Mount Pleasant reveals its new brand campaign: 'Meet Here'
The city of Mount Pleasant revealed its new brand, 'Meet Here', on Nov. 13 at the Art Reach of Mid Michigan.
The event was open to community members and representatives from Mount Pleasant City Commission, Central Michigan University and Mid-Michigan College attended among others.
The brand, "Meet Here", is an open ended phrase that community members and businesses can add to. Adding words in front of the "meet here" can curb the brand to convey a specific message. A few examples provided at the event included:
"Mom and pops. Meet here.
Messy hands. Meet here.
Many backgrounds. Meet here."
The main idea of the phrase "meet here" is to say anything and everything comes together in Mount Pleasant.
The process of creating a brand campaign for the community started seven years ago when interviews and surveys were conducted to gather data about how people define Mount Pleasant, or what makes Mount Pleasant unique.
To help with the creation of the brand campaign, Mount Pleasant hired the company Darwin. Darwin's goal, according to its website, is to move society forward by partnering with "change makers" to solve complex issues.
“One of the goals was to identify how Mount Pleasant is different from Grand Rapids or Lansing or anywhere else," said creative strategist Kathleen Monin. "We also wanted to make a fantastic reputation for the community while staying true to who we are.”
Throughout the research the single most important question asked was, "what unites the Mount Pleasant community," Monin said.
She said it’s easy to say Mount Pleasant is right in the middle of the mitten, and that it has CMU and the Casino. And while those are major parts of Mount Pleasant, they are not what unites the community, she said.
Monin said that a brand doesn't just consist of a logo, but also words, colors, fonts and a promise.
In the promise of the brand, there are two parts: the attributes and the ingredients.
Monin said the first attribute of Mount Pleasant, that they found central to their promise, is the cultural crossroads.
“This is how we wanted to articulate the value of being in the middle, that we are a crossroads for people to come together and unite," she said.
The second attribute is that Mount Pleasant has a relaxed lifestyle where you can "skip to your own beat," Monin said.
The last attribute states there are no compromises; there are just the right amount of amenities for you here in Mount Pleasant, she said.
Monin said these attributes are what make Mount Pleasant special.
The ingredients of the promise are the importance of community assets, the attractive culture in Mount Pleasant and being the Michigan crossroad.
The secret ingredient, Monin said, is all of the community members.
“The overwhelming thing that we heard is that Mount Pleasant is where people come together,” she said.
So, the promise of the brand campaign is the focus on the community members and their connection to each other.
Chris Rowley, the executive director for Mount Pleasant’s Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the grassroots of the brand is important because everyone can use it and see themselves being represented in the brand.
“The different entities within the community have their own brand, or different logos, so this community brand was really about uniting those separate elements of our community under one umbrella," said City Planner Jacob Kain.
He said the brand brings all the different attributes together into one coercive strategy for building community pride and reaching out to the rest of the state and the nation to let them know who the Mount Pleasant community is.
Damian Fisher, owner of Graysky Gallery, said he came to the event to see what the brand was all about.
“It’s one thing to come up with a new idea, but it’s another to make it work, and that’s where we come in," Fisher said. "Once the city makes the decision, it’s up to the businesses to sell it."
Darcy Orlik, director of public relations, said people can participate by contacting her; there is a playbook with electronic files of the logos and there’s tutorials on how people can use the electronic logo as well as the vinyl stickers.
This will make it easier for people to fill in that blank of what that "meet here" specifically means to them, she said.
