Does Community Branding Matter?

Does Branding Matter?

Mr. Madville Times himself, Cory Heidelberger, kicked up a storm a couple days ago in a blog post by claiming that communities are wasting their time — and more importantly their money – by redeveloping their brand.  It caused me to do a double-take because earlier that same day, I had plugged the importance of establishing a strong community brand in a presentation I made to some folks down in Kansas and Nebraska.

So who’s right?  Does branding matter?

At the center of the controversy was the community of Brookings, SD’s and their recent rebranding efforts.  The community felt they needed to refresh their brand because various community organizations were marketing the community in different ways.  To help everyone get on the same page, they hired a Nashville, TN community branding entity.

Cory’s objections seem to rest on the following arguments.

• Brookings has done well without a unified branding effort, so why change what’s working?
• Spending $84,000 to hire a branding specialist is a lot of money, especially when community leaders admit that they’ll have to do it again in a few years to keep a ‘fresh’ image.
• It’s impossible to find one thing that defines a community, so don’t try. It’s better to celebrate the community’s diversity, and allow your community to be many things to many people.
• A brand is useless if community members don’t have any actual performance to show for it.

Bottom line, Cory doesn’t think branding works for communities.  Some of the commenters to his post agreed, some didn’t.  I appreciated that they made me rethink my thoughts on the subject.

The bottom line for me is if we want people to choose our rural communities as places to call home, we need to pay attention to our branding.   Our brand is our collective identity, expressed in many ways when people encounter our community.

Too often our small rural communities are known for the last basketball championship.  Or worse yet, for being places that time forgot.  But changing that identity doesn’t mean we have to rush out and hire a branding company for $80,000.

Start by getting together as a community:  talk about what you want your community to be known for, make sure it connects to your vision for the future (if it does, it will help you achieve that vision.), and figure out how you are going to communicate it to others.

Visual elements like a logo and tag line are important, but actions are more important.  You have to be able to live up to your community brand.  If you want to be known as a friendly community, you’d better make sure residents (especially those who deal with newcomers like cashiers, waitresses, and elected officials) embody friendliness.  If you want to be known for supporting entrepreneurs, make sure you celebrate their accomplishments (like posting interviews with them on YouTube).

So, the big question is, does your community’s brand reflect who you really are?  If not, people will see right through it.

Tags: branding, Madison SD, marketing rural communities