The quest to rebrand Squamish is coming down to two words: Epic and Adventure.
Marketing consultant Roger Brooks unveiled the work done by his team and the District of Squamish’s Brand Development Committee to a group of approximately 70 people at the Ledge Café Friday (April 11).
While the work is not yet finalized, Brooks gave a preview of a proposed new logo for Squamish along with a tweak of the long-standing “Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada” to the “Adventure Capital of Canada.”
“Outdoor and recreation are the most overused words in the world,” he said, pointing out that Squamish already shows us at the top of the list when searching “Adventure Capital”.
“We’re not running away from what you’ve been working on all these years,” said Brooks. “All we did was change a few words.”
But before showing off the potential new look, Brooks spent much more time making the case for branding Squamish as an “epic destination”.
The goal, according to Brooks, is to reposition the community’s perception as a destination in its own right, both to attract visitors and promote economic development. It also needs to differentiate itself from Whistler and other outdoor recreation destinations.
“You do not own rock climbing,” Brooks said, citing Smith Rock and Skaha as examples of other places offering world-class experiences and noting the same goes for mountain biking, windsurfing and hiking. What Squamish has that others don’t, he suggested, is the combination of so many different activities in such close proximity, making it the best multi-sport destination in North America.
“Perhaps there is no place in North America that has all of these – and equally as epic – together within a five-minute drive,” said Brooks. “That’s your point of differentiation. And that makes you an epic destination.”
“You already own it; you just need to claim it.”
The other thing that makes Squamish unique is its young, highly educated population, which Brooks wants to see used in marketing the community to attract visitors, new residents and investment.
“The fastest-growing trend in tourism is ‘Arrive a visitor, leave a local’,” he said.
Brooks is advocating for Squamish to focus on attracting adventure seekers, especially from Washington State and Oregon, a combined market of 10 million people who would represent overnight visitors as opposed to day trippers.
Because the marketing budget is small, Brooks is suggesting a social media campaign to attract visitors from those markets around hashtags like #MySquamishAdventure or #EpicSquamishAdventure.
Brooks also previewed ads featuring local residents with their “playlist” of daily activities titled “My Squamish Adventure is…”
The next steps are the creation of an action plan to start putting the elements into place and the creation of a Brand Leadership Team to implement the plan, which Brooks wants to include wayfinding signs and trail maps for locals and residents to find trails and amenities, branding posters all over town, banners along the highway between the welcome to Squamish sign just north of Britannia Beach and the entrance, and improved signage leading to downtown.
Brooks teased the crowd with other potential ideas like renaming downtown Squamish as “The Landing”, but emphasized they were merely ideas, not plans. “Even our team [the Brand Development Committee] hasn’t seen a lot of this,” he said.
Brooks cautioned against paying too much attention to the logos and slogans – “They are not brands, they’re just marketing messages,” he said. “Brand IDs make up two per cent of a brand but get 98 per cent of the political attention locally.
“Do you buy Reeboks because you think the logo’s cool?”
He also warned the crowd against letting the process get stalled by inaction, the need to seek universal approval and negativity.
“Don’t fold to the CAVErs – you know what CAVErs are, right? Citizens Against Virtually Everything – and I bet there’s a few of them here,” he said to laughter.
