MANCHESTER, NH – Join us on October 18, 2023, at 6 p.m. at the Palace Theatres, located at 80 Hanover St. in the Marquee Club, for a free Creative Community Workshop presented by the Manchester Economic Development Office and North Star Place Branding + Marketing
This workshop will be an opportunity to hear about the data collected from the brand perception surveys and contribute to the community-wide brand.
What’s Authentic and Distinct in Manchester? Come on down and share your thoughts on this and what makes you feel Manchester is the best place to live, work, and play.
Go to www.distinctlymanchester.com to learn more and to follow the progress of the branding and marketing strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is Community Branding?
A. Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not around. In other words, your reputation! Just like people or products, communities have reputations based on all the different experiences people have had with that community over time. Branding is the process of changing, clarifying, refining, or improving that reputation.
The first step in our community branding initiative is conducting research to figure out what Manchester’s existing reputation is. At the same time we will conduct research to determine what Manchester’s greatest strengths are. What makes our community special and unique? This allows us to look at where we are reputation wise, where we want to be based on our greatest strength, and then we come up with creative tools, strategies and advocacy programs that help close the gap between the two.
A new brand won’t solve all our problems. What branding can do is focus people on the positive differentiator in Manchester, which can help us stand out as a preferred location. The stronger and more defined our reputation, the more people will want to live, work and play here.
Q. Are a brand and a logo different?
A. A brand is not a logo or a tagline. A brand is a set of ideas and images (such as a logo) that set an expectation of what our community is about. Our brand is our unique story.
Q. Can you share some examples of community branding?
A. You can see numerous examples of community branding on the website of North Star Place Branding + Marketing. This agency is Manchester’s branding partner.
Q. Why do we do research?
A. People have opinions about Manchester. We want to hear them all. And the only way to do that is to gather lots of data from inside and outside the community. That data then becomes the primary driver for uncovering Manchester’s brand. A statistically significant body of quantitative and qualitative research ensures the brand represents the perceptions of all audiences inside and outside the community.