We are about to kick off our comprehensive planning process. We've been brainstorming ideas for "branding" the plan. Can anyone share their ideas? Thanks!
We are about to kick off our comprehensive planning process. We've been brainstorming ideas for "branding" the plan. Can anyone share their ideas? Thanks!
What is this "branding" you speak of?
It is all a matter of perspective!!!
The title of the plan. Some that we've discussed include Vision 2030, New Horizons, Legacy....Any fresher ideas?
Its corny, but try a contest. High School kids can come up with some pretty amazing ideas and art work, or you can open it up to the general public. Newspapers are often willing to help organize these kinds of civic events, and you can usually get some local businesses to provide some kind of prizes (especially hit up the local devleopers, they like the publicity too).
"Future events such as these will affect you in the future."
when I started my Plan 3 years ago, I was going to brand it the 20/20 plan - get it? I thought it'd be cool and I'd have cute little graphics throughout the document and all - but when I got into the process, delving into all the data, meetings, visioning sessions, formal presentations, I realized that the branding doesn't matter, it's really about the plan - so with low budget color printing, unbound, with only local photographs I took myself adorning it here and there (and some cool mapping from my GIS consultant - better to spend the $ there really), it still managed to pass with 82% of the vote (everyone votes on the comp plan here) so I think it was a good decision
so don't feel like you need that catchy title and graphics - people want to know their voices were heard and addressed
but I will say it can depend on the community - if it's a rich suburb for a major metro area, they may want the marketing fluff - so determine what kind of place you are in - here, the no nonsense Yankee way worked
Ah this is somthing I struggle with too. My somewhat limited experience on the stuff I've worked on suggests its quite important if your doing lots of public consultation to make documents look more paletable. And useful to set it apart from other things.
Even for stop gap policy documents and the such i've found its good to either just stick with the corporate brand or use some really simple things like a colour, and a standard font. My homemade logos always look bad, but you might have an in-house design team. Even somthing simple like and arrow ... well maybe.
For example using word (or Star Office) you can make a header and footer with a thin coloured bar, use the same colour with headings and bullets and all of a sudden a bland document doesnt look half bad.
These guys used a great logo based on rubiks cube (they had to pay for it).
I can't remember what they called it now either but the logo is on this.
http://www.mendip.gov.uk/Documents/C...s%20paper2.pdf They used a pale greeny blue and a standard font as well.
It just helped raise the profile and set it apart for councillors and officers as well as external bodies and residents.
I'm starting to get some friendly push to brand our comp plan which we're currently rewriting. I just can't bring myself to call it "Vision 2020" (2020 being the horizon year of the plan).
If we do have to brand, what elements should we consider? Physical characteristics of our jurisdiction? Our economic engines? Our just something esoteric?
Any more thoughts from the Throbbing Brian?
A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place — like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard.
When I worked on our updated Comp Plan a few years ago, I used the stakeholder committee to come up with ideas to consider in branding. I threw out a couple of ideas to get people thinking and then left it up to the group. We ended up with ...
Mapping X' Future: 2030 Comprehensive Plan
This provided the stakeholder committee with some "ownership" of the product, which helped me increase their involvement as the thing dragged on.
Satellite City Enabler
Plan-It has a great idea. If you don't have committee, than maybe pull a major theme of the comp plan. In a comp plan we wrote for a jursidiction, the major focus was ag preservation. Hence the comp plan's title was "preserving the future: _ community plan"
Brotip #2418 - know when it's time to switch from being "the little engine that could" to the "little engine that said, 'f*ck it'"
Our comp plans have all followed the same format -- "City and ETJ Comp Plan: Year 2020". Bland, I know, but it does tend to avoid the potential pitfall that badly dates a plan or implies any potentially (unforeseen) negative connotation.
Off-topic:
I recall how utterly 'quaint' some older plans seem.
I have seen
old ships sailing
like swans asleep
A brand is a lot more than just a slogan or catch phrase, it is the overall image and story one wants to tell about a product.
A brand must be an honest representation of the the product that evokes an emotion from the audience.
The first question should be is what is the brand for the jurisdiction. CPSURaf provides a good example in that agriculture was important to his clients community and was a major part of the image of the community.I would look at what the community is, what it wants to be and how the plan figures into to it as a starting point for the slogan.
"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less" General Eric Shinseki
Brocktoon hit it on the head - branding is about conveying a consistent message to the public so that they begin to associate you with your activities (plans, efforts, etc.). It can involve a logo, color pallette, tag lines, phraseology and more. Its a total package approach such that ll materials going out about that plan would have a consistent set of elements that make it immediately recognizable to the public ("Oh, this must be about that comp plan process"). And it can be very effective. I personally think using this approach to promote and engage the public in planning is a great idea. Its very often done poorly.
We just finished a Branding process with an advertising firm for our organization. Being a non-profit, I have typically considered this approach to be more of a for-profit type of endeavor and tended to shy away from it, but I learned A LOT through the process and I see much more clearly the way that we can use it to amplify and clarify messages about what we do and why we do it. We really will benefit from it, I think. We will be ready to unveil in the next month.
I'll bet you can find a good Branding 101 type document online to give you an idea as to how to go about this.
The purpose of life is a life of purpose
I prefer a branding iron.
Last edited by nrschmid; 04 Feb 2009 at 6:09 PM.
"This is great, honey. What's the crunchy stuff?"
"M&Ms. I ran out of paprika."
Family Guy
Quote
