Crowsnest Pass Branding Open House

Last night I attended the Open House for the unveiling of the new branding for our municipality. First let me say the old brand showing a miner with his hard hat and pick was much dated (unless Riversdale does bring mining back to the Pass) and stale and in need of an update.

Well we got that last night, or should I say the elite in our community did with an hour long presentation by the group who designed and show-cased our new brand and look to the community at a special invited guests only wine & hor d'oeuvres presentation. The rest of the community could be damned as the Open House for us which was from 6-8 p.m. consisted of eating the left-overs and fending for ourselves for what exactly our new brand was and why, with displays, handouts and a muted powerpoint presentation that ran on and on in a loop repeating the same message as our only resources to information on this new brand. No hour-long presentation for us, the peasants, who paid for this gala.

However the evening did allow me to socialize with many people in groups and in one-on-one's, including with respect to the latter for example, with our CAO Myron Thompson who I found to be both forthright and candid as usual, and open to answering many of my questions on recent issues. When I brought up the subject of communication (or lack of), that being, people here felt in the dark on much of what our leaders have been doing he admitted that was a problem but stated that much of that was due to the fact people do not go to the source when questioning things. His door, for example, is always open he assured me and he is always willing to answer peoples questions and deal with their concerns, if only people would contact him. Apparently few people do. That he says is part of the communication problem.

Had a lovely long chat with our CFO Marian Vanoni mainly about the new brand. Told her and Sasha JaegerBaird, who joined us, that I could have done that job in five minutes by merging the awesomely beautiful banner heading the municipality has on their Facebook page with the Community Futures 'Mountain Freedom' logo, and Voila! :-)

Sasha, on her blog, has done a pretty good job of a write up on this event as well as in a personal correspondence raising some interesting thoughts and questions with respect to "Other than the costs associated with doing the branding study and creating the new brand, what will the total costs be (to the taxpayers) to implement this brand and put it onto all the municipal vehicles, buildings and signs?"

I must say that I have to totally agree with Sasha that "Naturally Rewarding" does not stick in one's mind. My wife and I both have asked each other several times since yesterday, "what is the brand name, again? Got no problem with the new mountain peak logo but they should give serious consideration, I think, to changing "Naturally Rewarding" to "Mountain Freedom". Although I can see the mayor's view that after having taken away most of our "freedoms" that we should be constantly reminded about "rewarding" him. Speaking of which, Da Mare totally avoided me, even resorting to running to the back to talk with the kitchen help to get away from having a conversation with me. :-( As did the councillors there, although I did get a friendly greeting from Emile Saindon.

The bottom line in my mind with respect to this new Branding for our community is it looks good, but is not catchy and therefore fails to do the job it is intended to do. This is of course my personal opinion, others I spoke to liked it. But this could be due to too much wine. When they sober up today it might be a different story? Only kidding. :-)


For more on our new brand go here.


UPDATE: 16:30

Municipal Media Release on Branding




You are not who you once were, yet you're not the person (community) you are still becoming.