Minneapolis is City by Nature: New brand position, logo and tagline
Meet Minneapolis, Official Convention + Visitors Association, announced the strategy and repositioning of Minneapolis as a destination for leisure travel and convention business with a new brand, including the reveal of the new logo. The "City by Nature" tagline and "reflections" logo were introduced as the visible marks of the brand position, "Metropolitan by Nature," that the organization will use to market and sell Minneapolis.

This repositioning of Minneapolis as a destination equates to a hospitality job growth strategy. Real people in real jobs work every day to create a visitor experience in Minneapolis for the 18 million visitors who come to the area each year and spend $6 billion annually. The industry supports 27,700 leisure and hospitality jobs in Minneapolis alone that translate into $1 billion in payroll.

"We want to educate the local audience regarding the importance of hospitality within our community," said Melvin Tennant, president and CEO of Meet Minneapolis. "By providing information on economic impact and jobs created by the leisure travelers, conventions and convention delegates that visit Minneapolis, we hope to highlight the reason behind the repositioning work we presented today."

Strategy and process

This strategy is behind Meet Minneapolis' goal to increase the number of domestic and international return visitors to Minneapolis by 300,000; doing so has the potential of creating 500 additional hospitality jobs in the city. The brand campaign will help Meet Minneapolis reach the audiences who are likely to visit the city, increase familiarity with that audience and give consistency to the messages used to market to that group.

The brand positioning process began with January 2011 ideation sessions involving a number of key constituents in the city and industry. The goal was to focus on the attributes Minneapolis has that stand out most in the minds of residents and visitors. Agency selection followed in the spring and Preston Kelly, a Minneapolis boutique agency, began work with Meet Minneapolis staff to develop and research positions.

Position statements were further researched and resulted in a strong position that rose to the top -- in a sample consumer group, the position statement and visual stimulus increased the intent to visit Minneapolis by 14.9 percent for meeting planners to 18.4 percent for leisure travelers to 29.2 percent for convention attendees. This demonstrated the power a new brand could have on increasing intent to visit on a larger scale for the three key audiences targeted by Meet Minneapolis.

ABOUT MEET MINNEAPOLIS

Meet Minneapolis is a private, not-for-profit, member-based association. It actively promotes and sells the Minneapolis area as a destination for conventions and meetings, works to maximize the visitor experience and markets the city as a desirable tourist destination to maximize the economic benefit of the greater Minneapolis area.

Online: www.minneapolis.org

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/meetminneapolis

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/meetminneapolis