The search for a Dunedin brand personality begins. It is very difficult to combine the entire range of city wide features and experiences of all Dunedin has to offer into one definitive statement of fact and emotional feeling. Instead taking one of the strongest and most versatile aspects seems like the most logical approach. As said before a positioning statement must have guts and legs, that means it must be much more than hype if it is to be believable by the public and most important by the locals. Ideally this aspect would be not easily replicable by other centers in the sense that it denotes a differentiating aspect. I will therefore present two brand statements, the first influenced more by competitive strategy theory and the second by the need for an emotive proposition.

Dunedin…
The first city of New Zealand

This proposition draws heavily from an arguable competitive fact; that Dunedin was New Zealand’s first city. It fulfills the need of a defendable unique competitive advantage and differentiating factor compared to other centers. By placing the sentence in the present tense we create the motivating factor that would be missing from an historic reference and interpretation. The sentence is purposely made long to add a stately honourable feel in contrast to “New Zealand’s First City” which sounds rushed. Dunedin is a city of firsts.

Alternatives:

Dunedin
First to the future

Dunedin…
Where life begins

The “where life begins” slogan focuses on the lifestyle aspect of living and working in Dunedin, the defining and youthful student culture and the early settlement of Dunedin as the first city of New Zealand. Many people choose Dunedin for the lifestyle advantage and a slogan along this line would be considerable.

In the right place at the right time, somehow I ended up in a promotional video for the new FlyDunedin.com website developed by my company Myth Website Design. Watch the full video here…

What is Fly Dunedin? Visit the FlyDunedin.com website, or get more information about the development and launch party.

Recently a new marketing campaign was launched to promote my beautiful city of Dunedin, New Zealand. The campaign slogan “The Dunedin Difference” was set and utilized in the form of a website and passport to activities and vendors.

The “Dunedin Difference” is one of those “lets get away with saying nothing at all statements”. At least if we are going to avoid using a positioning statement then we should make an effort to evoke some sort of emotional reaction. It is nice to think though that Dunedin has matured enough to stop referring to itself as “I am Dunedin.”

If we don’t define a “unique identity” for Dunedin city we will continue to complete our marketing communications with empty questions, process sentences or quick fixes. Until then we all await in eager anticipation the answer to the the Dunedin Difference question. What is the “Dunedin Difference”?

Messages become diluted in effectiveness when they attempt to do to much. For example, we could present a strong proposition for people moving to the city versus an advert that attempts to attract short stay visitors and promote the lifestyle. So what we need is a clear and simple benefit proposition that can work across multiple channels and for most stakeholders.

What do we want to achieve, what does our final outcome look like?

Lets brain storm a bit here and see what pops out:

1. A thriving economy that delivers wealth and a high standard of living for local people. Young people can find fulfilling employment and opportunities with rewards in excess of options elsewhere. Businesses are successful and continue to reinvest in the infrastructure of the city and the community.

2. A satisfied and thriving population that is rich in culture and community spirit. A multitude of community events. Support for the young and old.

3. A growing sustainable city that attracts people, investment and businesses.

Why do people choose to live in Dunedin?

1. A few of the reasons people choose to live here are due to size. Dunedin has a perception of safety and community.

2. Key words thats spring to mind are “Youth”, “Heritage”, “Wisedom”, “Culture”, and “Lifestyle.” The benefits are as you can see inherently lacking is in the industry/business area. This is not to say that this area is under performing, it is my belief that this area is simply in the most need of more promotion.

What is Dunedins competitive advantage

1. One option is to take a broader benefit approach and consider the benefit of Dunedin as the largest city in Otago. I believe that a strong pull for people living in Dunedin is the smaller city life with access to many lifestyle options. The geographic location of this city provides access to Central Otago and other adventure/leisure holiday areas for enhanced lifestyle.

2. It would take too long to run a campaign challenging misperceptions about Dunedin. For example, cold, small economy problems etc. A campaign that can gain traction quickly could be to go down the knowledge economy route. The city could be seen as an Oxford/Silicon Valley hybrid? A place with depth of expertise and knowledge, and commercial innovation in IT, biotech and much more… all with a fantastic lifestyle of course.

To have any competitive advantage it has to be compared or be competitive. So who are the competitors and what are they doing? I am going to consider just two for starters…Lets think. Wellington first went to market of late as the romantic city “fall in love with Wellington” and is currently marketing as the Gift city. A place to go for shopping. Which is fair enough. I dont think wellington in known as a knowledge city or a gateway to local holiday destinations so either one of our strategies holds up their in that regard. Christchurch has some really nice character elements to it and its benefits are diverse, the “Garden City” proposition is reasonably effective in giving it an identity that is sustainable. After all everyone wants to live in a beautiful city and gardens are beautiful right. It has that holiday access feel to it I guess. Actually it can offer many of the things Dunedin can but these benefits are difficult to utilize in a unique sustainable proposition because there is not one item that defines Christchurch, it is a bigger city with diverse reasons to be there. Of course it has the same problems of bigger cities also.

So at this stage my pitch would be somewhere along the lines of the knowledge city with an adventure lifestyle component.

Further reading…

Dunedin, New Zealand is a fantastic place to live and work. While it is very saddening to see some large employers reducing jobs in Dunedin, I feel that this is a place of opportunity….

Dunedin has a small and fast moving marketplace

In Dunedin excellence is recognized and rewarded quickly. There is less room for inferiority and wastage because the market is too small to support this. Those small businesses that survive transformation to become larger businesses have streamlined market expansion capabilities, because they are forced to seek out geographical expansion sooner in their growth phase.

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The founding symbol of pride, the one constant, the Carisbrook legacy is almost lost. Few challenged the slide remarks from northern media about the quality of the stadium. At what point did we start listening and at what point did their opinions begin to matter. Teams would come and go, great players have been written in history, all shared the legend of Carisbrook. But no more.

I am not saying that a new stadium is a bad thing. I like shiny things. What I will say is that when you swiftly discard a legacy symbol of pride you are left with a feeling of loss, a feeling of disillusionment and you start to wonder whats left to be proud of anymore.

Remember the stories, they were real, a game at Carisbrook used to mean something. Playing for your representative side used to mean something so did supporting your team. Now we find a team lacking pride, a game which is lost, and fans in disillusionment, perhaps it is time to rediscover what made Otago Rugby Proud.