By Lynda Hillman-Rapley, from www.lakeshoreadvance.com The Lakeshore Advance
Finding the commonality for Lambton County was loud and clear as 1315 people responded to a survey done by North Star Destination Strategies. The beaches. Clear and simple. This was something the people who live here already knew- and now there is proof.
Ed Barlow, VP and Director of Planning for Northstar spoke with a small group of people at the Grand Bend Legion Thursday at a public open house. He mapped out what the survey takers thought of this county.
This Nashville-based group suggests the general public may have a more negative impression of their community compared to what outsiders truly think of Sarnia-Lambton. It’s not unusual,” said Barlow, “Communities are often more critical on themselves because they live here and they’re facing the day-to-day.”
Having said that, many outsiders had no idea where Lambton County is.
Barlow explained to the forum this was a look at how we see the community and how visitors see it. It is research that brings the community to life. “What do people say about you when you are not around,” he said.
Barlow presented a swath of research on the public perceptions of Sarnia-Lambton. The months of focus groups, surveys and one-on-one interviews are part of a $65,000 community branding campaign to create a single image for Sarnia-Lambton.
Barlow says every community has a reputation- not many know though how to use that reputation to their benefit. He said this process usually comes from the history of the community but that “emotion and experience is not a logo and a line.” The main goal is to bring Lambton County together.
Chamber president Glen Baillie said, “I was very pleasantly surprised at the positive possibilities that are coming out of the branding exercise. While we have always known the lakefront is the best thing going, it was a relief to find that the rest of Lambton County found it to be the same. The residents of Sarnia proper also found the lakeshore to be the best thing, so we can hope going forward that the brand exercise revolves around the clean water we all enjoy for our tourism and lifestyle based lives.”
Baillie explained that once a means is found to tie in the industrial, chemical nature of the Sarnia industrial front with the pure, natural aspect of life along the lake, “we will have gone a long way to unifying the idea of what this area is about. Once that is done, we can look forward to marketing the area in a meaningful way.”
Baillie stated that the Grand Bend Chamber of Commerce has a core group of members who have marketed themselves as lakeshore based businesses for years. “They can look forward to working with the brand, as it is very likely to follow along with what any successful business has been doing here for years.”
The next step for this process is to move forward to the creative steps.
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