City Council Approves New Marketing Strategey

Temple Terrace is at the start of a new marketing strategy to brand the city and attract residents and businesses to the area.

The City Council approved a marketing proposal at their meeting Tuesday evening after a presentation from Mike Dunn, the city’s public information officer, who has been working on the plan for several months.

The city will partner with Martin Communications and Lancaster Design, both based in Temple Terrace, to create a Temple Terrace brand, logo, tagline and business image. It will also contract with CivicPlus, a St. Louis-based company, to create an interactive website, and Full Throttle Intermedia in Tampa to create a commercial-quality video that showcases and promotes the city and its economic environment.

There will also eventually be an optimized mobile version of the website available for use on smartphones, iPads or other portable devices along with a customer service app that would allow residents to report potholes, billing complaints, streetlight outages, and other concerns. Functionality with social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, will also be available so that updates to the website could be pushed immediately to these outlets as they happen.

Additionally, an LED sign might be placed in front of that could be used to display information about city events and meetings to residents.

Margie Martin, of Martin Communications, and Tim Lancaster, of Lancaster Design, told the council about the brand development process.

“We need to be able to complete this sentence: Our city is the only blank that blanks. And whatever those blanks are, that’s what we need to get at to be able to turn around and create a brand for this community,” Martin said. “It’s really that simple.”

The first steps will be to interview community leaders and talk to others in surrounding cities to get more insight into what others think Temple Terrace is, Martin said. Brand developers will also talk to people and businesses that looked at Temple Terrace as an option when moving, but chose to move elsewhere.

Temple Terrace resident John Nertney spoke in favor of marketing the city. He said attracting new residents to the city would help maintain property values and the economic base to sustain it. He also pointed out that Temple Terrace marketed itself in the 1920s, and again after World War II, and people came to the city as a result.

“It’s not a new concept for Temple Terrace,” he said.

Each council member agreed that branding the city is necessary.

Councilmember Alison Fernandez said her family moved to the city in the 1970s and it was a wonderful place for her to grow up. Now that she has her own children, she said she knows that Temple Terrace is a great place to raise a family.

“What I have learned over the years is that we’re the best kept secret in the area,” she said.