Branding funds flowing towards 'Dunedin Inc'

Sue Bidrose.
Sue Bidrose.
The much vaunted Brand Dunedin campaign - an up to $500,000 campaign designed to take the place of "I am Dunedin" - is about to get a serious push two years after it was launched.

While the Rugby World Cup drained funds for the campaign last year, the Dunedin City Council is hoping the promotional material will be used across local government and business, resulting in the city becoming "Dunedin Inc".

In 2010, the Dunedin City Council announced a campaign with no logo, and no slogan.

Instead, in the replacement to "I am Dunedin", and before that, "Dunedin, It's all right here", the city itself was to be the brand.

Then chief executive Jim Harland said instead of the council running the campaign itself, it would work with "brand partners": the University of Otago, the Otago Polytechnic, Tourism Dunedin, Allied Press, Dunedin Venues Management Ltd, the Otago Chamber of Commerce and the Otago Southland Employers' Association.

Those organisations signed a memorandum of understanding to use the brand for the next five years.

Residents were asked to tell their stories about why they lived in the city, and why it was special to them, and they were collected on the "Insiders Dunedin" website, and in other media, to be used as part of the campaign.

The project went quiet from that point, until it appeared to re-emerge recently at the iD Fashion awards, where one of the stories appeared on promotional material.

A small article in chief executive Paul Order's newsletter last week noted work "continues in partnership with Tourism Dunedin to progress the branding strategy for Dunedin".

Strategy and development general manager Dr Sue Bidrose said this week the project had gone quiet.

One reason for that was the council's marketing budget had been re-routed to promotion for the Rugby World Cup last year.

There was also a review of the marketing team under way, since former manager Debra Simes had left last year.

The $500,000 figure was the council's marketing budget, but reviews meant all communications and printing roles across the council were to be merged, and the budgets for those roles would also be merged.

The effect on the budget was not yet known, but it was expected to rise to "more than $500,000, but less than $1 million," she said.

Some work had been done with the new brand, and the www.DunedinNZ.com website address had been featured on the field at a Highlanders game at the Forsyth Barr Stadium recently.

Partner Tourism Dunedin was doing a lot of the work, Dr Bidrose said.

The original plan for the brand was to provide a framework Dunedin organisations could use to promote Dunedin's "values and beliefs" in order to attract and retain the kind of people who would make a positive contribution to the economic, social and cultural wellbeing of the city.

The word "Dunedin" had a typeface that all the partners would use in their promotional material, and there was a consistent photographic style.

Tourism Dunedin chief executive Hamish Saxton said he was inviting local tourism operators to incorporate the branding alongside their own material.

He said all the partners were still on board, and would use the branding.

"If we can get as many businesses as possible to incorporate [the branding] then it truly becomes 'Dunedin Inc'."

david.loughrey@odt.co.nz

 

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