Marketing | Girl About O-Town

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Cool Green

No more cozying up on the couch, hiding under a blanket, and sipping tea as the cold wind blows. Nope! Instead, the sunshine and warm temperatures are calling us to forgo our overcoats, to forget winter, and to linger longer on patios all around town.

Patios other than mine, that is. Despite my deep affection for this quaint little cottage I call home, it doesn’t exactly win the neighbourhood award for lovely landscaping. Gardening has never been my forte, and somehow, finding a few spare moments to even sweep off my deck just doesn’t seem to make my “to do” list. At least the wee little patch of lawn out front occasionally gets cut, thanks mostly to my kind and patient neighbours. Growing the green space of my dreams, on the other hand, goes way beyond my aptitude or abilities. A green thumb I am not.

This year, I vowed different. I had a plan. I was going to give it all up for good! I was going to turn over my territory to the trees and let the gardeners get growing….

If you haven’t already heard of the VegetablePatch.ca, then no doubt you will soon. Jesse Boynton Payne, founder and Chief “Green Bean” of the VegetablePatch.ca, began growing and selling organic vegetables from urban gardens all over the city just last year. This year, the VegetablePatch.ca will adopt a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) model, and will be distributing sustainably grown produce to shareholders right here in the city centre. Making use of otherwise underused land like…say…my backyard…Boynton Payne is making organic, environmentally friendly eating easy, affordable and fun. How cool is that?

As for the aforementioned trees, the City of Ottawa Trees, Reforestation and Environmental Enhancement Program (TREE) is an initiative that has been underway since 2007 to nurture the Ottawa’s urban forest by planting 100,000 trees before 2010. By planting trees all across the city, we can maintain forest cover and help combat climate change. Apparently, a variety of trees are available for planting in the spring and fall, on a first-come, first-served basis. All you need to do is call 613-580-2424, ext. 1TREE (18733) or email TREE@ottawa.ca.

Brand Ottawa – Imagining the Future

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…

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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…