Brookline had the exciting opportunity to support the City of Red Deer with a fully integrated communications and marketing project spanning from creative design and brand identity to media relations, event planning and everything in between.
Coming off the heels of the pandemic, downtown spaces across the country have found themselves struggling to get people back into their spaces. In response, the City of Red Deer launched a Downtown Activation Playbook, a strategy to define a shared vision, goals and opportunities for a revitalized city core. A key part of this strategy was the creation of a new visual identity to help revitalize the area into a well-perceived destination that entices both potential business and property owners, as well as residents and tourists.
The Brookline team set to work on the new visual identity. Community engagement was key to the process to ensure the new visual identity was a true reflection of the people who live, work and play in the area. Brookline hosted an in-person session with key stakeholders to gather insight and feedback to provide the overall direction for the design. Following this our in-house graphic design team, set out to develop the new visual identity. With a minimalistic and intentional design paired with clean and simple visuals and timeless typography, the new downtown Red Deer visual identity was born! Brookline knows how important an authentic brand is. The new visual identity was created to encompass Downtown Red Deer as the vibrant heart of the city, animated by spaces to gather, connect, entertain and reflect.
Once the new visual identity was developed, Brookline planned and executed a community event to unveil the new downtown visual identity. The event took place at the heart of Red Deer’s downtown on Ross Street. Brookline coordinated local vendors including two live bands, a face paint artist, a balloon twister, a photobooth and even a petting zoo! Brookline also coordinated swag such as mugs, water bottles and t-shirts with the new branding and logo to hand out to community members at the event. To create additional community involvement, Brookline also worked with local businesses to organize limited time deals and offers in coordination with the event.
Furthermore, Brookline developed and designed key content for the event including the invitation, a local business brochure and a package to engage local businesses and get them excited about the new visual identity.
Along with this, our team had the pleasure of managing media relations efforts for the unveiling event. We worked diligently to secure media attendance and coverage through the development of a curated media invite list of key contacts in Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton, a media advisory, media briefs and informational material. These efforts secured attendance from media at the event as well as local and provincial coverage from several publications including the Red Deer Advocate, RD News Now, CBC Radio Calgary and CBC Radio Edmonton.
But wait, that’s not all! Brookliners also took on managing the social media transition and launch strategy for the new visual identity. Taking over the city’s existing Instagram account for downtown Red Deer, Brookline developed content and managed posting before, during and after the event to aid in the transition to the new visual identity.
The Brookline team was delighted to have had the opportunity to support the City of Red Deer with such a fun project, filled to the brim with creativity and community spirit. This project allowed the team to flex their skills in several different facets of communications and marketing and provided a lot of valuable experience. This new visual identity will shine a spotlight on the connected and vibrant heart of Red Deer, and we are honoured to have played a part.
Sarah Ferguson is an Account Coordinator at Brookline Public Relations. With a background in media relations, crisis communications and social media strategy, Sarah is driven to deliver creative public relations solutions rooted in tangible results.