Manifestation of a Community Value

Many felt it was prescient that Durham, North Carolina, where I live, happened to honor social entrepreneurs at its Annual Tribute Luncheon in the spring of 2009.

Conceived in 2008, the honorees for that event seemed to foretell an explosion of entrepreneurial interest here including campus-like hubs such as Bull City Forward and two American Undergrounds.

However, that may be more coincidence.  The roots of Bull City Forward can also be traced to meetings in 2008, one of which was attended by an ATL organizer.  So it appears the revelation itself was entrepreneurial.

But Durham’s almost temporal entrepreneurial nature had been unearthed two years earlier during a two year process from 2004-2006 involving hundreds and hundreds of residents as well as external audiences culminating in the distillation of Durham’s “overarching” personality including community values.

It may also be coincidence that the notion of “social entrepreneurs,” was simultaneously gleaned during that two year drill-down to reveal Durham’s brand, when one of the executives involved with managing that process happened to read a 2004 Fast Company Magazine article.

The magazine recognized 20 companies as “best of the best” social capitalists including one based in Durham, The Center for Community Self-Help which was founded in 1980.  This clue led to uncovering a deep vein of community interest and activism that had been long taken for granted.

The idea that Durham is inherently entrepreneurial didn’t surface from a wish to be so or from envy or because it is now in vogue, but because it was unearthed by hundreds and hundreds of citizens digging down to discover Durham’s enduring distinctiveness.

A community’s personality, or brand in marketing parlance, is not an aspiration or a slogan or a tactic or even a strategy.  It can’t be imported, exported, transplanted or developed.

Its elements cannot be not born of or made sustainable from envy or trends.  While not always unique to a community, their distinct manifestation is.

Today’s press is all about the incredible American Underground with two 20,000+ sq. ft. downtown Durham campuses within a few blocks of each other.  It was recently recognized as part of the exclusive Google for Entrepreneurs Tech Hub Network.

But this and any subsequent efforts will always stand on the shoulders of generations of entrepreneurs here dating to the late antebellum 1850s of Durham’s founding.

That is what I mean by near-temporal.

Illustrating A Touch Point

Place branding is still relatively new, successfully distilling an overarching brand, such as has been done by Durham NC, where I live, is even more rare.

Most places still fall into the trap of thinking a brand is just a logo or a catchy tagline or what officials there want or presume it to be rather than something distinctive that can  be truly delivered.

An authentic brand is a distillation of the almost temporal values, traits and descriptors that are distinctively manifest in the minds of generations of not only its internal stakeholders but also its external audiences.  Far too many attempts at defining a place brand seem contrived or incomplete or even misleading and the problems can always be traced back to a flawed process.

Some place brands are just inaccurate in the same way that White Rhinos aren’t really white, Australian Shepherds don’t come from Down Under, Sperm Whales weren’t valued for their sperm, Hermit Crabs don’t live alone, Guinea Pigs don’t come from Guinea, Oystercatchers only rarely eat oysters and Flying Lemurs aren’t lemurs at all.

Various road trips over the nearly three years since I retired have taken me through 40 of the 50 states in the USA, crisscrossing many via multiple routes.  This is pretty impressive for someone who hated to travel during a nearly 40-year career in marketing communities as destinations for visitors.

Through a windshield it is easy to see why geography isn’t a very good way to brand or summarize the personality of any state because each one offers such a variety of landscapes and terrain.  Taking that approach is likely to result only in a stigma.

States are not usually destinations anyway.  Instead, they are a means of narrowing down a route or a specific destination town or city.  But how a state is branded, both in communications and in terms of being litter and billboard-free, can enhance or destroy first and last impressions.

An effective place brand must be reinforced at every touch point.  The State of Maryland even appears to tweak the hue of yellow used on roadway signs and markings there to resemble the shade of yellow in its welcome signs and on its state flag which are drawn from a part of the state’s seal.

Officials there swear that isn’t the case.  Maybe its just a dab fluorescence, but the change was very noticeable, to me at least, as I have traveled across state lines into and out of Maryland from adjoining states on six different occasions.

State seals and flags are notoriously poor designs for large scale use but Maryland, since the Civil War, has not only extracted an element that is scalable, but made it an overarching brand signature for the state including the University of Maryland.

If you are wondering what “every touch point” means, the appearance that Maryland seems to tweak the standard yellow used on roadways and signs is a good example, even if only perceived.

As for Baltimore Orioles, whose sweet sound heralds spring throughout much of the Eastern half of United States including where I live in North Carolina, they are not named for the city or the baseball team but because some believe the species exhibits a bright color similar to that in the crest of Lord Baltimore, the first Proprietor of Maryland.

On the other hand, some may find in the name a reminder of something I once read entitled Why Men Love Red but Wear Brown!

Newest Collaboration - Updated Downtown Durham Guide & Walking Tour

First published nearly 20 years ago with nearly 1 million copies in distribution, the newest annual update of DCVB’s Downtown Durham Guide & Walking Tour is also the newest collaboration with Downtown Durham Inc. (DDI) a private, non-profit, advocacy group partially funded by the City and County.

Along with many other improvements, the update includes a route map of just-launched Bull City Connector, a fare-free bus route running from Duke University to Golden Belt, which was also created by DCVB in another collaboration with the City of Durham and the Durham Area Transit Authority.

One of many reasons DCVB stands out in the minds and hearts of Durham residents as benchmarked in scientific public opinion polls is because it has always worked hard to leverage its mission with partnerships and collaborations.

Like other editions, DCVB’s in-house graphics designed and produced the updated Downtown Durham Guide & Walking Tour, as it did helping DATA and the City of Durham with marketing the new Connector . DCVB will also include 65,000 copies of the new Downtown Guide and a flyer about the Bull City Connector in bi-weekly distributions of its other literature to more than 100 outlets including all hotels, shopping malls, healthcare and transportation centers.

As an aside, for those interested in how an “overarching community brand” works, notice both the overall Durham brand signature and the Downtown neighborhood signature on the cover of the Walking Tour. Individual logos for the two sponsoring organizations are on the back.

An even clearer “best practice” use of a community’s “overarching” brand is the way the City of Durham and the Durham Area Transit Authority deployed the Durham brand signature, “Durham-Where Great Things Happen, on the website, literature and transit coaches (click to enlarge image above) for the Bull City Connector.

The term “overarching” means the brand is an umbrella that stretches over or encompasses all individual brands in the community including businesses, non-profits, universities, agencies, neighborhoods, faith communities etc. The signature is just an element distilled from the community’s distinct core values and personality traits.

Naturally DCVB, as Durham’s marketing agency, is the facilitator for the community’s overarching brand, which in a few short year is now showcased by nearly a thousand other Durham organizations in tens of thousands of applications.