Hiring a Branding Consultant for Your City

As I’ve discussed previously on this blog, communities are quickly realizing the importance of branding. Conveying a brand helps build a sense of unity among residents. It helps market the community for economic development purposes. Creating a memorable brand can have a dramatic impact throughout your community.

That is why spending the time and effort to create the RIGHT brand is so necessary. Your community needs a brand that resonates with all that you are trying to achieve. Creating a brand that is entirely based on tourism can alienate your residents. Creating a brand that emphasizes attracting new businesses may not sit well with your current customers or even residents. The brand needs to hit the mark in a way that gets everyone on board. However, that’s not an easy task to complete. Knowing this, many communities have hired a professional consultant to guide them through the process of achieving the most effective brand possible.

Important Aspects to Include in Your RFP

Be Clear in Your Intent

First, it is important to clarify that your community isn’t just looking for a new logo. It needs to be stated that you’re looking for a unified brand identity that reflects the community’s values, enhances our visibility, and supports economic development, tourism, and helps to stir up civic pride. Pushing that aspect right out of the gate is critical to help ward off those who want to drop some Canva-based, nondescript logo and call it good.

Provide Sufficient Details on Your Community

Branding companies are creative entities. You want to get their salivary glands flowing by providing them with sufficient details about your community. Not just the typical information they can dig up on your website or a Wikipedia page on your town. Provide them with background details that get their imagination flowing and arouse their desire to submit a proposal.

Outline Expectations

As with every RFP, it is important to be clear with your expectations for the consultant. A clear and concise scope of work is key to getting what you want out of the branding consultant. But it also provides clarity and helps to ensure you are comparing “apples to apples” when reviewing submitted proposals. It is always tougher to compare consultants when the interpretation of the scope is different between those who are submitting.

Some important aspects to consider in the scope include:

• Brand discovery (audits, stakeholder interviews, surveys)
• Logo and visual identity development
• Messaging and brand narrative
• Development of brand assets and guidelines
• Public presentation or rollout support

Example RFPs

Provided through the links below are some examples of community branding RFPs that other cities have posted:

Sandy, OR – A good, detailed RFP. The current logo on the letterhead looks nice, but breaks some important logo standards.

Mountlake Terrace, WA – Possibly the most thorough RFP for municipal branding I’ve seen. The background and scope of work sections provide plenty of detailed information for consultants.

Itasca, IL – The Community Background section provides good information on this Chicago suburb of 9,500. It also has clear requirements for what needs to be included in the proposal.

Interview Thoroughly

Once you’ve narrowed down the branding consultants, it is important to take the interview process seriously. Thorough interviews are an important key to selecting the right branding professional. Although detailed proposals can tell you much about a branding firm, interviews can tell you more. Interviews are an ideal way to confirm a consultant’s proficiency in the subject.

But more importantly, interviews are key to figuring out if your team can mesh with theirs. The working relationship with any consultant is significant to the overall success of a project. If you and your consultant cannot communicate well, any project is likely to have struggles. But this aspect is even more apparent in a branding project due to the emotion that can be involved in a brand. A successful brand is representative of a community’s personality or a community’s vision for itself. So it can become quite emotional. Therefore, use interviews to make sure you can interact well with the consultants to ensure you have the right fit for your community.

Conclusion

Hiring the right branding consultant is key to a successful rebranding. Proceeding through the process the right way will help ensure the right fit for your community. With the right consultant, your new brand can help unify stakeholders, tell your community’s story, and inspire pride and energize residents to become more involved.

Need Help Drafting Your RFP?
If you’d like a review of your draft, feel free to reach out through the Rural Resurrection Contact page. RR is here to support communities that want to stand out for all the right reasons.