Osceola tech center plans new branding
A 109,000-square-foot sensorresearch plant being coming up in the Kissimmee area intends to head off some confusion about its name.
Leaders at the facility, referred to alternately as the International Consortium of Advanced Manufacturing Research and the Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, will unveil a new moniker Tuesday.
Grant applications could face additional obstacles by the word “international,” CEO Chester Kennedy said in an email.
“We are challenged by the incorrect assumption that money invested here would somehow be financially supporting technology development at some ‘international’ venue versus building the U.S. tech base,” he said this week.
The $71 million Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, or FAMRC, near Kissimmee is set to open at the end of March and has been considered one of the most-ambitious construction projects in recent Central Florida history.
The building will host research projects from industries, universities and other entities, with initial work focusing on high-tech sensors, like those in smart technology and other Internet of Things-based products.
Already, it has landed Harris Corporation as a partner. The defense giant has been researching a road map that could eventually lead to smaller and lighter sensors.
The move to simplify the facility’s name should help as its opening date approaches, Rollins College marketing professor Mark Johnston said.
“The brand is so important in the world we live in today because people connect brands with an overall view,” he said. “Or they connect a lot of information about a product or organization through the brand and the symbol of that brand.”
Right now, it’s unclear what the brand actually is.
While the building itself has FAMRC on it, ICAMR is the entity that operates within the building.
But the name change will bring those two names together under one, new, presumably simpler name.
“You usually wouldn’t normally think of an organization like this needing a strong brand,” Johnston said. “But this one is dealing with technology that is cutting edge and represents the future of many products.”
Linguistics also contributed to the decision to change the consortium’s name.
The move comes “after watching everyone struggle with trying to make the acronym ICAMR into a word and hearing every imaginable mispronunciation of the name,” Kennedy said.
Complicating matters is a move by some to refer to the site as “The Farm,” recognizing the farming traditions that have been established previously on the facility’s construction site.
“It’s time we eliminate any confusion around the high-tech campus that we are creating in Osceola County,” Kennedy said. “It is important to rename and begin to build a new brand for the master site.”