“Your brand is the sum of theconversations about you.”

Radian6

“A brand is the emotional and psychologicalrelationship you have with your customers.”

Jay Ehret, Marketing Blog

“A brand is a person’s gut feeling abouta product, service, or company.”

Marty Neumeier – The Brand Gap

Your Brand is your Cornerstone

Jey Ehret from the Marketing Blog tells it like this:

“The first stone set in the construction of a solid structure is

the cornerstone. It is the most important piece of any ma-

sonry structure because all other stones will be

set in reference to this stone. Your brand will be the

blueprint of your customer experience design,

it will flavor all conversation about you, and

it will align your advertising & promotional

activity. Your brand determines the position

and strength of your entire marketing framework.”

Your brand must be the truth and it must be about you

Your Brand is made up of the thoughts, feel-

ings, and relationships that your customers

have with you.

Your Brand is who you are to your audience.

If you clearly brand your business, you have

an understanding of what you are about.

You have a self awareness that dictates your

actions – where decisions are made in align-

ment with the brand. Over time you build a

stronger business identity.”

A Logo is not a Brand

We refer to something with a logo as

“branded”, even though logos themselves

are not brands.

Logos are merely representations of brands.

They are the entry point and the shortcut to

the brand for your mind.

If your organization were a person, your logo

is the recognized face, and the brand is the

person we know – who you appear to be.

repre

y poin

r mind.

ations of brands.

d the shortcut to

CRP Brand

Developing the brand for CRP is already underway,

through a framework of visual materials, evolving

into a visual identity. Typically a logo is a part of

the process, but in this case a look and a feeling

is still taking shape through the CMP, interactive

multimedia, video and other components. CRP

staff and representatives are engaged and also repre-

senting the brand.

This is the brand – what the audience experiences

and how they think about CRP.

The CRP logo will provide the identifying signature

that connects all of it together.

CRP Logo

To create a logo for the CRP brand,

we step back and observe from

thirty thousand feet. What do we see?

How can we distill it down into something simple,

a logo that represents an organization as complex

as CRP. We know that we can’t tell the whole story,

just a part of it.

So what is the important part of the story? Is it some-

thing physical or metaphorical? Is it an idea

or a personality like we saw in the other

company logos?

COCHRANE

TURNER VALLEY

BLACK DIAMOND

CALGARY

AIRDRIE

REDWOOD MEADOWS

STRATHMORECHESTERMERE

HIGH RIVER

OKOTOKS

CANMORE

BANFF

IRRICANA

NANTON

V

C

MOM

ER

YC

A

One place to look is the CMP, because it is the backbone

to the CRP where we have the five key principles:

1: Protecting the natural environment and watershed

2: Fostering our economic vitality

3: Accommodating growth in more compact

settlement patterns

5: Supported through a regional governance approach

What do we take from this? Some key words come to mind:

Sustainability Partnership Integration Planning Support Vision

Now let’s take a look at the retreat last winter,

and the General Assembly this summer, where

you learned a lot about the CRP membership

and about yourselves – with stronger self

awareness and an understanding of who you

are in the eyes of our audience. The activities

of the past year spawned conversation

with us and about us.

Back to the quote from Radian6:

“Your brand is the sum of the

coversations about you.”

What is the sum the conversations about CRP?

Innovation

SustainabilityWater

Partnershipainability

OpportunityW t Future

y

Purposeterartners

Futu

VisionInnovationno

ii

Region

Family

StewardshipInnovation

Infrastructure Sustainability

Harmony

Development

Water

Land

Planning

Together

Partnershipinter-connected

Collaboration

Accomplishment

Opportunity

Future

Dynamic

Purpose

Security

Vision

Understanding

Moving Forward Together Moving Forward Together

Moving Forward Together

Moving Forward Together

Moving Forward Together

Moving Forward Together

Exploring variations:

The design we are working with is two colours – blue and green.

Further study on the design will explore both waves in solid blue.

Options with and without fading areas outside of “the region”,

and whether the light blue fill should be incorporated or not.

A closer look at the elements in the design and what they mean.

How do they speak to the conversations we discussed earlier?

Together they represent land and water,

earth and sky – sustainability

The green represents growth, life,

land, and the environment

The blue represents water, strength

dynamic and confidence

FamilyTogether

Partnershipinter-connected

Collaboration

Sustainability

HarmonyWater

Land

Accomplishment

Opportunity

Future

Dynamic

Region

Innovation

Infrastructure

Development

Planning

Stewardship

Purpose

Security

Vision

Understanding

Thinking out-of-the-box

Responding to change

Working together for a sustainable Calgary Region