So the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority changed its name to DC Water and spent $180,000 on a branding campaign (see the “Hearts and Minds” article in this issue of TPO).
Must be nice to have that kind of money, eh? And time? Why, if your smaller community spent money on anything as frivolous as branding and public visibility, you’d get pilloried in the local press, right? Exercise in image polishing. Waste of public money. And all that.
Maybe you think that way and maybe you don’t. Whatever. Let’s stop for a moment and consider why branding can be one of the most important things your clean-water plant or wastewater department can do — and how you can do it with reasonable effectiveness and quite inexpensively.
Why have a brand?
A brand has a simple purpose: To create in customers’ minds a single, positive impression of an organization and what it does. Think Harley-Davidson. Campbell’s Soup. Coca-Cola. Ford. Apple Computer.
Of course, it took years, zillions of dollars, and great products to create those brands. You can’t build a brand that strong on a shoestring. But the basic idea is for customers to know at a glance who you are and what you stand for — or simply to know you’re there at all. That much you can do.
You might ask, “Who cares? What’s wrong with just doing a great job and keeping a low profile?” Nothing, maybe, until it’s time to convince the public to spend big money for a plant upgrade.
Or until something bad happens, and then you become known simply as the people who caused the big overflow — the villains — because when it happened you had no bank account of good will to draw upon, no visible record of solid public service on which to stand. At times like those, a brand can make a lot of difference.
What to do
So suspend belief for a moment and pretend it really is important to present a consistent face to your customers — backed up of course by excellent performance (without which branding truly is a futile exercise in image polishing). What can you do in the next six months or a year? Here are a few items.
Logo. Have a visual marker that appears everywhere — a symbol that says you stand for clean water, a clean community, and a quality environment. How to create it? Community logo contests are fine, but you shouldn’t leave something this important to amateurs. Have a contest if you want, but let some local design professionals pick the winner, and hire a professional to refine and polish the chosen entry. If you already have a logo, but it’s tired and drab, create a new one that has some pop.
Sign. In our PlantScapes column in this issue and in coming months, you’ll see great examples of treatment plant signs that are colorful, classy and inviting, and are often surrounded by great landscaping of flowers, native grasses and shrubs. Of course, put the logo on the sign. In materials sent to us recently, we’ve seen some striking “before and after” pictures. It’s amazing what a difference in first and lasting impressions the right sign can make.
Giveaways. Make notepads. Coffee cups. Caps. Pens. Print the logo on them. Hand them out (judiciously) to visitors, tour groups, attendees at public meetings. Choose items of decent quality — never put your logo on junk.
Uniforms. I don’t mean your team members should wear car mechanic blue jumpsuits with their name above the pocket. But what’s wrong with everyone wearing quality work shirts in the same color — with the logo sewn in? Besides impressing visitors, nice work attire has a strange way of helping team morale, too.
Web site. Don’t just have a single page under the city’s Web site that tells how old, what process, how much flow, and so on. Create an actual site where you can show your buildings and processes, introduce your people, describe your performance record, list your awards. Put the logo on every page.
Brochure. Have something to hand out to visitors, to students at class presentations, to job prospects at employment fairs. Again, think quality. Don’t just slap something together in black and white. Have a professional design it. Use high-quality photographs. Hire an excellent printer. Include the logo.
It all adds up
Doing all these things (and others I could name) won’t make you as recognizable as General Electric. But their cumulative effect will be to help create a clear and enduring impression of what you do and why it’s important. None of these items are terribly costly, especially when the costs are weighed against long-term value.
Does your treatment plant or agency have a strong brand? If so, let us hear about how you created it and how it helps you. Please drop a note to editor@tpomag.com, and I promise to respond. We’ll use some of the most interesting stories on our pages.
