Published: June 27, 2009 06:11 pm      

BELCHER: It’s all about ‘selling the sizzle’

Our story this week about the company hired to produce a new “brand” for the City of Corsicana brought back some memories for me.

The very first column I submitted to then-editor Raymond Linex II for publication in the Daily Sun was about Corsicana’s “new” slogan chosen back in 2004 — Corsicana: Where Country meets Culture — penned by our now-County Judge H.M. Davenport Jr.

In that column I offered a dozen or so “tongue in cheek” slogan suggestions that I had penned while listening to twangy country music as a radio DJ. That alone should be enough to make someone wary of what I had to offer. (Some of them were funny, though). By the way, my lovely bride still has that first column stuck to the side of our refrigerator at home with one of those funky little freebie-magnet things.

The new effort to “freshen up” the slogan for the city comes out of the efforts of the Strategic Planning Group — also known as the “SPG” — to better position and market the city and county and what we have to offer.

But it’s really more than just “freshening up” the old phrase. The desired result is to create a coordinated approach to marketing. I believe one of the folks from the firm engaged to produce the package called it “everyone speaking the same language,” or words to that effect.

Just to be clear and “transparent” on the matter — you may see or hear my name associated with the SPG as I did attend some early meetings of the group, and I do support their efforts. My contributions to the process have been minimal — if any — but disclosure is far better that non-disclosure, someone once said. (That might have actually been me that said that.)

I think the bottom line is this — we need to do something to better market our town and county. While the “Country meets Culture” slogan had merit, neither the execution of that message, nor the message itself, hit many “hot buttons” during some of the focus groups held by the SPG.

And, if we do a better job of “selling” ourselves to others, in theory they will visit and spend money and tell others, who in turn will visit and spend money and tell others, and on and on.

Marketing — creative and targeted — is an extremely important part of that scenario of people coming and spending time and money here.

That being said — we also have to have something to offer those people who we want to attract, and that leads to another goal of the SPG — make the city more attractive, thereby making it more “marketable.”

In that arena, there have been a few “victories” but there remains a ton of “opportunities” in the wonderful world of civic beautification. Referencing the headline above this piece — we have to have a “sizzle” to sell to start with.

Having been one of the biggest critics of the city’s code enforcement efforts over the past couple of years, I have to say I think things are better than they were. But by everyone’s admission — or what should be everyone’s admission — things are not where they need to be.

But like the slogan process, it is exactly that — a process. And, it involves more than just the city and its code enforcement efforts, and the planning and zoning folks and their enforcement of existing codes — it really needs to involve us all.

That may be one of the biggest opportunities of all facing the city, the county, the SPG, the Chamber of Commerce, and area businesses and industries alike — personal responsibility for the part or parts of town that you may have an influence over.

Frank Steed of the SPG once said to me “Right now, we just want to get people to stop parking in their front yards.” And he was 100 percent dead-on right.

While progress has been made in some areas in getting the city to “look better,” we’ve yet to accomplish that “no parking in the front yard” to any large degree from what I’ve seen. And that’s exactly the kind of “personal responsibility” I’m talking about.

I’ll close with a couple of questions for you all to ponder. Then, feel free to pass those questions along to anyone you think needs to ponder them as well.

First — What have you done to help make Corsicana a better, cleaner, prettier place to live?

Second — and perhaps most important — What are you going to do next?

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Click here to e-mail Bob Belcher.

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