Edmonton Construction 11 (November 2011)

[Hallsy's Toupee]

Lamphier: Money, co-ordination could solve Edmonton’s long-standing image problem

Nothing new here except for this:

In an interview Wednesday, Ferguson reiterated his blunt message. It’s time for the city to take its image problems far more seriously, he says. And that means adopting a more strategic approach toward branding, messaging and marketing.

“If this city was a company, we’d spend one to two per cent of our revenues on marketing. That would give us about $12 million a year. But we operate at about a quarter of that today and the monies are distributed to different groups that aren’t aligned.”

The result, he says, is that the city, key local companies and organizations don’t project a simple, coherent ‘take home’ message, leaving outsiders scratching their heads and wondering what Edmonton is all about.

“I’ve been here at EEDC for about three months now and I’ve welcomed six or seven foreign ambassadors or consul generals to this region during that time,” says Ferguson.

“All of them but one told me: ‘You know, I didn’t know what was here.’ They said they knew about Calgary and Fort McMurray, but they didn’t understand the strategic importance of Edmonton,” he notes.

“But they became quite excited about it when they were here, and now they want to come back. So it’s clear that we’ve got some work to do and that’s really why I made that statement (to city council’s executive committee).

“I didn’t just throw it out there. I want to raise the bar in terms of what it’s going to take for us to be competitive. And it’s going to take alignment and it’s going to take money.”