We all know of city rebranding efforts which have missed the mark so badly that they’ve turned into jokes rather than launching pads for growth.

When I began working with the City of Covington on their rebranding project, this was a mistake we could no afford to make. The city residents already felt divided, some being from the past generation who chose the city for one reason, and the other half being new arrivals who chose it for completely different reasons. Bringing these two sides together under one common banner in order to see them grow together rather than apart, this was the essential goal of the project.

Project summary:

Covington started as a railroad shortcut, an in between. It was a place to pass through, but not stay for any period of time. We are out to change that.
With a solid comprehensive plan in place, the support of the city council, economic development commission and city staff, and a well organized rebranding effort, Covington will become a stop, and not just a pass through.

My work consisted of:

Analysis of raw citizen data from a series of community workshops and surveys. This included:

Resident Survey 2009
Downtown Plan & Zoning Study 2009
Communication Plan 2011
Four Re-branding Workshops 2012
Casual conversations with city residents during the preparation of this report

From this data we concluded the following, which guided our recommendations.

Audience:

There are three main groups that the city rebrand project will focus on. Those who...

Live in Covington (With a special designation for families)
Do business in Covington or may in the future
Visit Covington

Each audience had their own list of key issues, which we documented.

Attributes:

We identified the top negative perceived attributes of the city:

Poor community (feel & events), family activities, & outdoor space (11%)
Growing pains from retail development (11%)
Poor safety (9.2%)
Poor traffic, transportation, & walkability (5.5%)

And then the top actual attributes of the city:

Good sense of community, family friendly, friendly in general (12.9%)
Good government & city services (11.6%)
General feeling of lack & being limited (9%)
Good retail choices (6.4%)
Poor traffic, transportation, & walkability (6.4%)
Good medical choices (5.1%)

View the entire deck of key findings and recommendations here

We ultimately developed a tagline which fit the mark perfectly and was well received by all our key audiences: Growing toward Greatness.

Today (as of June 2019, 6 years after this work completed), if you drive down the streets of Covington you will see banners and signs with the new logo and tagline on it. It’s also used on construction signs, and on city buildings, parks, swimming pools, etc.

The tagline and rebrand hit such a mark with city officials, I even found it being used during the next election season several years later.

Let's work together and keep Covington "Growing Toward Greatness" with improved public safety and transportation infrastructure; effective stewardship of a safe and healthy environment; creating a vibrant and diverse downtown; attracting quality education and employment opportunities; and expanding recreation and community services. I'm proud to serve you! - Margaret Harto, City of Covington Mayor

Some additional coverage of the rebrand: