Visualize the best of your city or town. Think about the story you want to tell residents, visitors, business owners, economic development prospects or news reporters about what’s great about your city or town. What would be your community’s best assets? What would you want to show off?
At the Hometown Legislative Action Day in February, the Municipal Association rolled out a series of new visuals and ads for the “Cities Mean Business” campaign to help local officials do just that. Attendees got the first look at new visuals that tell the story of the value of public safety, infrastructure, tourism, thriving downtowns and recreation to our state’s economy.
The “Cities Mean Business” campaign is part of the Association’s overall advocacy strategy that gives local officials the tools to tell the stories that help reinforce the value of cities. “This campaign is about putting the pieces in place to help legislators and our local key influencers better understand the great things going on in our cities and towns,” said Orangeburg Mayor Paul Miller, president of the Municipal Association in his remarks at Hometown Legislative Action Day. These campaign visuals are an updated and freshened up version of the original series launched in 2006.
The “Cities Mean Business” campaign grew out of the Hometown, SC initiative which laid out the strategy to align the message of strong cities with legislative advocacy efforts.
“To help policy makers to better understand our issues, they first must recognize and appreciate the many programs, services and amenities that cities and towns provide to businesses and residents,” Miller said. “The ‘Cities Mean Business’ campaign materials bring attention to the many positive attributes of cities and towns and their role in bringing economic growth to the community.”
The updated campaign materials consist of the following:
- Nine ads that can be localized by individual cities and towns. The themes of the ads include public safety, tourism, infrastructure, downtown development and recreation. The ads can be included in city newsletters or magazines, adapted for slates on local cable access channels, made into posters or signs, or posted on city websites.
- Updated website (www.citiesmeanbusiness.org) that features a daily newsfeed with news articles from around the state focusing on positive stories that illustrate the value of cities and towns.
- Updated logo that can be used as an icon on city websites to link to the “Cities Mean Business” website
- Stickers that can be downloaded for local events
- Updated guidelines for holding local engagement sessions and business appreciation events
- Updated Facebook page
- Continued publication of the bi-annual Cities Mean Business magazine
“The new visuals offer greater flexibility to appeal to cities and towns of all sizes in all areas of the state,” said Reba Campbell, deputy executive director of the Municipal Association.
The Municipal Association has downloadable files of the ad templates that local officials can individualize to meet their local needs.
For additional information, contact Reba Campbell at 803.933.1245/rcampbell@masc.sc or Casey Fields at 803.933.1256/cfields@masc.sc.