Living the dream and making history to build your brand

A tale of two cities who have mastered the art of delivering on-brand content that informs and delights their residents

Since it looks like we struck a nerve with our first post on storytelling (If You’re Not Good at Storytelling Are You Even Governing?), I doubled down on the topic with a follow-up post last week (featuring hippos and suicide prevention — don’t accuse me of being overly thematic) and since I’m not one to shy away from flogging a deceased equine, I now offer up the third in what will be a four-part series on the subject.

Today: community storytelling to build your brand. Next week: using humor.

Just so we’re on the same page when talking about branding, here’s the best definition I’ve ever heard: Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not around. Branding is what you do about that. (Credit to Don McEachern of North Star Strategies.)

Given that definition, your community has a brand, intentional or not. If you’re just winging it on your brand, God help you. (Or, better yet, give Don a call. Or Granite Sky or Chandler Thinks or Cooksey or Slate or DFW StratComm.) If you haven’t taken the plunge to define your brand, here are examples from two cities that show you’re definitely better off not winging it.

I’m not sure anyone’s doing branding better than the City of Arlington, Texas. Yes, yes, I featured them in the budget post. But this is a City that wins communications awards by the wagonload. I mean this literally. Communications chief Jay Warren needed a wagon to carry the city’s trophy haul after an awards ceremony a couple of years ago. Here’s the receipt.

Good lord, Jay.

Arlington introduced a new brand about six years ago that included the tagline, “The American Dream City.” That’s quite the statement. One could call it braggadocios, even for a city in Texas. But as we say here in the Lone Start State, it ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up. The “American Dream Story” series of videos backs it up. The videos feature professional athletes, community leaders, business owners, students, journalists, college researchers and just average residents telling their personal, inspirational Arlington stories.

The series “made the branding initiative more accessible, connecting the public to what otherwise could have been merely a civic campaign that didn’t reach beyond City Hall,” Jay said.

Here are a couple of my favorites.

I love it not just because it’s about a barbecue joint (that certainly helps, though, dedicated carnivore that I am), but it tells the story of an immigrant couple succeeding in ways they could not have comprehended just a few years ago. “It’s beyond belief what’s happening to us,” says Fasicka Hicks. The ingredients: hard work, a supportive community and fabulous smoked meat seasoned with Ethiopian spices. The fact Smoke’N Ash BBQ was recognized by the New York Times as one of the Top 50 Restaurants in America is just the bark on the brisket. (That’s “icing on the cake” for those of you living in barbecue deserts.)

This next one also happens to be food centric, but served up by a native wunderkind.

This Arlington kid is apparently going to take over the world, culinarily speaking. I shouldn’t say kid. Preston Nguyen is a well-spoken young man who is very much a product of Arlington. He attended a career and technical program in the Arlington ISD. After attending culinary school, he won the title of World Chef Champion at the tender age of 18. If that’s not enough, he was recruited to compete in the latest season of Gordon Ramsey’s “Next Level Chef.”

Preston’s story couldn’t be more on brand for Arlington, which is the country’s 5th most diverse city. As Preston says in the video, his dad is Vietnamese and his mom is Mexican, both attended culinary school and got him cooking at an early age. He loves to create fusion dishes from those two cultures along with Texas barbecue. (Can he make a mean peach cobbler or pecan pie? If so, that’s a grand slam on my favorite foods and I’m adopting him immediately.)

This series is among the most effective brand-building tools in Arlington’s award-winning tool box. It should go without saying that the most important thing about a brand is that is has to be true. The next most important thing is that citizens have to accept and adopt it. Check and check for The American Dream City.

“The videos have also built strong resident awareness of the City’s brand in just five years,” Jay says. “A recent survey of Arlington residents found that more than 50 percent could identify The American Dream City as the municipal brand for Arlington and more than 75 percent could identify the new logo that accompanied the brand.”

For those of you intentionally building your brand, would you get the same results? Yeah, me neither. So lighten up on my including Arlington again in GGF.

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Say you’re a forward-looking community, relentlessly focused on your strategic plan and implementing the projects necessary to reach your goals for managing growth/economic development/quality of life/you-name-it. Awesome. Seriously. You’re a candidate for a future Good Government Files profile. (Nominations accepted at will@hamptonpublic.com. Seriously.)

That said, you should be telling the story of your history as well. In fact, it’s vital for future focused cities to take a look back, according to maybe the best storyteller of my lifetime.

“I’ve always been a big believer you can’t move into the future unless you have a complete, solid basis of understanding and empathy about the past.”

— Steven Spielberg¹

The town where I live, Round Rock, Texas, has a colorful history. In 1878, there was an actual, no-kidding Wild West shootout on Main Street that started in buildings still standing. In 1842, it was the site of the Texas Archives War, where a group of Austin residents demanded — helped by a very persuasive cannon — that state records be returned to that city instead of continuing their theretofore surreptitious journey to Houston.

Round Rock’s Communications and Marketing Department spends a lot of time focused on communicating the City’s success in strategic planning for the future. Success is the City brand, and there’s no shortage of proof points for the comms team to expound upon. That said, it saw an unmet need and desire for residents to learn more about the city’s fascinating history, including some of its more recent history.

“Knowing where the city came from, what it has been through, and how it has developed over time provides valuable context for current issues and decisions,” says Austin Ellington, the department’s assistant director.

So they came up with the idea for a video series called “Places in Time,” which recognizes places of interest and historical importance that helped shape Round Rock into what it is today.

“Rather than just promoting the City’s general history, we wanted to keep a unique focus on the physical places Round Rock residents pass by every day,” Austin said. “In doing so, we wanted to also tell the story of the strategic planning in the past that helped to shape the community that exists today.”

One of the most beautiful places residents pass by every day is the Woodbine Mansion. This gorgeous structure sits on Main Street, next door to City Hall. For most of my 34 years in Round Rock, it was a real enigma: lovely to look at, but occupied by a widow who understandably wasn’t interested in sharing it with the public. That changed when her heirs sold it. Now it’s one of the most gorgeous wedding venues in Central Texas and generates scads of visitors to Downtown Round Rock — one of the City Council’s strategic goals.

Have a look inside this amazing place and hear from the owner about the love and care taken to retain its authenticity.

Recent history matters, too. So the comms team told the history of the Round Rock Public Library. It was timely because a new library was just about to open, so interest was high in the subject matter. Multimedia Specialist Ethan Lankford really delivers with this video. I especially like the drone footage that shows the old library and the new one in sweeping shots.

A couple more things to love. First, a lot of history is delivered in 3 minutes, using old photos of previous buildings and some of the narrative delivered by Chip Hadley, a longtime, beloved library employee who embodies so much of what makes RRPL so special. The fact Chip wore a coconut shell bra and hula skirt on the library’s tropical themed float during a July 4th parade tells you pretty much all you need know about his sense of humor. (Alas, no receipts to share on that one.)

The second thing to love is Library Director Michelle Cervantes’ explaining how the library embarked on a strategic plan prior to the 2013 bond election that generated the funding for the now-iconic new building in Downtown Round Rock. So this history video serves to remind residents of the City’s strategic focus and strong planning chops, one of the goals for the series.

Best of all, you get to see the heart of a public servant. While the library history is super interesting and the new building is a smashing success, Michelle delivers a line that speaks volumes about the library and its staff and the culture she’s built:

“If you don’t feel like you belong anywhere, like you don’t fit in anywhere, you can walk into our library and feel welcome and respected and like you belong here, just like everyone else.”

Places in Time has been a hit in Round Rock. The first five episodes received 433,503 impressions, 35,194 engagements and 106,400 video plays on social media, and comments on the videos have been “extremely positive,” Austin says.

So. Much. Success.

And yes, yes, I know I keep featuring Round Rock in GGF. But this video series — like Arlington’s — won a first place award at last month’s Texas Association of Municipal Information Officers conference. And while I used to work there, I can take absolutely zero credit for Places in Time. Not that I wouldn’t love to, but it’s a Good Government Truism to not lie.

Who else out there in subscriber-land is doing great branding work? Any of you smaller cities killing it on this front? Do me a solid and leave a note in the comments. (Especially if you’ve had your fill of Arlington and Round Rock.)

As noted earlier, next week we bring the funny. Expect to see cats. Lots of cats.

1. *From “Five Came Back,” a Netflix documentary series on filmmakers John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, John Huston and George Stevens and their work during World War II. If you haven’t watched it, you should. Beloved Wife and I binged all three episodes on July 4. It’ll get your storytelling juices flowing.