Someday, Franklin may want to select a slogan to identify itself.
Someday.
For now, the major project isn’t to name and market an entire city, but a proposed business district on a street that hugs both Franklin and Oak Creek.
The name’s already been chosen for that area of S. 27th Street......…The Boomgaard District.
I have a suggestion for anyone associated with the project along with city leaders and planners.
Invest $24.95 and buy this book:
Destination Branding for Small Cities by Bill Baker
The book is advertised this way:
Branding is one of today's hottest and most misunderstood destination management and marketing concepts. Destination Branding for Small Cities takes readers on a fascinating journey and shows how to orchestrate a successful brand for tourism and economic development.This must-read primer demystifies branding, demonstrates how to uncover a Destination Promise, and provides real world examples, as well as affordable, proven tools, templates and checklists to help breathe life into a city brand.
Destination Branding for Small Cities highlights:
- Why branding is important to ambitious places
- The pitfalls in destination branding and how to avoid them
- The essential steps in brand planning for cities
- How to define your positioning and Destination Promise™
- Critical questions to test your positioning, logo and tagline
- How to encourage stakeholders to be champions for the brand
- How to deliver outstanding brand experiences
American City and County Magazine says this:
For economic development officials and tourism leaders, a city's brand can be a strong magnet for businesses and visitors. But, many cities do not have clear or meaningful public images to attract tourists or business investment, according to Bill Baker, author of a new book. In “Destination Branding for Small Cities,” Baker, president of Tualatin, Ore.-based Total Destination Management, explains seven steps to help communities create successful place brands. The book explains how city leaders can discover their brand, express it, and keep it fresh and relevant.
Here are the book’s contents, along with the seven steps to create successful place brands:
Contents:
1. The World of Brands and Branding
2. The Challenges and Rewards of Branding Places
3. What is Being Branded and Why?
4. Prepare to Start: Mobilize the Forces
5. Seven Steps to a Community Brand
6. Step One: Assessment - What's Your Place in the World?
Research: How to Obtain the Answers to Your Questions
7. Step Two: Analysis and Advantage - What Will You be Known For?
Brand Positioning - Claiming the Most Valuable Real Estate
It Takes an Emotional Edge
8. Step Three: Architecture and Alignment - What Are the Brand's Relationships?
9. Step Four: Articulate - How Can the Brand be Expressed?
10. Step Five: Activation - How Will the Brand Come to Life?
11. Step Six: Adoption and Attitudes - How Do We Maximize the Support of Stakeholders?
12. Step Seven: Action and Afterward - How Do We Keep the Brand Fresh and Relevant?
Appendix: Destination Branding Terms
Here is just one review of the book that early critics of the name, “Boomgaard” will find interesting, no doubt:
"This book by Bill Baker has the potential to save millions of dollars spent in the past by cities, states and nations on ill conceived and ineffective campaigns purporting to be brand development exercises. In addition it has the further potential of reinforcing the value of brands in the rapidly changing world of destination marketing."
John King
Managing Director
Global Tourism & Leisure Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia
So before there are any more meetings, teleconferences, or press releases, someone really ought to go to Amazon.com, plunk down $24.95 and take the time to read these 192 pages.
I wonder what author Bill Baker would say about “Boomgaard?” 
