Canton Residents Help Shape City Brand

About the Project

The City of Canton selected id8 to create a new Brand and Marketing Strategy that positioned Canton as a pleasant place to live, work and play for residents, businesses, and visitors. However, the City had one unique request. They wanted the new identity to be centered around the thoughts and opinions of its community.

Research

For 4 months, id8 listened to Canton’s leadership, it’s business owners, residents and visitors during one on one interviews, focus groups, workshops, street interviews and an interactive online survey that was available to the public and City employees. All of the stories and opinions that id8 heard gave id8 the words and visuals to create a truly authentic identity for Canton.

At the end of the research and analysis phase of the project, id8 was able to clearly identify Canton’s key distinctive benefits as natural beauty within the City (mountain views with the Etowah River running through the City), location (convenient to Atlanta and the Blue Ridge Mountains) and community (genuine, personal relationships with neighbors and business owners). id8 began developing concepts and messaging for Canton’s new identity that focused on the key benefits with each target audience in mind.

To better understand Canton’s best/ideal customers among targeted consumer stakeholder groups, id8 conducted ESRI Tapestry Segmentation reporting for Canton’s two zip codes (30115 and 30114), to help identify consumer characteristics regarding perceptions, experiences and desires of residents.

Netnography research was used to gain digital insight into the actual ways that individuals in Canton’s stakeholder groups were going online to research and make plans to work, play or do business in Canton.

Solution

id8 developed promotional materials in multiple mediums that were capable of being used across a variety of departments, programs, and services that aide in communicating the City’s new identity and messaging.

We created a brand strategy to identify the long term strategy the City should adopt to ensure that Canton’s new brand identity is sustainable and assists in attracting, retaining and expanding businesses in the downtown area and throughout the City.

id8 also developed an advertising and marketing strategy to identify the short term strategies, as well as marketing tactics and tools that the City should adopt to communicate and deliver key messaging to its residents, business owners and visitors.