KAWARTHA LAKES-The City of Kawartha Lakes is looking at spending almost half a million dollars on “branding” the municipality. Branding is the identity, perception and image of a place or a company.
Council learned the “branding” initiative would cost an estimated $450,000. $75,000 would be spent on new uniforms for Fire, Paramedic, Police, and other City departments that require branded uniforms (certain Public Works, Parks and Recreation staff, Municipal Law Enforcement, etc.), $80,000 on something called the “branding project”, $25,000 on printed materials and $270,000 to replace the individual municipality signage.
Communications staff wants to have all signs in the municipality follow the same format using the signage in the Township of Springwater as a comparison.
“I referenced Mississauga and Springwater’s projects and talked about how they did things their own way, in response to what their stakeholders had shared.” Cheri Davidson, Communications Manager, City of Kawartha Lakes explained. “This was particularly true in Mississauga, as they did a full public engagement prior to the graphic/visual representation of the brand. Public engagement is going to be the foundation of the project for us. We are all part of the Kawartha Lakes brand today, we we need to be a part of our future brand, we need to shape it together.”
The $80,000 branding project would be in the 2019 budget and all other costs would be in 2020. These are estimated costs and could increase in the coming years.
Community engagement would begin in the spring/fall of 2019.
Creative design of visual identity would commence in Winter 2019/2020
Brand rollout and marketing strategy would roll out in 2020 and beyond according to the presentation.
The issue will come to full council at a later date.
