Branding Your Community
Branding Your Community A Workshop for South Dakota Horizons– Milan Wall, Co-Director and a founder of the Heartland Center for Leadership Development was in Armour on Tusday, March 25th. About 40 people from the Armour, Wagner, Artesian, Letcher, Woonsocket and Tyndall attended a presentation on Branding Your Community. I was very impressed by the fact that 18 people from Armour attended. We learned the importance of Branding. For example, can you think of facial tissue or gelatin without thinking of Kleenex or Jell-O? It is important to be clear about the difference between a brand and an image. A brand is carefully constructed and managed. An image, however, is much more fluid and in many cases, not controlled or created at all but simply evolved over time. Every community projects a certain image, positive or negative. A community image is really made up from the accumulated perceptions of residents and visitors over time. Every time people visit your town, they take away a community image as part of their experience. How do outsiders see your community? What do they recall after a visit? What do they say about their time in your community?
A community brand can be used to promote a town event, to create consumer loyalty and encourage folks to shop locally, or attract new businesses and families. The best use of a community brand is to make connections by representing the community values and special features.
We were split into groups where we had to opportunity to talk about our community. In doing this we discussed several questions. What do we want to be know for? What are our community’s key unique assets? How is our image connected to our key assets? Who are our customers? How can we get their attention? How can we move them from attention to action? We also discussed Tips for Branding, keep it simple, build recognition and exceed your promise.
This is just another tool that can be used to help fulfill our hopes and dreams for our community.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
This was a very good workshop. It was certainly impressive that so many folks from Armour were there. Since there were several other activities happening in our area, I was the only one from Tyndall who could come. I also enjoyed sharing ideas on marketing our communities with the women from Sanborn Central area. I brought home several ideas to share with our community leaders.