident attraction. It also communicates to those within the community to build commitment to, and participation in, community direction.
Leading with the heart of our community
What is brand in a nutshell…or a seedpod?
If you were to think of Cypress County as a person, Brand would be its beating heart, pulsing with community core values, beliefs, and the ideals it stands for. Brand identity, logo and imagery is the look. Its face. Messaging and content is its voice. How it interacts with people and shares its story to the world, is marketing action. While each of these components can work separate from the rest, in order to give a complete, honest, and accurate depiction of the community as a whole, each should be telling part of a larger story as directed by the beating heart of brand - just as we, as human beings, should be directed by what’s in our hearts. For this, brand expresses outward and connects inward.
If we say “Cypress County,” what comes to mind? Answering why we truly matter, and why people should care, great community brands will have something quickly come to mind as being different, better, or more desirable than somewhere else.
Brand is also seen as a collection of thoughts and feelings that someone holds for us as a community. Every place has a brand, and it’s owned by the interests or audiences that interpret us. Everyone has or will have an opinion of Cypress County based on our reputation, immediate interpretation of our materials, visuals, messaging, and actions, and of course what they think they know about “rural lifestyle living”. The question is, is it the right opinion?
Where marketing is focused and immediate in its urgency to say who and what we are, brand building is a broader, long-term investment. It’s where we prove who and what we are in order to influence opinion. It takes time, commitment, and consistency of effort, just like any courtship or developing relationship.
The most effective community brands…
- Are MUCH more than a logo. They are a workhorse for representing focused, differentiated, and ambitious community and economic development vision and strategy, and use bold marketing language and visuals to connect existing and potential residents, investors, and visitors to opportunities within that vision or strategy.
- Dare to be different with “breakthrough” visual, content, and marketing excellence in a world of noise and choice; competing for attention and overcoming the paradox where we must be creatively brave to get noticed, and yet more risk = less consensus.
- Answer “Why here” with definition of differentiated value propositions (what makes the community different, better, or more desirable than other options people might consider) to create focused marketing actions that most align with what the community offers, vs the generalities of saying “come discover us” – compromising our strategic resident, visitor, and investment attraction efforts.
- Wear their heart on their sleeves when storytelling the life and times of community. This is in recognition of neuroscience research that concludes most of our decisions are emotion-based, with facts and figures simply used to support our emotion-based decisions.
- Don’t need expensive budgets…just creativity, purposeful action, time, and consistency of effort in showcasing and celebrating being different, not the same.
Getting down to the nitty-gritty of brand
A brand isn’t just a logo. It’s an expression of a future horizon line for our community. Something to reach for in pursuit of our highest aspirations in regards to:
- People – their level of pride and investment in the community;
- Place – where quality of place (or placemaking) is rising in importance as we shift to a knowledge economy and more people increasingly choose where to “make their job” vs follow jobs around; and
- Economy – where sector and job availability are rapidly changing in an increasingly technological and automated global economy.
A great community brand is about 5 things:
- Our business practice with residents and investors
- Our community belief (in what makes it different, better, or more desirable than other places)
- Our community culture
- Our dedication to product or service excellence and enhancement
- Our emotional bond with internal and external community (building strong linkage between what we want to say, who we say it to, and how we say it)
Great community brands are also effective workhorses for such ambitious strategic objectives as:
- Expanding and diversifying the local economy, including job creation and workforce talent development.
- Connecting residents together in ambitious action; knowing that pride tethered to understanding of–and belief in–community vision has deep benefits, including the creation of local “salespeople,” local investment, and local business retention and expansion.
- Representation of community values to external audiences.
- Promotion of–and focus on–quality of place, environment, amenities, social conscience, fiscal responsibility, and governance leadership.
We don’t want to be just another dot on a map. We want to be a place that people take pride in, and a place that people remember.
What does brand success look like?
- Growth of community population
- Growth of community pride
- Growth of community engagement (e.g. attendance, volunteerism, etc.)
- Growth of community investment (entrepreneurial attraction)
- Growth of existing businesses
- Growth of a non-residential assessment base that enhances ability to pay for desired services and amenities
- Better ability to re-invest in infrastructure (e.g. water, sewer, roads, facilities) enabled by a greater proportion of non-residential assessment and new investment
- Enhanced civic infrastructure (e.g. recreation amenity/service levels)
Who do we want or need to attract to Cypress County?
Target market(s) that align with community value proposition(s) need to be identified and profiled. A target market is not “everyone” because “everyone” will not want to visit, move to, or invest in, Cypress County.
Community value proposition (what makes Cypress County different, better, or more desirable than other options people might consider) needs to be identified. To establish value proposition, we look to collect, analyze, and interpret economic development strategy, data, community insight, and experiential offerings. The more unique the experiences are, the stronger the value proposition – which has direct relationship with the ability to motivate people to visit, relocate, and/or invest.
The process of determining value proposition yields a simply-articulated vision of a desired future state. Target markets become those we need to help realize our vision, and who best recognize and respond to our value proposition. This brand initiative will bridge three gaps that typically bedevil rural community brand initiatives:
- There is considerable competition in the “small community atmosphere”, “rural lifestyle living”, and “quality of life” space;
- Rural communities are challenged – from infrastructure recapitalization to population growth - by accelerating urbanization and broader, global “new economy” transition;
- Community buy-in/leadership is inherently challenging in terms of getting enough people into a boat, rowing together.
We are looking for two distinct niche markets:
- Those living in the County with existing or budding entrepreneurial spirit who can be motivated to start or expand businesses via the County’s community development and marketing activity, or those living in the community who can be motivated to contribute efforts to achieve community vision; and
- A segment of the external (geography to be defined) entrepreneurial / investment / visitation population motivated to consider Cypress County because of a distinguishing set of features (value proposition) offered by the County that matches with personal value systems, lifestyle desires, and life-cycle motivations.
We identify target investment markets related to economic/industry profile and industry sector-based value proposition, and create a set of key messages to align target markets with value proposition. These key messages form “narrative” in a marketing program.
We need your input and ideas!
Please complete our short Community Survey (https://www.unfussybrands.com/community-survey/), and look to the County’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/cypresscounty) over the coming weeks where we will ask some key questions in regards to your vision for the future! Responses will contribute to creating a strategic direction for the brand.
The brand development initiative, anticipated to be completed by late June, will also see the participation of mayor and council, county staff, and a brand steering committee in direction-setting. Cypress County, who is leading the initiative, has retained Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta-based Unfussy (www.unfussybrands.com) to develop our brand.