Will Dayton coalition's brand attract business?
Some marketing specialists doubt it, saying the message isn't specific to Dayton or its history.
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Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Dayton Development Coalition's new branding campaign for the Dayton region, aimed at target audiences around the nation, is intended to help attract new employers and professionals to support science and technology development.
Marketing specialists not connected with the campaign said it will have to be concerted, consistent and well-funded over time if it is to work.
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Several who viewed the "Get Midwest ... We Think of Everything ... Dayton Region" logo also questioned whether people will comprehend it.
"It doesn't mean anything to me," said Jack Trout, principal of Trout & Partners, a Greenwich, Conn., marketing strategy firm that serves Fortune 500 companies. "You put an ad out there and say, 'I want you to come here.' That's obvious ... I'd much rather hear or see important news about what's happening in the area."
Branding campaigns must deliver a focused and comprehensible message to attract consumers, said Shashi Matta, an Ohio State University assistant professor of marketing.
"What's missing for me when I look at this logo is, 'What is it telling me?'" Matta said. "It needs to be specific to Dayton. 'Think Midwest,' 'Be Midwest' or 'Get Midwest' is way too broad for Dayton.'"
The Dayton Development Coalition and firms it hired spent two years developing the brand at a cost of $1.5 million either already spent or committed, their leaders said. Leaders of the effort said the campaign's goal is to attract companies and individuals to build the region's targeted growth industries of aerospace research, information technology, advanced materials and manufacturing, and human sciences and health care.
The promotional campaign is intended to convey the region's Midwestern values of a population that is "hard-working, entrepreneurial, open, humble, hospitable," said J.P. Nauseef, the coalition's president and chief executive officer.
Officials of the coalition and its contractors said they plan to keep the campaign going for years with direct-mail pitches to corporate executives elsewhere and ads in publications that serve the targeted industries. They are also soliciting "brand ambassadors" from companies already here to spread the message about research at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the region's universities, as well as the area's affordable housing and reasonable home-to-office commutes.
The campaign may have missed a bet by not trying to capitalize on Dayton's aviation heritage, said Dave Lightle, who has served in recent years as marketing communications director for the Aviation Heritage Foundation. A national survey the foundation commissioned three years ago found just 14 percent of Americans knew of the Wright brothers and that they developed the airplane in Dayton, Lightle said.
The coalition's decision to develop a branding scheme based on Midwestern values for the 12-county Dayton region doesn't build on the recognition Dayton already has as the cradle of aviation innovation, he said.
"In branding, it's a heck of a lot more effective and cost-efficient to build on what you have," said Lightle, who previously worked for years developing brands for Thailand, Colombia and Taiwan to help them sell goods in the United States. "The coalition has taken the position that they're going to start with something all new. That's inherently more risky."
Lightle said he will support the campaign nonetheless because of the need for regional unity to make it work.
Elizabeth Allen, who led a communications subcommittee that helped the Dayton Development Coalition formulate the regional brand, said she believes that it will be effective. It resulted from thorough research and its Midwest theme reflects the region's people and work ethic, the affordable cost-of-living and ease in getting about — all of which would be attractive to companies that would consider starting operations here, she said.
"I think the brand is authentic," said Allen, who is also vice president for marketing and communication at Premier Health Partners, the health care organization. "It reflects how we feel about ourselves."
The coalition oversaw two years of exhaustive research, involving communications and graphics professionals and including focus groups, online exchanges and one-on-one interviews, to develop the brand, Nauseef said. The research uncovered little evidence that the country as a whole is aware of Dayton's aviation significance, he said.
"Whatever you develop has to be based on reality, not what you want the reality to be. The research we did was based on the long-term reality of importing capital and importing people, the workers we want to have in our economy," he said.
Evan Scott, a former coalition employee who helped get the branding development started, said the promotion needs to focus on what the Dayton region is today, not what its history has been.
"We have a chance to retell our story for the first time in 100 years. We are not the Wright brothers, we are not Charles Kettering, we are not John Patterson," Scott said, including references to the inventor Kettering and early NCR Corp. powerhouse Patterson.
Staff Writer Tom Beyerlein contributed to this story.
