Stafford Wood: Needing a new brand

Needing a new brand

What is the essence of Baton Rouge? What is our brand? Let’s begin by focusing on the positives while embracing change. BY STAFFORD WOOD

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Stafford Wood is the founder of Covalent Logic, a corporate communications agency based in Baton Rouge. With offices in Austin and Houston, she works along the I-10 corridor for clients including Shell Chemical, Cleco, BTR airport, Manda Fine Meats and other local and national organizations. WHEN A COMPANY comes to me and says they want to rebrand, it sometimes means they want a new logo. I often counsel that a new brand should be the result of a change in direction, a movement toward a new vision and a transition to a new purpose. Choosing a new mark, typography and colors does not give a company a new brand.

A brand is the perception of your company. It’s what makes someone “one of us” and what makes someone proud of buying from “us.” It’s the feeling you get when you talk about a com-

pany. It’s the agreement we have for what a company is. Nike is for winners. Apple is for creatives. Manda is for Louisiana kitchens.

“Brand means everything connected to the essence of a [community]. The directors, all the people, the efforts, the [community] itself, its logo, its physical visual presence, its voice, its reputation, its associations and endorsements, its audience perception and the sum total of the [community’s] communication. It means every incarnation, and every living, breathing second of a [community’s] life,” writes Will Murray in his book Brand Storm.

Organizations, communities, and people have brand identities, too. The brand of Austin, Texas, used to be weird and a music city, but it has added tech. Las Vegas’ brand is tied to entertainment. New York’s to culture, arts and finance. Brooklyn’s brand has shifted from plumbers to DUMBO in my lifetime. When you travel somewhere and say where you are from, what do people know about this place?

A brand position represents the essence of the community and, as such, should guide all insider conversations and external promotion. We get to define what we talk about to each other and to the outside world. If successful, our words will define something that is desirable (by residents and prospective residents), distinctive

(from the competition), deliverable (by the community) and durable over time.

So, what is Baton Rouge’s brand? It’s what people hear about us and what we talk about. It’s what we obsess about: LSU football, Southern, LSU, state government, LSU, industrial corridor and LSU, LSU, LSU. We talk about problems like health, crime, racism, and education, instead of assets like the river, the parks, the trees and the beauty of what life is like when you know your neighbors.

In Baton Rouge, so many people went to LSU or Southern that you don’t even talk about other colleges. And if you do, it’s probably because they went to another SEC or SWAC school. When someone has an area code that’s not 225 or 504 or, maybe, 318, you are surprised.

As much as I love purple and gold, this brand is the Opiate of our Economy. We rise and fall with wins and losses and we ignore the other contributors to our local economy.

Austin 6 highlighted that in 1978 Austin and Baton Rouge had the same strengths, the same population and the same position in their respective states. At a recent cocktail party in Austin, someone said, “Thirty years ago, everyone in Austin had gone to UT. But, Austin embraced new culture and new people coming into the community and now it’s a rarity.”

We don’t need to become like Austin in our character traits, but we do need to become welcoming of people from other cultures like Austin is.

What will it take to make that true in Baton Rouge?

We must celebrate outsiders and the people who come to us with new ideas and new perspectives. How many times has an organization in Baton Rouge brought in a leader from outside our area and we feel that they aren’t “one of us” because they didn’t go to Southern or LSU? We try to invite them into our culture instead of embracing theirs.

Hiring managers need to seek out candidates who received an education that didn’t happen under the campanile.

Recently on Facebook, Mike Polito commented that it’s OK if Baton Rouge hires a firm from out of town, because companies like his and mine get hired in other communities all the time because we are the best for the job. Other places don’t have the “foreign invasion bias” that Baton

As much as I love purple and gold, this brand is the Opiate of our Economy. We rise and fall with wins and losses and we ignore the other contributors to our local economy.

Rouge seems to have.

At the same time, we are growing and changing. The Baton Rouge Gallery, the Water Campus, the industrial growth and change that’s happening as the epicenter of climate change with considerations for oil and gas and the changing coast. We are the center of this transition for the economy, and we need to embrace it.

We have to be proud of where we are. We have to celebrate what is great about Baton Rouge. In other Southern cities like Austin or Nashville, you might hear complaints about issues in the city, but you also hear a determination to fix those problems. And a belief that our city is awesome despite it.

Like Sigmund Freud says to the unicorn, “You need to believe in yourself.”

Baton Rouge needs a new brand.

I don’t mean we need a new logo or tagline or creative advertising campaign to create community pride, encourage tourism or build awareness of our strengths. We need to define who we are.

I’ll never forget a quote from JR Ball, who said that “Baton Rouge is the vanilla in the Neapolitan of south Louisiana.” I think he meant it as a slight, but what if that is our brand? We go well with anyone or anything! Like artwork on a neutral wall, you look at the artwork, not the wall.

What if we’re the uniters in a state that features a multitude of cultures? Where New Orleanians and people from Shreveport can work together. Where Texans and Floridians meet in the middle.

What if we’re the place you want to raise your family, start a business, build a career and retire? If we aspire to it together and focus on the positives, we can build a future that is desirable, distinctive, deliverable, and durable over the next 40 years.

RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW, LIFE CHANGES for the better.

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