Success stories improve city’s image, group says
When it comes to the image department, this city needs a ton of work, says Edmonton writer Todd Babiak. “The baseline here is terrible. We have a bad reputation.”
We are so lost, Babiak says, that when Oprah Winfrey recently came to town to give a speech, the U.S. cultural maven was presented with a gift of truck nuts, ornamental testicles that hang from the back of a truck and are a symbol of Southern U.S. redneck pride.
It was a joke gift, but Babiak says it’s also the kind of “dumb, confusing” gesture that demonstrates our need to better know and promote ourselves. “This is what we’ve not done a good job of.”
Babiak is one of the leaders of the “Make Something Edmonton” group, which now has a $2 million budget from the city to wage a campaign to spruce up Edmonton’s image.
It’s no small amount and I’m not convinced we can spend any sane figure on public relations that will succeed at making others think better of us. That said, it looks like the “Make Something” folks have hit on one essential and valuable truth when it comes to transforming our image: that we’ve got to make the effort, not count on outsiders to define us. For one thing, as a major recent study found, there’s a huge disparity between the love we have for our city and the disdain that outsiders feel for Edmonton.
The “Make Something” game plan isn’t to have some clever advertising guy from Los Angeles think up a new slogan and logo for Edmonton, Babiak says, mainly because that rarely works. For example, Calgary recently rebranded itself as “Calgary: Innovative Energy.” Regina went for: “Infinite Horizons.” Winnipeg? “The Best Place to Work, Live and Play.”
Such slogans are stale and overused, Babiak says. “We don’t say, ‘We’re the best place to live, work and play.’ We don’t say, ‘World-class.’ We don’t say ‘Gateway to the North,’ — all this stuff that people have no feeling for. ‘City of Champions,’ — no feeling for. There were six other Cities of Champions before Edmonton became one. It doesn’t work. It never has worked for us.”
Trendy buzz words such as “dynamic, innovative, creative, sustainable, and diverse” also don’t get at the heart of this or any other city, Babiak says.
What does resonate here, he says, is our numerous and unique local success stories, such companies as PCL, BioWare and Stantec growing from small to huge, or the local inventions of the Fringe Festival or the Edmonton Food Bank.
These successes were built on the notion that anyone can come here and get ahead. In Edmonton, you don’t have to be born somebody to become somebody. You can succeed through inventiveness and hard work. Entrepreneurialism is crucial, but so is a co-operative spirit.
This particular success story is our collective story, the Edmonton brand, Babiak says.
Edmonton businesses say our image problem must be addressed because sometimes it makes it difficult to convince qualified people to come here.
I ask Babiak if all this new effort will actually change what outsiders think of us.
“We’re hoping,” he says. “We know this will take a long time. We know this isn’t going to be a three month or three-year exercise.”
My take? While we do have an image problem, and navel gazing is certainly an interesting pursuit, this exercise is a small part of city building.
Do we really lose out on that many excellent workers? And why should we worry what anyone from Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal thinks about Edmonton, let alone someone from London or New York? No doubt, they think about Edmonton about as much as we think of smaller centres such as Lethbridge, Red Deer and Grande Prairie: hardly ever.
Our main focus shouldn’t be on our image problem but on our reality problem. We need to keep pushing ahead improving our downtown, making our gorgeous river valley more accessible to the mass of people, expanding our LRT rapidly, and figuring out a way to better thrive in winter.
Nonetheless, there’s value in the “Make Something” effort. The group is earning its keep by helping Edmonton business and civic leaders come up with the right narrative and the right framing to push us all to build a better city.
If you don’t have a strong sense of who you are and what you’re all about, it’s hard to move forward. “Make Something” is doing that work and doing it well.