Moses Lake talks tourism branding

Developer encouraging concepts, hopes to bring ideas by Labor Day

MOSES LAKE — The Desert Oasis. Home of the Great Blue Heron. Moses Lake has used those phrases to help market the city in the past, but Roger Brooks wants to help the city create a new brand that will stick out to its visitors.

The CEO of Olympia-based Destination Development told a gathered crowd of business and community leaders Friday that whatever brand that's chosen for Moses Lake, it has to be obvious.

"We want to make it a spectacle," said Brooks, who led a workshop on branding Moses Lake Friday morning at the Museum and Art Center.

That's why Brooks said visiting customers, and not locals, will ultimately decide the brand that best labels Moses Lake. He is, however, encouraging people to submit their ideas for that brand. Brooks is helping design the brand as part of a contract with the city to create a three- to five-year marketing plan to lure tourists and development to the city.

"A brand is not what you say you are, it's what people think of you," Brooks told the crowd.

Over the next month, Brooks and Destination Development will be taking branding ideas, and looking at branding concepts for Moses Lake. The team has already begun to toss around brand ideas, and hopes to have four good brand concepts for the city by the end of August.

He gave the group a taste of a few early themes Friday that his team has been discussing; he mentioned team sports, competitive sports and 1950s retro themes as a few of those ideas for the city and downtown.

If the city did a competitive sports theme, for example, his team has toyed with the idea of bringing in SeaDoo and water ski courses to the lake. Other ideas Destination Development is looking at include bringing together the lake and the sand dunes, marketing the city's central placement as a conference location, or looking at highlighting music and entertainment.

"We have to make it obvious," Brooks said. "So when people drive off the highway it's obvious to them."

The brand should look to build recognition of Moses Lake as a destination, but he said it should build on the available attributes the city already has.

The brand also has to be lasting for visitors. Brooks cited the advertised "Blue Herons," or "Desert Oasis," themes as slogans that petered out quickly once visitors came into town off the highway. Any brand the city uses has to be intertwined with the community, he said.

"You know where the oases are?" Brooks asked. "They're your parks, but people don't see those."

Brooks gave kudos to the city for its park and amphitheater as the city's greatest asset, and told workshop attendees he would try to find a way to connect them in his team's plan.

But while the parks were hailed as positive parts of the city, the temporary banners hung on just about every establishment in town were not. He encouraged the city to restrict the temporary canvas and plastic signs to two weeks only, and during special events.

Brooks also praised the city's efforts for revamping one and a half blocks of Third Avenue downtown, calling it a demonstration project. But he said the street work being done by the city won't bring people downtown unless business owners take the lead to improve appearances and draw people into their stores.

"From what the locals say, do you know what the biggest destination in Moses Lake and Grant County?" Brooks asked. "Wal-Mart."

He said locals need to come downtown for it to be successful, and that means having destination retail stores, food establishments, and downtown businesses open after 5 p.m. If merchants make their downtown a place where people will want to go, then they will find their stores will see more sales.

"If you can get locals to hang out downtown, then visitors will too," Brooks said. "If you can't get locals to hang out downtown than visitors won't either."

The successful brand has to be different and specific, Brooks said, and maybe a little crazy. And while the final decision may not be embraced by everyone, it needs to be validated by groups in the community. The brand also has to be continually cultivated by the city and business leaders.

"You've got the diversions," Brooks said. "You don't have the lure, and that's what we're going to help you with."

Moses Lake Business Association President Vern Hellewell said Friday's presentation gives businesses more information to work with.

"It opens your mind to all the possibilities," Hellewell said. "It's going to take creative thinking to make this work."

Brooks wants people to e-mail their own branding ideas to Destination Development at theteam@destinationdevelopment.com.