Bellevue Officials Establishing Brand to Market Community
There are taglines everyone knows — “Do the Dew” for Mountain Dew or “Betcha can’t eat just one” for Lay’s. But how do cities brand themselves?
That question is something Bellevue business leaders are exploring, with plans to publicly present the results sometime around April.
The project began around two years ago after a group of community stakeholders determined the city needed a brand. The goal was from an economic standpoint, said Kevin Hensel, president and CEO of the Bellevue Area Chamber of Commerce. He said the chamber received 17 proposals from across the country and engaged with OBI Creative in the beginning of 2020.
“Some people call it the rebranding initiative. I call it the branding initiative because I don’t know that the community as a whole has really had its own brand,” Hensel said. “The city, chamber and school district have logos. What we were really looking at was something that brings Bellevue together as one.”
The brand will serve a few objectives.
“One is giving us an internal community sense of who we are and a way to unite us as a community,” Hensel said. “Another is how do we communicate externally who we are and strive to be so that other businesses and industries, individuals and families look to coming to Bellevue.”
Hensel said the coronavirus pandemic slowed down the project and changed the strategy.
“We had anticipated using in person interviews for research,” he said. “We hit pause on the research for a few months because we knew the focus of people was on the pandemic. It picked up late spring, early summer, with the majority through zoom meetings, online surveys and telephone calls. It impacted how we gathered information and also the timeline.”
OBI Creative went through an extensive process to work on the branding.
They conducted qualitative and quantitative research to determine how the public perceived the community of Bellevue.
“We interviewed, or surveyed, members of city government, owners of businesses, members of the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce, residents of Bellevue and the general public,” said Ann Pedersen, director of strategic communications and public relations at OBI Creative.
Among the questions posed to those surveyed:
• What did they like?
• What didn’t they like?
• What were the strengths and weaknesses of the community?
• How should the community be positioned for the future?
The firm also conducted interviews and round table discussions with more than 50 people who represented education, business, the military, city and county government and residents of Bellevue, seeking a common thread between all stakeholders and how this thread could be woven into a new brand for Bellevue.
Pedersen said three messages came from the research:
• Welcoming everyone home;
• Bellevue as a gateway to one of the fastest growing counties in the state; and
• Service to one another, country and to community.
“We heard so often that Bellevue was a caring, welcoming community regardless of whether one was born there, chose to move there or was part of the military and ordered there,” Pedersen said. “Residents of Bellevue stressed that everyone was welcome.”
Pedersen said they tested these messages through an online community engagement platform called MindMixer, which allowed community members to voice their opinion on which statement resonated with them most.
Hensel said La Vista and Council Bluffs have focused on developing their own community brands in recent years. Cities use banners, logos and other elements that can tie together as well.
At the county level, there’s no formal brand, said Megan Stubenhofer-Barrett, communications director for Sarpy County.
“We do have brand standards when to do things, and we promote the Sarpy County seal with the buffalo in the middle as the county government’s image, but it does not come with a tagline like La Vista or Papillion,” she said. “Much of that has to do with the different roles the city and county government play. They have festivals, entertainment venues and parks. We have the courts, the jail and build roads.”
She said the Sarpy County Tourism Office does “sell” Sarpy with branding and slogans.
Hensel wants to emphasize that Bellevue has been trying to be transparent and open to feedback.
“A branding is not going to work if the community doesn’t agree with it and embrace it so we are working really hard to get good information from as many people as possible,” she said.
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