What do you think about Wichita and our surrounding communities? More importantly, how do you describe us when you're talking to neighbors, or families and friends from out-of-town?
If you think it doesn't make a difference, you're wrong. In fact, the words you use, the stories you tell - even the images you share, all define our community's identity. And, the Visioneering Wichita Community Identity Strategic Alliance is taking steps to make sure those words, stories and images are the kinds that make people want to call this place home.
The Community Identity Alliance is part of Visioneering's Economic Development Foundation, so the goals are related to growth. Think of it as recruitment and retention from the inside out.
In south-central Kansas, we have an identity crisis. A survey developed by the Community Identity Alliance and taken by more then 2,000 citizens showed that an overwhelming majority of us really like our community. But, we think others don't. (See Survey Executive Summary under Recent Developments in the green box on the upper right-hand side of the page.)
The nearly 20 advertising, public relations and marketing experts making up the Community Identity Alliance want to realign our thoughts with our actions. The plan is to take the information from the survey and build an identity campaign that will give us what we need to communicate about the great things in our community.
It will be a process that involves listening to local citizens, identifying authentic and inspiring stories and developing a brand for our community that will retain and attract jobs, visitors and a workforce.
The brand will be used to make sure we are all on message when it comes to selling our community - to ourselves and to others.
