The Shorewood BID launched a blog 3 weeks ago now, which promised to "to keep residents up to date on what's happening downtown." They stuck with the old BID branding, "Uptown, Upscale, Uncommon" as their blog title. This brand is also used on the Shorewood BID website.

Given the fact that we spent $225,000 on a marketing plan to come up with our new brand, I would argue that any semi-governmental body affiliated with the Village of Shorewood should be using the "Walk Shorewood" branding. Consistent communications and positioning are keys to brand success.



Comments

1. "Hi Steve! The Shorewood BID spent several thousand dollars three years ago on the Uptown brand. While we are supporting the effort of the new Shorewood Village branding, we are slowly implementing on our end. The board felt there was still value to be gained from the investment in the other campaign. I would think by this time next year you will find the BID embracing the "two-feet" and "heart of everything" themes and identities. Hope this help! As always, just ask!"
- Jim Plaisted, Executive Director, Shorewood BID

2. "Steve, Thanks for keeping your eye on things like this that make no sense! While you're at it, you could point out that the poorly branded 'blog' contains not timely observations, but just the same old tired press release blather--not exactly the kind of thing to make people think of Shorewood as up to the minute, or even up to the decade. With a grand total of only two postings in three weeks, one would like to think they could do better. You manage to!"
- Shorewoodian, 7/25/07

3. "Well, for that matter, Steve, what have we gotten out of our $225,000 PR campaign that started two years ago or so? We don't have a brand that sticks or any coordination between Shorewood groups to ensure that we're branded consistently. I haven't seen any evidence that the positive press Shorewood has gotten had anything to do with that campaign, have you? Once in a while the village sends some newsletters telling us what's going on...could someone maybe let us know what we got for our money except for a poll identifying that we think of ourselves as Brad Pitt-esque and a promise to someday do a "direct mail" campaign--an extremely outdated and ineffective way to advertise?"
- Shorewoodian, 7/26/07

The new website for the Village of Shorewood is now up and running. You can view it here.

Comments

1. "It sure took a while, but it's very attractive and organized. Very well done!"
- Mark, 6/19/07

2. "Much better, and includes a lot of good information."
- Anonymous, 6/20/07

The note below is from Leeann Butschlick, the Assistant to Village Manager Chris Swartz.

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Hi Steve,

Just thought you'd like to know that we have requested SBC/AT&T make the necessary browser adjustment to launch our new website. We did not receive any confirmation of a time so I can't give you any more than a "heads up" to watch for it.

I'm anxious to hear what you think. Thanks for your interest in the project.

Leeann Butschlick
Assistant to the Village Manager
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I spoke to Village Manager Chris Swartz today about progress on the Village of Shorewood website. He said that 2 weeks ago, the marketing firm, Meyer and Wallis sent their concept of what the website should look like to the Village of Shorewood.

The Village then sent it to GovOffice, the company who is constructing our new website. GovOffice is supposed to send the Village a draft version of the site tomorrow. This draft version will then be released in a limited fashion for beta testing. Several weeks after that, it should be live.

This is the timeline, as it was relayed to me today.

Comments

1. Thank you for the update. That is great news. Meyer & Wallis does good work.
- Anonymous Comment, 6/4/07.

In case you want to view the results of the marketing initiative Shorewood has undertaken, the development version of the website is now available at this link:

http://www.walkshorewood.com/dev/

A comment from an unidentified reader suggested I contact Village Hall about the website. I talked at length with the Village Manager, Chris Swartz, who confirmed that a website redesign is, indeed, underway. The new site uses the E-Gov engine, will be completed in March of 2007, and will cost approximately $2,400 for the initial startup, and $600/yr to maintain. The result will be a much more usable and aesthetically appealing website.

E-commerce will still not be included in the new website, an omission which mystifies me. However, any upgrade is certainly a big step from where we are today!

I struggle to come up with a positive spin on the current Village of Shorewood website. The best I can do is..."quaint." It has what a real estate agent would call, "old-world charm." There is no larger political point to make here, other than a general call for someone, anyone to address this issue.

Writing a list of the current deficiencies of the Village site would be take months, and reading such a list would waste everyone's time. Let's fix this problem. Surely we can sacrifice one of the many $20,000 - $50,000 consulting contracts we pay every year for studies of varying degrees of usefulness. For the love of efficiency, please make us a functional website.

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.