Girl About O-Town

Branding is not an easy concept to grasp.  While we readily acknowledge that strong brands influence us, and sometimes we might think we know why, we still have a very hard time articulating how this actually happens.

Thankfully, many very smart brand experts out there can.  After consulting the oracle (Google), and reading up here and there, I can only begin to appreciate the notions of brand identity, brand personality, brand value, and brand promise. 

Personally, I like the way Martin Thoma simplifies:

“Your brand as the sum total of all that is known, thought, felt and perceived about your company, service or product…it exists only in the mind of the public. It can be created, developed, managed, influenced and even bought and sold – but it cannot be owned or controlled.”

Does the concept apply to cities then?  Think for a moment. What do you know, think, feel and perceive about San Francisco, Paris, or Hong Kong? What about Ottawa?  What do you know, perceive, think and feel about Canada’s capital? 

There are many who think that cities are brands, and it seems Ottawa is no different.  In fact, Tourism Ottawa has been working on this idea for a while now. Some very specific brand guidelines have been developed to help market Ottawa as a destination, and to extol the virtues of our fair city to the world.   For fun, I’ve condensed them here into a Wordle…

What do you think? Do these brand-building concepts speak to you? Do they accurately describe the Ottawa inside your mind?  Do they capture your imagination? Is this a place where you long to live?

This question of Ottawa’s brand interesting to ponder in the midst of the heated public discussion underway about the fate of Lansdowne Park, the Kanata Soccer Stadium, and Ottawa’s urban development in general.  The city is in a tizzy, and rightfully so.  What happens will matter to us all, and not simply because of the money. 

Even if you are not a sports fan, big buildings, significant architecture, and public infrastructure are a critical element of a city’s collective identity. Design matters.  Done right, these city-building mega projects can serve more than their primary purpose…they can inspire genuine pride in generation after generation of urban dwellers. They can even become iconic symbols of greatness; of a time and a place when people came together to contemplate a better future, and when decision-makers went beyond mere expedience by considering their investments as an enduring legacy.  

Whatever the impetus or motivation, and in spite of inevitable controversy, big things can happen. Good things. Things that can make a strong statement to the world, that improve with age, and that might actually be perceived positively through the lens of history. 

This might be one of these times in Ottawa, so more than a little public engagement is healthy.  Let’s come together, listen carefully to each other, and to invite great ideas into the discussion. What kind of place do we want to become?  Only when we hear each other will we be able to imagine our future.  Building on needs, let’s also consider our wants and use more than a little imagination. 

To do otherwise would be to miss an opportunity.

Here is the Ottawa inside my head.  This is the city where I want to live…