The City of Summerside
Summerside is the second largest city in the province of Prince Edward Island and the principal municipality for the western part of the island. Summerside is quickly becoming recognized by potential investors, site selectors and business leaders as "the city to watch" for growth. From developing one of the lowest-cost operating environments in Canada to investing in state-of-the-art technology and facilities, Summerside continues to surprise and meet the needs of those businesses that already call it home.
Challenge
To develop a strategy and marketing communication to engage international investors and business people in conversation and collaboration. The task was to build a strong brand to represent the City of Summerside via all media channels in highlighting the advantages and opportunities of doing business in Summerside and create a “call to action” that will resonate with the target audience.
Idea
bigpossibilities.ca
The key marketing channels for communication became online platforms, videos, and social media. The printed marketing collateral had to support the brand strategy and deliver full information about the business opportunities afforded by the city’s economic sectors and its innovative eco projects. We developed a website and a social media to create a strong online presence for Summerside to communicate the advantages, “big possibilities”, and government programs which allow businesses to grow and provide access to the North American market. We created an animated presentation with marketing materials consistent with the city’s branding and utilized an engaging approach to promoting Summerside as a venue for innovation in all economic sectors, emphasizing the eco-city with its “big possibilities”.
Results
In keeping with the new marketing strategy, we created an effective and comprehensive communication system that used all media channels. Providing full marketing support to the Economic Development Department of the City of Summerside, we developed an informative and attractive video presentation by using infographics. Our work on the video presentation included the creation of scenarios, storyboards, illustrations, copywriting, graphic design, animation, and voice recording. We created a city Economic Innovation Ecosystem map to showcase the eco facilities and innovative cleantech projects that have been developed and are planned to be developed in the near future. A strong value proposition, delivered in impactful content, combined with a consistent corporate identity that we created across brochures and social media to represent the city of Summerside, ecosystems, aerospace and IT, helped develop effective marketing communications with the target audience. E-marketing, promotional brochures for each economic sector and an Ecosystem map highlighting the innovations and ambitions of The City of Summerside served as the main touch points with the local and international business audience. The content, marketing messages and visual style of communication resulted in a wide presentation of the Summerside brand and its new initiatives. The marketing materials became a key tool to promote and engage international and local business communities.