Launching Your Brand – an insider’s perspective

Henderson, Kentucky just went through our place branding process. The project was led by the Executive Director of their Henderson County Tourist Commission, Kyle Hittner.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a patient person.  At all.  So when our commission decided that a branding initiative was in order, I was ready to RUN. But Steve kept trying to persuade me that a true community brand requires buy-in from community stakeholders. He warned us that if we were to just forge ahead on our own, that we’d have trouble getting our community brand off the ground when it was time to activate.

Now that we have completed the branding process with Chandlerthinks and are carrying out the tasks outlined for us in the branding navigation guide, I can tell you that Steve’s early advice couldn’t be more true. If it weren’t for the buy-in and passion that we had gotten at the beginning phases of the project, our brand would have already fallen flat, outside of what we do in our office. But because of that buy-in from community stakeholders, we are now off to the races, and have discovered/created/executed multiple storytelling opportunities around our entire community…..and we’re just getting started!

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