A city isn’t a company. But if a city is going to put a tagline on its entrance signs, it ought to be the core expression of its marketing efforts and its overall strategy. It ought to bring tourism, economic development, investment and talent attraction, municipal government policy, and most importantly citizen action together under a single, unique idea.
This is where City of Champions fails: as an expression of what makes Edmonton and its people different from other mid-sized cities across the continent. There are plenty of cities of champions.
Did Calgarians respond so differently to their catastrophic flood than Edmonton to its tornado? When you ask people who aren’t promoting the slogan they will tell you it is about sports. Why? Because it is about sports.
City of Champions was on our entrance signs for a long time. Yet in 2013, in the city’s economic development plan, leaders agreed the number 1 challenge for Edmonton’s future was its image and reputation. Market research confirmed their feelings. As travellers know, from conversations at hotel lounges all over Canada: when your teams aren’t winning, the word “champion” suggests its opposite.
Is Edmonton unique? Yes, absolutely, and you can find this uniqueness in the way we build together. The Heritage Classic shares something with Stantec, Bioware, PCL, Running Room, Boston Pizza, Shaw, Jobber, and hundreds of other companies that launched in this laboratory of a city. It shares a spirit with the Fringe and the Food Bank, waste management, a new model for public schools, and a university devoted to “uplifting the whole people.”
This spirit comes to life at a hockey game, when the PA system doesn’t work and the singer needs help with The Star-Spangled Banner.
At its simplest, Edmonton is an extraordinary blend of openness, entrepreneurship, and co-operation. If you have an idea, this is an unusually good place to do something about it. We encourage each other to start things, launch things, make things. We help.
There is a brand strategy. Citizens built Phase 1, Make Something Edmonton, and you can see and feel its effects in thousands of projects all over the city, from lights on the High Level Bridge to community gardens and new companies. You saw and felt the tourism expression of it, Edmonton Original, in television commercials during the NHL playoffs. It’s working. And it’s just beginning.
As Mayor Don Iveson said in his state of the city speech on Wednesday, “this city of quiet confidence is on the verge of something extraordinary.”
No one says you have to stop thinking Edmonton is the city of champions. Commission a piece of public art about sports victories, from the Edmonton Grads to the Orange Crush, to honour that history.
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