Where Community Branding and Destination Branding Meet

The art and science of product branding is a complicated field. When you take this field and apply it to branding a place it can get very complicated. People tend to have strong emotions tied to places they've visited and even stronger emotions tied to the places they've lived. 

A key part of any strategic branding initiative is the emotional appeal. It has been my experience that people tend to reserve a different set of emotional characteristics to places they live to places they only intend to visit. Of course there is a good amount of overlap in these but people feel differently about the place they call home. Even a small town is a complicated concept to grasp as a product. Every store you visit and every person you meet impacts the brand. 

I look at destination branding and community branding as different things. Destination branding has the advantage of limiting the brand messages to a greater degree than community branding because people are not constantly interacting with the (ever changing) product. When you are living in a community you the negative inputs are very difficult for the brand manger to control. Someone cuts you off in traffic in the morning and you cannot get that negativity out of your mind all day, the community brand is impacted. Remembering that negative messages have much greater power than positive messages, the community often loses the battle to improve its image in the mind of locals. This is the well known concept "the grass is always greener" where places look better from a distance.

Two of the times (or circumstances) that the differences in destination vs. community become smaller are during holidays and key community events. When "family and friends come to town" we have a tendency to look differently at our community. As hosts we feel the need to think like a tourist. This is where these two types of branding meet. And this is where communities/destinations have some of their best opportunities. By focusing strategic energy on creating or improving local events you can impact both locals and visitors. Every destination marketer would hope that their locals would be their best promoters but this is not often the case. Many locals tend to have the perspective that "this is a great place to live but you wouldn't want to take a vacation here" while tourists often feel their favorite vacation destinations are "a great place to visit but you would want to live there." A great local event that brings out a large cross-segment of the community can do more for branding that place than almost any brand-image advertising campaign.


Another challenge for community branding is the power of apathy and indifference. Our minds are designed to take the repetitious data that we intake daily and sort it into a category labeled "unimportant." Unfortunately for a community those might be many of the best assets the the community has to offer. If you have smooth streets and beautiful parks your mind will eventually only remember the new bump in the road. It's why so many cities get more calls about the (relatively few) potholes in their streets than they'll ever get about the great parks. How many people do you know that are passionate about a local museum? Think about this: Are you more likely to visit a museum while you are out of town on a vacation or while you are in your home town? You have no urgency when you are "at home."

Purpose

I'm not sure why this has been running through my mind today. I keep thinking how important it is to enjoy what is right in front of us, and to live with very few regrets. I see too many people stressed about their lives. And these are not terrible lives to be living. Mostly it's worry about the future, wanting control of that unknown before them. For others it is regret. Deep regret. But usually for things they had little or no control over.

It just seems to me that our primary purpose is to make the most of the days given us and to ENJOY it. "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Him. His creation. The misfit people. The dusty landscape and therefore dusty cars we own. The unexpectedly cold or hot weather. Rain on our parade. An unexpected death. An unexpected life. An unexpected boon. An unexpected boondoggle. An unfulfilled promise. An undeserved gift.

Now I remember why this might be going through my head today. I recently spent time with a baby. Happy and content one minute, crying for a small need the next. And a video I saw this morning of a baby laughing at paper being torn. Just paper. Hilarious, to one baby, now to anyone who sees the baby laughing.

Let's all laugh at paper being torn. Let's cry when our friends feel pain. Let's look for more chances to see the joy in what is right in front of us. No regrets. OK just a few. plan for the future but don't fret over it. And sometimes just stop to make a record of your time here. Take a picture, draw a picture, write a poem, write a note. Then look back and remember how blessed you are.

Frontier Texas Celebrates Texas Independence Day

Frontier Texas Celebrates Texas Independence Day

Viral Videos

Today I had the pleasure to work with the great team at In-Focus Digital Video. They are the video production sponsors for our museum's fundraiser, the Buffalo Chip Classic. They do top-notch video production and did a great job producing the 2009 short (online) video and a nice longer DVD with footage of all of the teams.

We got into a disussion about editing to make videos more "viral" or faster, shorter, punchier etc. The event was really fun and they captured great footage so we think it has potential to be somewhat viral. I asked for the video to be limited to three minutes. That seems really short at first but if edited with a standard television commercial format it is actually six 30-second ads.

That made me think about the great 30-second ads aired during the Super Bowl each year. Many of them use narrative story-telling as the format and take you through an entire "plot" in 30 seconds. I watched about a dozen, and most of the 2010 Doritos ads, and counted an average of 15 cuts (segments of footage) per 30-second spot. They move fast but are able to carry a narrative, and make you laugh. This one is my favorite video of the bunch.

While I was jogging this morning I thought more about an idea I had back in 2004 that keeps coming up in my mind. The idea was about creating a business that brings high-quality video/film production to a mass-market. It was creating the next Kinkos, for video and digital services. It was really prompted by the death of my mother, Carolyn Cooper Salmon. I wanted to create a documentary tribute to her wonderful life. But now, six year later it still hasn't happened. I keep seeing new/better ways to distribute video online and it makes me wonder who is going to capitalize on this. Today I thought about the year 1932 when my mother was born. I thought about the events of that year. I thought about what might have been happening in Nocona, Texas where she was born. I thought about how a business like I've envisioned could create the templates for each of these years that could be added to someone's life story. Then, as usual, my thoughts fell into the many details of copyright law and competing interests...and I finished my run and went to work. Only today while working on my "real job" I decided to write this down here, where nobody will likely see it, but it is recorded. Life goes on. History is made...

Life Online on in 2010 - Is it real?

2010. A new decade has arrived. I'm sitting in my office working on several projects including updates to the Frontier Texas! website: www.frontiertexas.com. That reminded me that I have this blog space that I don't actually use and that nobody knows about. So here I am writing to you, or myself as it seems. It reminds me of the question "If a tree falls in a forest...?"

I am an active Facebook user and keep posts for Frontier Texas! on www.facebook.com/frontiertexas but I am still avoiding Twitter at this point - but it might be in my near future - I keep hoping it fades away.

Just for the record, it's really cold in Abilene, Texas today. Well, cold for us Texans - about 25 degrees. We're planning an event for Texas Independence Day on March 2, 2010 - it should be a good event. We're also working on a new exhibit: "Gunfighters: The Law and the Lawless on the Texas Frontier" that should open in March.

If anyone reads this please email me (jeff@frontiertexas.com) and let me know so I can actually give some thoughts to future posts. Happy trails!

Community

I am thankful that we have people in our community who give so much of their time and money to help causes greater than their immediate needs. From the outside, it might look like being on a board of directors for a local nonprofit might be some kind of privilege. But it's actually just a place to be asked to do more work, give more money and carry the emotional burdens that come from working on hard issues. If you've ever thought "How did THEY get APPOINTED to that board or get that position?" the answer is almost always that they offered to help. Find another cause to add to your list and do more. You might be surprised what else you can do and that it's more rewarding than improving your golf game or redecorating your house.