Duke Community Helps Create New Brand for Durham

On Sept. 29, the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) announced it had come up with a new overarching brand for the city: "Durham -- Where great things happen."

DCVB employed an outside consulting firm and set up an advisory group to help create the new brand. The 25-member advisory group was diverse and included, among others, representatives from both Duke and North Carolina Central universities.

"The DCVB relied on the [advisors] to be a sounding board, to provide feedback for our ideas [because] they understood the fabric of our community very well," said Shelly Green, DCVB's chief operating officer.

Those from Duke who helped oversee and advise the project included MaryAnn Black, associate vice president for community affairs; John Burness, senior vice president for public affairs and government relations; E'Vonne Coleman-Cook, assistant director for continuing education and chair of DCVB's governing board; Beverly Meek, Duke Performances' assistant director for marketing; and Mike Woodard, a business analyst for Duke and Durham city councilman.

The project was a two-year process and cost $64,000. The new brand is accompanied by a logo consisting of multicolored stars, and DCVB officials hope Durham businesses will incorporate the logo into their websites and publications.

DCVB initially was thinking about creating a brand aimed at tourists, but began to consider the interests of businessmen, students, researchers and other groups that visit Durham, Green said. So the idea was expanded to create an overarching brand for the city. "An overarching brand is tricky and more difficult because of its more diverse audience," Green explained.

In addition to relying on feedback and input from the advisory group, DCVB also conducted polls and tested the brand outside of Durham as part of its research process. Green said DCVB does most of its marketing to people outside the community, but noted that for a brand to be truly overarching it has to work inside the community, too.

One of the tangible ways that the advisory group contributed to the initiative was by taking out one of the words initially associated with the brand. The word "tolerance" was replaced with "accepting" in the information booklet describing the initiative.

"Durham is a more inviting and open community," Meek explained. Tolerance was not the right word to reflect that.

"If it is an authentic brand, it helps people re-envision how they see Durham," Meek added.

Green listed the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, which for the past 10 years has been supporting community goals to improve life in neighborhoods around the Duke campus, and the Inter Neighborhood Council of Durham, which plans to use the slogan as part of its annual award, as the kind of organizations that reflect the values represented by the brand.

"[The brand] is just a symbol for something that should be going on all the time in our community. The real validity is in what we do each day," Meek said.