HOTEDD Board of Directors, April 2011

HOTEDD Board of Directors, April 2011

What is the Heart of Texas Economic Development District?

HOTEDD delivers information, collaboration, coordination, and training among economic developers, communities, businesses, and individuals in our service area: Bosque, Falls, Freestone, Hill, Limestone, and McLennan Counties. The Honorable Justin Lewis chairs our Board; our President is Russell Devorsky.







Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Regional Brand for the Heart of Texas

Who are we?
Sounds like a silly question - navel-gazing, perhaps, and not much to do with the nuts and bolts of delivering economic development. It matters, though, because the six counties that make up the Heart of Texas don't have much that binds them together beyond the fact that someone at a desk somewhere arbitrarily put them together when the state was carving out regions for Councils of Governments.
In economic development, we know that we're selling communities. Lots of our work is done for us already in selling communities - for better or for worse - because each community already has a brand. Whether you're a member of that community, or the other town they play in football, or someone who just drives through, you have an idea of what that community is.
With our six-county region, there is not the same sense of identity. That's good in some ways - it means we have a relatively clean slate. We don't have to battle existing notions that may be different than we'd like. But selling a clean slate won't work in economic development, any more than it would work in a grocery store. Would you buy a box with no label, no ingredients?
Right now, the EDD is working on regional branding, as a first step to marketing the region. We're gathering information on the communities, what people think and feel about this area, and what images and taglines are out there. We're reviewing best practices from around the state and around the nation, to get a sense of what excellence looks like. The results of this work will be presented to the Marketing Committee on Thursday, and then the group will move forward toward development of images and language to communicate the brand to the world.
We'd love your input - and we'll keep you posted on what we discover!