One 12 months after a Norfolk Southern derailment pressured the some 5,000 residents of East Palestine, Ohio, to evacuate, the group rolled out a brand new brand and tagline.
Village Mayor, Trent Conaway, not too long ago launched East Palestine’s new brand and tagline, “Pleasure. Custom. Progress.” The previous brand, from earlier than the poisonous 38-car derailment blackened the sky, was a round seal displaying a solar with rays beaming over a area. The brand new brand exhibits hand-drawn village landmarks because the group focuses on financial growth.
“We nonetheless wish to maintain our small-town really feel, however it might be good to have some extra growth coming to city,” Conaway mentioned at a press convention.
[Images: East Palestine]
WRL Promoting, a advertising and marketing agency in Canton, Ohio, that’s labored with purchasers together with the Professional Soccer Corridor of Fame, was tapped by East Palestine for the mission in November. Engaged on an abbreviated timeline to ship belongings in time for the anniversary of the derailment, the agency did two discoveries and located that “lots of people had the identical issues to say,” says WRL promoting president Jeff LeBeau.
“It’s a really small, close-knit, heat group that’s very supportive, working class. Additionally they discovered that quite a lot of households are 4 or 5 generations within the space, so that they’ve been going to the identical colleges and sports activities, quite a lot of small-town delight, a particularly resilient group of individuals,” LeBeau tells Quick Firm. “We actually wished to focus and attempt to get that message out.”
Researchers at Cleveland State College estimate the derailment resulted in an annualized family lack of $10.3 million, along with different prices like long-term well being impacts, a lack of tax income, and prices related to housing points and lack of companies.
“To me that stigma’s going to take time to put on off, however all we are able to do is try this constructive promotion,” Keith Drabick, East Palestine’s hearth chief, mentioned on the press convention.
The brand is a public-facing image for a bigger effort to revitalize the group’s financial system. As a part of its recompense, Norfolk Southern introduced $500,000 for the village final August to rent a private-sector financial growth marketing consultant and develop a long-term economic development strategy. That technique will embrace spotlights on particular person companies on the town, conventional promoting, and efforts to succeed in shoppers over the state border in Pennsylvania.
“We’re attempting to get a advertising and marketing model for our village so that individuals will wish to come right here,” Village Supervisor Chad Edwards instructed Spectrum News.
