One Year Later - Durham's Overarching Brand is a Success - DURHAM, N.C.

One Year Later - Durham's Overarching Brand is a Success
Posted: 10-11-2007 : DURHAM, N.C.

DURHAM, N.C. – Assessment, one year after its launch, indicates the overarching brand for Durham is working. The brand is already adopted in more than 250 ways by local organizations and companies, and hundreds more by the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB), Durham’s marketing agency. The embrace has also been ratified by scientific surveys of local residents and external audiences nationwide.

“When you’ve articulated a successful community brand, it strikes people not like a lightning bolt, but rather like an Aha! – this really fits,” said Shelly Green, Chief Operating Officer of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Three years ago, DCVB was asked by other messenger organizations to explore the possibility of an overarching brand. Only one year after its launch, it’s getting good traction.”

Successful overarching brands for communities are rare and there was concern it wouldn’t be possible to overcome the fragmentation common in a community as eclectic and diverse as Durham. After all, to be overarching, the Durham brand had to encompass everything from Research Triangle Park to Duke University, from Downtown to NCCU, from sports and performing arts to festivals, history, research labs and everything in between.

The purpose of an overarching brand is to make all messenger organizations more consistent. At their essence, community brands go far beyond logos and tag lines to drill down into the values and experiences core to the community’s personality. A major hurdle is overcoming the simplistic notion that brands are logos or taglines.

DCVB took on the challenge with the blessing and coordination of the 15 organization Durham Public Information & Communications Council, a best practice consortium of the senior communications officials, as well as final review by an inclusive Durham Brand Advisory Group of community leaders. Place branding specialist and author Bill Baker came on board to help facilitate each step of the process and protect it from special interests.

The process included nearly two years of assessment, interviews, focused groups balanced for inclusivity, workshops and meetings. Uniquely, Durham also used generalizable research and surveys of both local residents and external audiences nationwide. “Durham’s approach to this…is like nothing that I have seen from any other community of a similar size or even much larger,” said Baker.

“I like the entire effort….I was impressed with the process and like the outcome,” said Bob Ingram, Vice Chairman of Pharmaceuticals at GlaxoSmithKline, Inc.

Another unique tool to facilitate adoption of the brand has been deployment of a Durham brand portal where residents, non-residents working in Durham, and Durham based organizations and businesses can register and then download various ways to support the brand. Flatteringly, an early guest registrant was from John Deere, a company that knows a little about branding.

For “reasons to believe” in the overarching Durham brand, www.wheregreatthingshappen.com provides ample evidence along with an opportunity for residents and visitors to post personal stories about where in Durham great things happen to them.

Now, a year after launch there are clear signs Durham’s overarching brand is working:

40% of residents are already familiar with the brand tagline, “Where Great Things Happen.”
97% of those residents believe it makes them feel more positive about Durham. By 12 to 1, respondents nationwide feel the brand signature make them feel positive about Durham.
Among female respondents, often believed in consumer behavior to be the decision-makers about places to travel or live, the ratio is 16 to 1.
Among the bellwether 18-24 age group, the ratio is 24 to 1.

Already the Durham model is being hailed in books and academic papers on branding places.

“I’m delighted to join in celebrating the success of the overarching brand of our community,” said MaryAnn Black, Associate Vice President of Community Affairs with Duke University Health System.

Additional Information:

To view Durham’s Brand at a Glance: Core Elements of the Overarching Brand, Durham Brand Promise, and Signature Elements of the Overarching Brand, click here.
To view “10 ways to Deploy Durham’s Overarching Brand,” click here.
Local businesses and organizations have used Durham’s overarching brand in over 250 different ways during the last year. To view some of these adoptions and uses, click here.

Durham, North Carolina is a single city-county of close to 250,000 people and is home to Duke and North Carolina Central universities and Research Triangle Park. It features a range of nationally acclaimed sports events, festivals, restaurants, and historic sites and hosts nearly 5.5 million visitors annually.

To learn more about Durham, make travel arrangements, request an official Durham Visitors Guide, subscribe to a weekly eCalendar of Durham events, or view an interactive map of Durham, log onto www.durham-nc.com. Online packages and tickets will be available on DCVB’s website later this year.

Durham News Service is a service of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau, an internationally accredited local tourism development authority and the official destination marketing organization for Durham, North Carolina, including Research Triangle Park.

http://www.durham-nc.com