The UNCW-led “regional branding” initiative for the lower Cape Fear finally found support from Wilmington City Council on Tuesday–conditionally.
An alternative resolution the board offered up and approved unanimously at that evening’s regular meeting steers around issues council members raised earlier this month–chiefly that the board was asked to endorse whatever brand an independent development team comes up with.
That development team–to include local business, nonprofit and economic development representatives–isn’t even assembled yet, noted council members including Laura Padgett and Margaret Haynes. And after it is, they posed, how can the board be confident its product is worth an advance endorsement?
Facilitators in the branding initiative–at this point a few staffers with the city, county and UNCW–said the elected board’s advance endorsement would be important to empower the Brand Identity Leadership Team (BILT) with the knowledge that the fruit of its time and effort would find support from local leaders.
“It’s all very nebulous,” Haynes appraised before her board passed a resolution essentially backing the process toward a regional brand, but not the as-yet-unknown brand itself.
And to stay up on the process, council asked through its resolution that the facilitators provide regular updates to all the area’s elected boards.
That includes all the municipal bodies in New Hanover County and northern Brunswick County–the area the idea’s developers want to include in the branding.
The idea of the need for a brand here–think the feeling of “Virginia is for Lovers” or Nashville’s “Music City”–has picked up traction at recent meetings of business minds at UNCW, including an entrepreneurship summit in February.
Jenni Harris, UNCW’s assistant to the chancellor for community partnerships, said that summit divided local business representatives into six groups asked to note local hindrances on their abilities to grow.
“One of the challenges that came up that was consistent of all six groups was the fact that we needed branding, we needed identity,” Harris said Tuesday, adding it came up again at a business leaders summit at UNCW in June.
From there, the city and county were brought into the discussion, and the brand-quest formed with UNCW offering to volunteer its resources.
“One of the things that [UNCW] Chancellor [Gary] Miller did when he came here two years ago was to commit the university and its staff and all of its resources to the community,” Harris told the city council Tuesday.
That means UNCW is putting forth students and staffers and other availabilities–no local taxpayer dollars involved at this time, officials emphasized– to gather and analyze extensive local data that will be forwarded to BILT for the brand-making.
Although the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners has already approved a resolution supporting BILT’s to-be-determined product, the city council’s support for now starts and ends with the process.
“I’m all for the process,” Haynes said Tuesday. “I don’t have any problem and I think the university ought to take the ball and run with it.”
“So, basically we’re saying, ‘Go ahead, bring us something,'” said Councilman Kevin O’Grady. “But, remember, in ‘Mad Men,’ they always say, ‘What else you got?’
“Be ready to give some alternatives,” O’Grady encouraged, “because you got a lot of people you’re going to have to please–not just us, but all the other governing boards and business people who are going to have to get behind it. And, I tell you, that’s going to be tough to do. But, I mean, have at it.”
Another question addressed Tuesday hovered over the difference between a brand, a slogan and a logo.
“Virginia brands itself as being all about love, pure and simple,” said Roger Johnson, assistant to the city manager for development. That’s a brand, he said, orbiting the slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers.” And that slogan rendered into a catchy graphic for bumper stickers and T-shirts is a logo.
The Port City will have its version when this process wraps in early 2014, he said.
“It’s about identifying what differentiates our region from the rest of the world.”
Past stories:
Council withholds support on regional branding plan
The search for identity: Officials start process to ‘brand’ greater Wilmington
A quote from City Councilman Kevin O’Grady in this story was amended from a previous version.
Ben Brown is a news reporter at Port City Daily. Reach him at [email protected] or (910) 772-6335. On Twitter: @benbrownmedia
