One Year Later - Durham's Overarching Brand is a Success

DURHAM, N.C. – Assessment, one year after its launch, indicates the overarching brand for Durham is working. The brand is already adopted in more than 250 ways by local organizations and companies, and hundreds more by the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB), Durham’s marketing agency. The embrace has also been ratified by scientific surveys of local residents and external audiences nationwide.

“When you’ve articulated a successful community brand, it strikes people not like a lightning bolt, but rather like an Aha! – this really fits,” said Shelly Green, Chief Operating Officer of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Three years ago, DCVB was asked by other messenger organizations to explore the possibility of an overarching brand. Only one year after its launch, it’s getting good traction.”

Successful overarching brands for communities are rare and there was concern it wouldn’t be possible to overcome the fragmentation common in a community as eclectic and diverse as Durham. After all, to be overarching, the Durham brand had to encompass everything from Research Triangle Park to Duke University, from Downtown to NCCU, from sports and performing arts to festivals, history, research labs and everything in between.

The purpose of an overarching brand is to make all messenger organizations more consistent. At their essence, community brands go far beyond logos and tag lines to drill down into the values and experiences core to the community’s personality. A major hurdle is overcoming the simplistic notion that brands are logos or taglines. More here.