I intended to go to the Marketing Steering Committee meeting this evening at 7:30 PM. Unfortunately, upon arrival at Village Hall, it became apparent that the PM in that last sentence should have been an AM. So I missed it.
For those of you who do not know, Shorewood is engaged in an initiative to create a Shorewood "brand," to better control the messages that are out there about Shorewood. I fully support this initiative, as the Village competes for future residents and attempts stem the population decline. However, being a marketing professional myself, I am skeptical of several aspects of the process itself.
How are the Trustees involved actually contributing? There are no marketing professionals among the Trustees at this time. Other than President Johnson, the business background of the assembled group is marginal (2 lawyers, an architect, a professor, a fund raiser, and a stay at home mom). As such, it remains to be seen how the initiative progresses if it is up to Trustees to lead.
Often, non-marketing professionals get caught up in an endless cycle of data collection when required to make a marketing decision. Collecting marketing data is outrageously expensive, so this trend can be dangerous.
Anyway, I will try to round up some of the presentations and materials from these meetings and post them here.
