Duane Hicks
Who are you? Why do you matter? What do you want to be known for?
What do you want to say to who and how?
These are questions the community is being engaged to answer in the near future as Twist Marketing, an award-winning Calgary-based firm, undertakes a consultation process to establish a unified brand across Fort Frances.
The process got underway last Wednesday night with a workshop at La Place Rendez-Vous, where about two dozen stakeholders gathered to learn about branding, as well as provide initial input to help shape the community’s future.
Chris Fields, senior brand strategist with Twist Marketing, said many people think the term “brand” means you’re designing the next pretty logo—but that couldn’t be furthest from the truth.
“Let’s assume that 20 years from now, Fort Frances is not even a mill town,” Fields remarked. “What are you?
“That’s what [a] brand should be working to establish, to set a horizon line.”
While municipalities love to create lengthy planning documents, those only gather dust and fall by the wayside.
This process, instead, is about taking a big funnel and getting it down to a tight funnel which says, “Who are you? Why does it matter? What does your future look like?”
“It’s trying to get as many people as possible into a boat and rowing in the same direction,” explained Fields, adding this includes not just the town, but area First Nations and Fort Frances’ sister city of International Falls across the river.
“What I want you to think about in this process is [to] step out of the generational ‘Yeah, but . . .’ or ‘We can’t do that,’” Fields said.
“I want you to think about, if only we can get out of the way of ourselves, what can we imagine for a future that is different?
“When you’re a one-industry town, and that one industry in a digital era is in perhaps a slow state of decline, I think it’s a good time for a process such as this where we say, ‘How do we re-engineer ourselves?’” he reasoned.
Fields said today’s municipalities have to face a new reality and be far more aggressive in marketing themselves, which means people have to step outside their comfort zones.
He added if a municipality is not marketing itself, “someone’s talking about you anyway, and it’s getting worse because in the world of social media, people will form an opinion of you and if you’re not out in that world, trying to navigate people’s opinions and to shape strategy and people’s perception of you, they’re forming it positively or negatively anyway.
“So you have to insert yourself in the world of that conversation,” he stressed.
This means developing a distinct voice—and a distinct message—for Fort Frances in a busy, chaotic world.
What that voice and message will be is the point of doing this branding exercise.
Fort Frances is looking for a brand to attract local/foreign investment, diversify the economy, promote tourism, and present a lifestyle to attract talented, skilled people to move here.
But Fields said this means being unafraid of change, which not everyone will like.
Municipal leaders have to stop listening to negative people, who almost always are in the minority, as opposed to positive people who make up the silent majority.
“Change creates critics,” Fields noted. “Imaginative change creates even more critics.”
A good portion of last Wednesday’s workshop involved stakeholders, including members of the Economic Development Advisory Committee, some town representatives, and several local businesspeople, answering questions to give Twist Marketing an initial round of input to use in its consulting process.
The questions, and a sampling of the answers provided, were as follows:
•What are Fort Frances’ strengths or unique characteristics?
Fishing, outdoor life, hockey, rough roads, lakes and rivers, heritage, full service community, empathy/generous citizens, volunteers/fundraising, multi-generational families together here, mosquitoes, three 18-hole golf courses, the lookout tower, boating, and its location—whether that means as a border town, living next to isolation (the woods), or having one foot in the Prairies and one in the Canadian Shield.
•What’s your “big idea” for a business here, given Fort Frances’ resources, geography, and infrastructure?
Cheese factory, sawmill, year-round resort, outdoors store, tackle manufacturing, large campground with amenities, guided outdoor adventures, cultural centre with First Nations, water park, casino, site for media production (film/TV), hub for computer programming/website design, retirement community/assisted living, housing manufacturing, wood furniture manufacturing, boat manufacturing/repair, movie theatre, and combined sports/arts camp for youth.
•What’s are “cool things” to do or see in the area?
Seeing the Pine Rock Memorial, Rainy Lake Mermaid, and pow-wows, “Polar Plunge,” playing golf on ice, running up the lookout tower, going to an island and being alone for a week, going on a tour of where fur trading posts used to be, playing paintball, touring the Manitou Mounds, going to the Border Bar, cross-country skiing, going to the bass tournament, “Pulling for Peace” tug-of-war, going to Voyageurs National Park, going to Sha-Sha, and seeing both countries from the lookout tower.
•What are the weaknesses that stand in the way of a more ambitious future for the town?
Smell of the U.S. kraft mill, the border, lack of residential/commercial lots, declining job base, impending closure of the mill, aging volunteer base, distance from Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, lack of vision/identity, long winters, one-horse town (lack of economic diversity), not a tourist destination, fear of risk, youth outmigration, surrounded by other fishing communities, lack of investors, lack of ownership, and resentment of change.
•How would you describe a typical resident of Fort Frances?
Generous, friendly, intelligent, helpful, hardy, masculine, connected to nature, compassionate, loves their small town (it’s a good place to raise a family), looking to retire, goes on three-four weeks’ winter vacation, lives in a household that has all the toys, having a shared history with other residents, trusting, fiercely proud, self-motivated, everybody knows everybody, never short of smiles, and empathetic.
•Using only a few words, make up a marketing tagline for Fort Frances.
These ranged from “Love to Live,” “Play Like an Otter, Laugh Like a Loon,” “Home is Where the Heart Is,” “Dip In,” and “Heart of Borderland” to “Give Us a Hug,” “Rock Solid,” “Come a Stranger, Leave a Friend,” “Fort Frances—Hook Up,” “Fort Frances—MOM’s the Word,” and “Up the Lakes.”
Workshops attendees also were asked to write down, in 20 words or less, what their vision is for the future of Fort Frances?
This information was given to Twist Marketing, but not related openly as the workshop was running over time.
While they garnered a number of ideas last Wednesday, the company’s work is only beginning.
Committed to making the branding an inclusive process, Twist Marketing now is going to look around Fort Frances, make its own observations, do some analysis, talk to stakeholders one-on-one, interview residents, and gather more input.
As of Monday, a survey to allow everyone in the community to weigh in on the brand is available on the town’s website at: fort-frances.com
Twist then will create a strategy to focus the town’s future, produce some logo work, provide examples of what happens when the brand is creatively executed, and then create a plan as to what the brand will do in the next one or two years so it won’t die.
It’s hope to have a brand in place by the spring.
Examples of Twist Marketing’s project can be found online at www.twistmarketing.com
