Presentation-Transcription & Slides - I Am Park Rapidsiamparkrapids.com/.../2017/08/Presentation-Transcription-Slides.pdf · CivicBrand presentation transcription & slides - August

CivicBrand presentation transcription & slides - August 11 & 12, 2017

I’m Ryan Short, Founder and Creative Director at Civic Brand, and I’m incredibly grateful that you’ve invited me and my team to address you here today. In a few minutes Shiloe, will be working on an exercise with you all, and I speak for the whole team when I say how excited we are to have been invited to learn about Park Rapids and what makes it great.

You have so much to think about and do, yet you’ve chosen to join us here, and that means more than you could know.

You all clearly have a passion and motivation for the success of Park Rapids - however you may define that. And it’s important to note that we do all define that differently. These are some of the answers to the questions we asked before you came.


In about an hour we'll all leave this room and each go out on our own, back to what we do - running and marketing our individual businesses and in turn promoting Park Rapids but each independently.

There is a way that we can each achieve our many individual goals for Park Rapids but in a more effective way by developing a brand platform that can support these many goals.

This is how we think about a brand platform.

“Brand” is a weird word. I could ask three of you to define it and I’d easily get seven different answers. That’s how weird it is. So let’s make sure, before we get too deep into the process, we’re all on the same page.


Let’s start with a quick exercise.

I know it’s early and you all don’t know me too well but we’ve got our coffee so let’s try something… I’m going to call out an emotion, and ask that you communicate the emotion using only your body language and facial expressions. Everyone ready? Okay, here we go:

Please communicate Joy.

Okay, now try Melancholy.

Next up, Surprise.

Okay, now… Don’t communicate at all. Nothing. Don’t tell me anything with your body language or facial expressions.

You, sir, are telling me I’m boring. Over here, this group is telling me they didn’t get enough sleep last night.

Ok, so why did we do that? For two reasons:

1. First of all, because it’s impossible NOT to communicate. And from a marketing perspective, that means whatever Park Rapids is doing today – whatever your current residents, tourists and other municipal stakeholders are exposed to – is all communicating something. Are you proud of that something? Is it the right something? The best something to help you all achieve the city’s goals?

2. Second: You should have seen the variation, from my vantage point, in what you were saying with your faces and bodies. I would never have expected there would be so many ways to communicate “melancholy.” Yet somehow you surprised me. You showed me that with one single emotion, there are almost as many articulations as there are people in this room.


Because of these 2 things… Branding is so important. Because we’re always communicating, and our communication styles vary, it’s necessary to develop a brand, so people can easily organize their thoughts and feelings about what they see in the world. Even when we’re trying to communicate the exact same things we do it in different ways.

When we say “brand,” we mean “the system of beliefs which defines an organization and attracts others to it.”


Please take note here: The words “logo” and “tagline” are not in this definition. That’s because a brand is so much more than these devices. Logos and taglines are just parts of ways brands speak… More on this shortly.


So while it’s great that we all individually have a very wide wide range of goals. It can also lead to this sensation.

We are all individually working hard and doing our best for Park Rapids and our businesses and our families but it can have unintended consequences. It can create a lot of noise and confusion and it’s just not that effective.


So the real, tangible benefit of branding? It’s this.

Let’s build a brand together that will avoid the risk of working against each other, and instead work in harmony, casting a wider net than any one of us could reach with one pole.

What’s an example of a brand which does this very well? Toyota.


Toyota sells a range of vehicle types that each have very different audiences and goals. They sell rugged pick-up trucks that need to appeal to that audience as being tough and adventurous.

They also sell minivans that must be seen as safe and family friendly. They sell eco-friendly cars like the Prius that need to be progressive, hip and smart.



Instead of running each division as completely separate brands they have developed a brand platform. Each of the vehicle types benefit from the supporting Toyota brand platform. That is because while each vehicle has completely different goals they benefit from the shared brand platform that Toyota has created that emphasis quality and dependability.


When done correctly community branding can do the same. Tourism, business, community… those are the like the different vehicles. They can each benefit from a shared brand platform that enhances their individual efforts but gives them the flexibility to appeal to their specific goals and audiences.

So how is a brand this strong created? How do we go about making this happen? Toyota and its promise didn’t just appear overnight, right?

Of course not. The one thing that all the world’s best brands have in common? People like you. Multiple inputs that strengthen the output.


Multiple inputs strengthen the output.

At Civic Brand, we feel very strongly that “black box branding” is counterproductive and counter intuitive. The notion of handing the keys to your brand over to an agency who disappears for weeks on end, only to return with a “big reveal?” That’s ineffective, antiquated, and useless. At the end of that process, you all walk away holding something in which you feel no ownership.

On the contrary, our perspective on developing this system of beliefs is iterative, collaborative, and most importantly, it’s whatever you bring to it.

It’s what you bring to it.


This perspective defined our process…

… What we’re looking for, throughout all this, is a shared value. That emotional space where residents, tourists and business stakeholders overlap with Park Rapids in what they want. What’s important.

Once we find it, we amplify it. Harness it. Put it to work and build upon it.

But we can’t find it without you. Your experience, your perspectives, your opinions. You’re the secret ingredient in building the Park Rapids brand. We need your input now. We need it often. We’ve already asked for it, and we’re going to ask for it again before we wrap up here this morning.


That’s why we created IAmParkRapids.com. It’s a 2-way communication tool for all the stakeholders in this project to provide input and have your fingerprints on the output.

By signing up on this project site, you’ll be able to weigh in on future surveys, be notified about project updates and receive other communications that are important to shaping the brand.

In a world where…

• We’re always communicating (whether we like it or not),• And communication varies significantly from person to person,

… Developing a unified Park Rapids brand isn’t just important, it’s vital. Necessary. And to see this succeed, so are you.

You are vital to the success of this project.


Documents

Presentation-Transcription & Slides - I Am Park Rapidsiamparkrapids.com/.../2017/08/Presentation-Transcription-Slides.pdf · CivicBrand presentation transcription & slides - August