City will consider 'identity project' for marketing Nelson
By Bill Metcalfe
In January, city council will discuss whether to contract with Chris Drysdale and Gregory Mackenzie to run a community identity project.
On November 18, Drysdale and Mackenzie appeared before council proposing that they be hired to run a project that would help Nelson to “take ownership of how we are perceived, capitalize on our assets, and leverage the benefits that are derived from being unique.”
Drysdale and Mackenzie said Nelson needs a specific, single, unique identity that could be used in marketing, and that they would lead a community process to discover that identity. They did not say Nelson needs a logo.
They told council their backgrounds are in marketing and branding.
They said their proposed project would cost $12,000 for Roger Brooks Consulting, $16,000 for themselves, and $5000 for community engagement costs, for a total of $33,000.
Roger Brooks is a prominent American tourism consultant who would advise Drysdale and McKenzie on running a community process to formulate Nelson’s identity.
On November 18, council decided it would like to consider the proposal further and referred it back to city staff to bring forward more details and a recommendation at a future meeting.
Asked by The Nelson Daily if city council would put this project out to tender rather than simply granting it to Drysdale and Mackenzie, city Manager Kevin Cormack was somewhat ambivalent.
“In this case it was really us leaning toward a community-driven process, and a couple of community members said, ‘we would be willing to lead it, and here is what we would like to compensated.’ It was not so much two businesses as two individuals that are local folks that have an expertise in that area.
“I probably would recommend to council that they might want to get some quotes from others to do this,” Cormack said.
Mayor John Dooley, when asked the same question, said, “Absolutely. That is standard practice.”
According to The Nelson Daily’s interviews with Cormack, Dooley, and the city’s cultural development officer Joy Barrett, the proposal originated in the downtown waterfront working group, which consists of politicians, city staff, and citizens acting as an advisory group for the implementation of the city’s Sustainable Waterfront and Downtown Master Plan.
Members of that group and people from the Chamber of Commerce and from Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism took part recently in a series of webinars by Roger Brooks on tourism destination development.
From there, an identity working group was formed consisting of Cormack, Barrett, Chamber of Commerce executive director Tom Thomson, and the executive director of Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism, Dianna Ducs.
Drysdale is a member of the downtown waterfront working group and sits on the board of Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism. Mackenzie is Barrett’s husband.
“We are not looking to brand Nelson or do a new logo, that is not where we are going,” Barrett told The Nelson Daily. “That is not even something we ever discussed with Roger Brooks.”
Rather, she says, the group wants to create a distinct identity that would express Nelson’s uniqueness in a consistent way.
“We discussed how we did not really have an identity,” she said. “We have a lot of separate identities. People see us as a ski town or an arts town or a funky coffee town, but in terms of putting that out there we do not have anything solid, and because of some of the work we are starting to do, such as the downtown banners or new signage, we realized that unless we have a unified creative vision, what we will be doing is a bit piecemeal.”
