Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson - "It's in our Nature"

Courtesy of the City of Quesnel:

Weekly Column by Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson:

What’s in a name, or a logo and tagline? Ask any marketing expert and they will tell you: everything! Names, logos, and taglines must be current, cogent, and capture the imagination of the audience you are targeting your product or service to.

Based on multiple points of feedback, particularly from our business community, the City of Quesnel’s Goldpan City logo and tagline were dated and desperately needed refreshing and modernizing.With great trepidation and some hesitation, Council agreed to tackle this issue by undertaking a community-based rebranding process and, after a year of consultations and much deliberation, we formally adopted a new brand for the City this week.

This includes a fresh and bold stylized “Quesnel” logo, with the new tagline, “It’s in our nature.” Council’s initial hesitation came from the fact that branding exercises can be costly and divisive. However, we were able to fund this process through grants from the Northern Development Trust, Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition, and the CRD and City’s economic development budgets. And, I’m happy to report, the new brand and logo for the City has been well received by the businesses community and the many stakeholders who were engaged in the process. In fact, it has achieved unanimous and enthusiastic endorsement by everyone who worked on it and the groups and individuals who reviewed it prior to Council’s formal approval.

Personally, I am thrilled with the final product and believe it captures all of the positive attributes and potential of our beautiful City and the diverse and welcoming community it is home to.All of the documentation detailing the City’s new brand and the comprehensive marketing and communications strategy that underpins it can be found at: quesnel.ca/brand.html.The main intent of our new branding initiative is to position Quesnel as a sustainable, accessible, trailblazing and fun community, a place where visitors and residents alike can enjoy an affordable, balanced life in a welcoming and inclusive community. Our challenge now is to ensure we can deliver on this brand promise.

Internally, we’ve met with the City employees to review the new brand and asked them to help us ensure that every program and service we offer to the community is sustainable and accessible, and, where possible, fun and trailblazing (that is, leading edge or even courageously innovative). We have also asked our senior managers to make brand implementation one of their strategic priorities this year.The City will also fully incorporate all the new brand’s elements into the public washroom and community promotions space we will be creating adjacent to Spirit Square. This fully accessible and fun community place will have our new brand colours, fonts, and graphic elements incorporated into its design, so will the City’s new website, which we are currently developing and hope to launch in April of this year.

Externally, we will be working cooperatively with our business associations, tourism operators, hoteliers, restaurateurs, and other service providers to incorporate the City’s new brand into all of our marketing initiatives and seek their help to ensure we deliver on the brand promise of being a sustainable, accessible, trailblazing, and fun place to visit, live, work, and invest in. Please review the new brand’s documentation and help us to deliver on the positive promises it makes about this thriving community we call home.