The New Rochelle City Council has hired a firm that bills its members as “community brand avengers” to brand and market the city in an effort to spark economic development.
What entices shoppers and investors in a city, town or village, and what makes one community more attractive than another is often intangible, but the city and New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency are investing $68,000 to turn those intangibles into a quantifiable report.
Nashville-based North Star Destination Strategies, which says on its website that it is “saving the world one community reputation at a time,” is at the beginning of what is expected to be a 10-month process that will include resident surveys and focus groups and will end with a brand identity guide and implementation strategy.
Ed Barlow, vice president of strategic branding for the company, said the first step is gathering information to define the character of the community. The idea is that the company is not looking to create a new identity for a community, but rather looking to accentuate the character that is already there, he said.
“We cannot tell you to be something you are not,” he said. “We are not here to change you.”
Barlow and Lori Odom, the company”™s senior project manager, visited New Rochelle this month, holding a community outreach meeting and beginning the work of getting to know the city. The studies will include surveying shoppers at other communities to get the perspective of outsiders.
Odom defined a brand as what people say about you when you”™re not around; she defined branding as what you do about it. Branding the city will mean more than just designing a logo or coming up with a tagline.
“Nobody moves anywhere because they love the logo of a community, nobody chooses their college because they think Harvard has the best-looking T-shirt,” she told residents at a Sept. 9 meeting. “You”™re going to these places because of their reputation.”
Councilwoman Shari Rackman, a Democrat, expressed concern at the Sept. 10 council meeting that input the company receives from residents in surveys and through outreach might end up being a sounding board for complaints.
“People are very happy to be complaining,” she said. “If something”™s good they”™re not necessarily going to scream it out on the rooftops.”
The company representatives said they had worked with 200 communities over 14 years and take both negative and positive input to build a portrait of a municipality, though Barlow noted they wouldn”™t build a brand around “something bad.”
After the research and information-gathering stage, the company will identify target demographics and suggest a brand identity that can include a logo, colors and catchphrase to use on social media and local signage. An action plan from there can include not only signage and a related website but advertisements with testimonials from local business owners (Lee”™s Summit, Mo., went with a campaign around ”˜yours truly”™).
The city is on the cusp of several major redevelopment projects as it seeks master developers interested in two downtown “clusters.” It recently entered a memorandum of understanding with Manhattan-based Twining Properties to build a mixed-use development on the city”™s Echo Bay.
Luiz C. Aragon came in as the city”™s development commissioner last year. He told residents at a Sept. 10 presentation on the branding that it was one aspect of an overall change in the city that will also include a completion of a Comprehensive Plan draft.
“I don”™t think that we”™re saying just going through this exercise is going to resolve all our problems and everything is going to be rosy and wonderful at the end,” he said. “We have some very tough decisions ahead of us if we want to grow and if we want to change. ”¦ Being able to verbalize who we are and to brand ourselves is core to achieving that goal.”
Yonkers launched a six-month, $350,000 marketing campaign in the spring aimed at attracting millennials into the city. The campaign, called “Generation Yonkers,” was developed by Briarcliff Manor public relations firm Thompson & Bender and included advertising in New York City metro daily newspapers and on social media platforms including Twitter.
