Tasmania’s true meaning

Brand Tasmania chief executive Todd Babiak knows how to stand out in a crowd and he has a few tips for Tassie

IT works every time. Todd Babiak launches into presentations by asking his audience what the Tasmanian brand is. Someone invariably says “clean and green”, which enables him to reply that Austrade lists 160 places that use “clean and green”.

“Then I’ll show them all the places, including Punjab, that say their brand is clean and green,” says the Brand Tasmania chief executive, who was appointed to the role in March following the State Government’s transfer of the body into a statutory authority last year.

The place-branding expert hails from Canada, has worked extensively in the US, and before his recent appointment did some work with Tourism Tasmania on its new branding.

What most surprised Todd in early interview-based research across Tasmanian society was the consistency of the response.

“In some places, such as the Western half of North America, where the cities have all grown the same way, it feels as if you are really hunting for something special, something distinct,” he says when we meet for a cuppa at Basket &

Green in Midtown. “Here it was consistently different [to other places] and people used the word ‘Tasmanian’ as a filter, to say ‘that is so Tasmanian’ or ‘that’s not Tasmanian’.”

Another thing that struck him was how often people mentioned adversity, struggle and hardship.

“Whether in their own lives or in Tasmania’s past, there was a sense of things going wrong here.”

They also talked in their own ways about the shake-up that came with the collapse of the commodity market, ending expectations of lifelong company jobs.

“They talked about how people were interrupted when everything became cheaper and Tasmania couldn’t compete on price any more.”

Then he noticed something curious. “They would talk about 100 years of Hydro power the same way they’d talk about [more recent specialised industries and products such as] cheese, whisky, museum and advanced manufacturing.”

The toil was always part of the story. The doing things harder, but also the doing things better, and with a deep sense of purpose and meaning. There was acknowledgement, too, that in many ways the struggles sowed the seeds of our current success.

We haven’t always been good at talking about our hard-won gains, though, says Todd, or literally selling the fruits of our labour for top dollar.

That’s where Brand Tasmania’s new catchphrase, “the quiet pursuit of the extraordinary”, comes in. It’s a defining line the team distilled from hundreds of conversations over the past year, just as it carefully delineated Tasmania as the place and Tasmanian as the culture.

“Everybody talked about Tasmania in that way,” says Todd. “I think it’s a really special cultural expression and one we can use to unify our efforts and talk about this place.”

Though some of its wealthy individuals come from humble backgrounds and can be seen as inspirational, the Tasmanian story is not a classic rags to riches story, says Todd. “It’s a rags to meaning story.”

At a practical level, Brand Tasmania operates as a free client-service organisation.

Its new website Tasmanian.com.au, which goes live on December 20, is designed as a toolkit for Tasmanians wanting to align their brands with some of these themes.

In the launch lead-up the team is running workshops for start-up entrepreneurs, social ventures and cultural and local government organisations.

Another focus is extending Tourism Tasmania’s audience segmentation work into different areas.

“In trade, these are the [same] people who are buying our stuff,” says Todd. “And in workplace attraction, these are the nurses and doctors and entrepreneurs we can bring here.”

Then there’s the “workplace development” piece, part of which addresses the prosperity or lock-out that remains the reality of many Tasmanians’ lives.

“Maybe that’s our most important work,” says Todd.

If you get the feeling oldfashioned marketing and promotion barely describes the power of brand in 2019, you are not alone. Todd thinks its potential is enormous.

“I would probably get into trouble anywhere else for even suggesting this, because brand usually has nothing to do with high-school completion rates, but let’s look at that.

“What’s the baseline and where can we go together?”