Dallas Area City Seeks Branding Firm
Located in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the City of Carrollton is a vibrant corporate and residential community. The City’s location and business cost advantages attract and support a diverse local economy with over 9,000 businesses calling Carrollton home.
They are seeking a branding agency to establish a unified platform for the City of Carrollton where a shared brand between the City and the community stakeholders will be utilized.
The goals of the branding program are to:
- Provide a clear vision that crystallizes the City’s competitive advantage and distinct strengths by focusing on the authentic and organic characteristics of the City of Carrollton.
- Provide a brand strategy that aligns the City’s vision with the competitive positions of community.
- Identify, preserve, and present the City’s heritage and stories.
- Encourage the development of experiences that provide opportunities to encounter the City’s authentic cultural and natural environment.
- Engage the citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders and give them the reason and tools to become advocates for the City of Carrollton.
- Build community pride and ownership in what is distinctive and special about the City.
- Introduce signage guidelines for community gateways, gathering places, and buildings that enhance heritage, streetscapes, and viewing corridors.
Scope of Work
- Research and Foundation. This task encompasses the initial research necessary to define target audiences, develop a brand positioning statement and test recommended brand concepts using targeted stakeholder groups, surveys, and other methodologies as appropriate. It is anticipated the selected firm will review research results with staff and identified stakeholder committees. Furthermore, the selected firm is expected to draw from existing research, economic development and community planning documents as well as conduct their own research and focus groups.
Deliverables:
- Research summary
- Brand positioning statement
- Brand and Message Development. In this task, the selected firm will create the messaging, the expression of the brand, and visual elements that will effectively communicate Carrollton’s identity to target audiences. Messaging should connect to the hearts and minds of this audience and be believable, relevant, and simple. Consistency, with the allowance for some flexibility, so that the messaging can be used by all departments, programs, and services that make up the City is also important.
Deliverables:
- Visual elements guide and graphic standards, including logo and fonts
- Templates for common needs such as municipal signage, brochures, web page layout, PowerPoint, report covers, etc.
- Strategic Brand Implementation and Community Engagement. This task will define the activities designed to effectively establish the City’s new brand identity, as well as identify ongoing strategies for communicating, maintaining, and enhancing the brand’s value over the first three years following introduction. These strategies should:
- Prioritize both short and long-term strategies and tactics, including a timeline.
- Employ a variety of communication tools.
- Engage Carrollton’s citizens, businesses, and educational institutions.
- Enable target audiences to connect and interact with the City and use feedback to further build the City’s brand.
- Provide opportunities for target audiences to become advocates.
- Effectively tell the “Carrollton story.”
- Introduce a long-term tourism strategy that encompasses the brand identity (implementation for this tourism strategy is not included in this request).
To ensure effective implementation, the brand strategy should recommend methods for tracking results and measuring success with target audiences.
Deliverables:
- Brand strategy
- Tracking and measurement recommendations
Proposal due by November 10th, 2016 to:
Community Development Director
Erica Studdard
Carrollton City Hall
315 Bradley Street
Major PR firms in Texas include Taylor PR, MWW PR and Edelman.
