The Brand Atlanta Campaign: Lessons Learned by Ken Bernhardt Regents' Professor Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - September 24, 2005 As you have undoubtedly read in Atlanta Business Chronicle and elsewhere, a team of people have been working to develop a branding campaign for Atlanta.  The Brand Atlanta Campaign has had a team of marketing professionals working on this program for almost a year and it will be launched in a few weeks.  I have been privileged to play a small part in this effort as a member of its Marketing Strategy Task Force.  This has enabled me to make some observations about "Lessons Learned" that can be applied to any organization's branding strategy. Lesson 1 - Start with clear objectives in mind.  For Brand Atlanta, from its inception, it has been made clear by Mayor Shirley Franklin that the objective of the Brand Atlanta Campaign is to support Atlanta's New Century Economic Development Plan.  Among a number of objectives, this plan calls for the creation of 60,000 new jobs by 2009, many related to tourism and hospitality.  Thus, attracting meetings, conventions, and individual tourists to Atlanta is a key goal of the campaign.  Other key drivers are attracting businesses and new residents.  Lesson 2 - Base the branding strategy and campaign on research and key facts.  Research conducted by the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau (ACVB) showed that there had been a major change in the criteria used by meeting planners to select destinations for their conventions, trade shows, and meetings. These planners increasingly based their decisions on destination appeal. Atlanta rates very high on infrastructure, but not as well as many competitor cities on destination appeal.  During 2004, the Boston Consulting Group conducted research for ACVB to determine the critical factors that determine destination appeal and what Atlanta's strengths and weaknesses were.  The results showed that Atlanta possessed many of these factors, but they were not well recognized by those who had not visited the city. Atlanta was particularly weak on agreement that "there are lots of things to do in Atlanta."  These findings became very important in developing the branding strategy for Atlanta. Lesson 3 - Clearly define the target market(s).  The majority of the potential $3 billion metro area economic impact from a successful Brand Atlanta Campaign will come from attracting more visitors to our city.  Given that marketing funds are not unlimited, careful targeting is necessary.  In the case of Brand Atlanta, the target markets are a) residents, b) people who travel and live within a 6 hour drive of Atlanta, c) specific national high potential target markets such as up-scale African American families and the gay-lesbian market, d) convention and meeting planners. Lesson 4 - Start with Internal marketing.  A smart decision was made to target residents first.  The research had shown that friends and family in Atlanta have a huge influence in attracting people to come here.  This is comparable to companies needing to ensure that their employees are familiar with the branding efforts before rolling out to the marketplace.  During the coming weeks and months, there will be a host of exciting new attractions in Atlanta, including the Georgia Aquarium, Atlantic Station, new expansion of the High Museum and the Louvre exhibits, an improved CNN Tour, and a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Museum. A key factor will be to make people aware of all these new things to do, and the best place to start is with the people who live here. Lesson 5 - Have a clear positioning strategy and make sure that it is authentic. The research found that there was no one thing that represented Atlanta (such as the Arch in St. Louis, gambling in Las Vegas, theme parks in Orlando, or Bourbon St. in New Orleans).  Instead what differentiated Atlanta was the spirit of the city, specifically its boundless opportunity, inspired optimism, and universal openness. Atlanta welcomes people in an open and accepting way, whether they are current or new residents, visitors, or businesses considering relocating here.  Thus, these 3 O's together with new attractions became the key to defining Atlanta.  A "Stakeholders Committee" made up of representatives from some 60 organizations including ACVB, Atlanta Business League, several chambers of commerce, Metro Atlanta Arts and Culture Coalition, and many civic and business groups have contributed to the positioning strategy. Lesson 6 - There is a difference between a positioning strategy and a tag line.  The key to a branding strategy's effectiveness is the "takeaway" from communications or the positioning.  Positioning means the place the brand occupies in the minds of target market consumers relative to competitive alternatives.  A tag line is not nearly as important as the positioning, and it is a rare situation that people remember a tag line.  For example, how many people know that the Lexus tag line is "the relentless pursuit of perfection?"  But they do know the positioning - - what Lexus stands for.  The Brand Atlanta campaign has been careful to focus media attention on the positioning, not on the tag line. Lesson 7 - It is important to have a totally integrated brand campaign, not just an ad campaign.  The Brand Atlanta campaign will start by recruiting thousands of "Ambassadors."  These volunteers (with paid recruiters and leadership) will be similar to the thousands of volunteers during the Olympics.  They will be educated on the new attractions and positioning and will be seen all over town at many events during the 4th quarter of the year.  The Ambassadors will distribute hundreds of thousands of information packets, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and other premiums, all with the new Atlanta logo, and will tell the Atlanta branding story.  There will be a new Atlanta Anthem, created by Dallas Austin that will be heard all over town and hopefully on cell phone ring tones.  There will be considerable public relations efforts in addition to ads on radio, TV, newspapers and magazines.  The Brandatlanta.com website will be prominently featured and "new" media will be used including wrapping of MARTA Buses, ads on telephone kiosks, video clips on Delta planes, and ads throughout the airport.  The key is that all the messaging will be coordinated into an integrated campaign. To ensure this integration, representatives of Brand Atlanta's ad agency, public relations firm, website developer, and experiential marketing agency have held weekly meetings for a number of months. Lesson 8 - Establish metrics to measure the campaign's effectiveness.  Clear metrics have been established relating to advertising recall, recall of the messages, perceptions of Atlanta as having lots of things to do, and economic impact measures such as market share of hotel room nights among the top 25 U.S. cities.  Establishing quantitative goals and measures of effectiveness are critical to evaluating the success of a campaign. So, as you see the various elements of the Brand Atlanta Campaign during the 4th quarter, remember the things that are relevant to your own organization.  The ninth lesson may be the most important one to remember - - it takes a long time to create a strong brand, so it will be a while before we truly know how effective the Brand Atlanta campaign is. No one ever said branding was easy.