Case Study
Rockford Region Brand Identity Development
Objective
Destinations often find it helpful to periodically rebrand their identities to provide potential visitors with a fresh look of their offerings. The rebranding can include anything from commercials to a slogan or, in the case of Rockford—a logo.
A destination’s tourism identity is a set of crucial differentiating factors that define experiences visitors are likely to enjoy—hopefully in meaningful, memorable and creative ways. Graham Spencer Strategic Communications was chosen to redefine the Rockford region in 2007 and create a new regional brand for the Rockford area.
The goal was to develop an exciting and memorable logo to be used for tourism promotion, economic development and community pride-building.
Strategies
Community branding should come from a firm basis of knowledge. In most cases, design audits as well as primary and secondary research (externally and internally focused) must be conducted. Since Graham Spencer was already familiar with the region, they were able to eliminate much of the normal "discovery" process and made a variety of detailed strategic assumptions. Using that knowledge, they began to design a number of different identity options based on the following positioning statement:
"The Rockford region offers residents and visitors an honest, real, and quintessentially American experience. Life here is lived at a different pace than many of the markets from which we draw visitors, and we are blessed by a wealth of unique natural and 'man made' assets that make this a vibrant, truly original place to live, work and play."
Tactics
Once the identity options were created, Graham Spencer presented the work to focus groups comprising individuals who represented Rockford’s target market for travel. Five logo and tagline concepts were shown to the groups. Rough advertising concepts were also shown during the focus groups and the key learnings were used to create new campaigns and advertising executions. The resulting creative revolves around the notion of "real, original Rockford." The Rockford region is a welcoming, what-you-see-is-what-you-get community with wonderfully pleasant living and tourism assets that individuals would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. The logo's graphic elements are meant to suggest green, forested hills, flowing river waters and its mid-American location and character.
Results
The new branding identity has been in place for several months. One of the first campaigns utilizing the branding was “Summeriginals,” which out-performed the previous year's campaign by a wide margin. In fact, the 2007 summer campaign drove 30 percent more traffic to the Rockford Convention and Visitors Bureau's Web site than the 2006 campaign. Several hundred waterpark packages and arts/culture packages were also sold during the campaign. To learn about the current "Winteriginals" campaign, visit www.winter.gorockford.com.