Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Fayetteville tourism bureau undergoes rebrand
FAYETTEVILLE — A steady rise in tourism revenue prompted the city’s convention and visitors bureau to rebrand.
Experience Fayetteville, the city’s bureau in charge of promotion and tourism, unveiled a new logo and website Tuesday.
“This is really more than a brand and more than a logo,” Executive Director Molly Rawn said. “The reason why we call ourselves Experience Fayetteville is because it is a total experience.”
Experience Fayetteville attracts visitors by airing commercials outside the city, promoting the city’s attractions on social media, creating a visitors guide online and in print and advertising the city in other ways. Its grants program helps pay for local events and projects twice yearly that promote the city.
Rawn referred to three types of visitors the tourism bureau wants to focus on. Culturalists, typically millennials, tend to go places they identify with. Scenic landscapes and trails bring out the naturalists. Weekenders look for a place to get away for a specific event, she said.
Pinpointing the city’s top draws proved to be a harder task than initially thought because of its melting pot of attractions, restaurants, entertainment venues and natural beauty, Rawn said.
“Whether it’s singles, families or what we refer to as empty-nesters, there is a Fayetteville experience you can embrace,” she said.
Shayne Hart, chief executive officer of local design firm Blkboxlabs, said the inspiration for the new look and artistic direction came
from his Fayetteville experience. Hart grew up in a multigenerational farm family in Prairie Grove and would frequently visit the city as an artistic high school student.
“I thought that it was just this amazing, Bohemian enclave,” he said. “To defend myself, this would’ve been the ’80s.”
Hart’s career took him all over the United States and after about 25 years he returned to the city. Everything stayed the same and everything changed, he said.
“Fayetteville became this even greater version of itself,” Hart said. “Yes, it’s still unusual. Yes, it’s still an odd, unexpected mix of things. And yet, it has
evolved while maintaining that ability. I think that’s a unique opportunity for us to look at.”
The Advertising and Promotion Commission, the governing body of Experience Fayetteville, hired Blkboxlabs for $37,500 to handle the branding effort. Half of the city’s 2 percent hotel, motel and restaurant sales tax goes to tourism efforts. The tax generated $3.3 million for tourism last year, compared to just more than $2.5 million in 2012, according to Experience Fayetteville’s figures. The other half of the tax goes to city parks.
The branding effort also entails a website design and ad campaign. Experience Fayetteville for several years has had an annual contract for its advertising and website design with Sells Agency and its digital arm Pixel Perfect.
Ching Mong, a member of the Advertising and Promotion Commission, said the brand matches the city’s professional yet funky style.
“If you look at the design — the fact that it’s very uniform but it also looks like it’s hand-drawn — it’s very artisanal looking,” he said. “That’s what I find attractive. It reflects our community.”