Here to Inspire
Recognizing a gap between perception and reality, Ottawa embarked on a city-wide branding initiative to elevate its reputation on both national and global scales.
In 2017, the City of Ottawa and Ottawa Tourism collaborated to develop a coordinated city brand strategy. Despite Ottawa being recognized as the top place to live by MoneySense in the same year, research revealed that its city brand was underperforming. For instance, in 2018, the World’s Best Cities Report ranked Ottawa 71st, a surprising position for a G7 capital. While individual brands may have excelled, the overall perception depicted a high-performing city with a lagging national and global reputation.
The partnership aimed to align Ottawa’s brand messages with the place's identity and its people. This involved creating cohesive messaging not only for tourism but also to unify external voices within the community, addressing residents, visitors, and business partners nationally and internationally. To bolster Ottawa’s reputation, it was crucial to develop a consistent and unified city brand that aligned the millions of stories generated each year with the authentic identity of the place and its people. The primary goal was not to develop a new city or corporate tagline but a city brand essence that would be foundational to all tourism and economic development partners, ensuring communication and messaging fundamentally mirrored the true uncovered essence of the place.
The first step in the process was defining Ottawa’s Place DNA by discovering the city’s core identity and unique attributes. From there, a city Brand Framework was established that defined Ottawa’s brand story, brand promise, and brand essence – "Canada in one city.” Core brand themes were identified, providing the foundation for all future Ottawa stories. Finally, a Brand Storybook was developed, laying out how collectively we can communicate Ottawa’s stories more consistently and compellingly to key audiences.
Anjan Krishnamurthy, Director of Talent Recruitment at Invest Ottawa, spoke to our team about how Invest Ottawa uses the Ottawa brand to attract talent from outside of the region. Krishnamurthy highlighted various collateral (e.g., photos, videos, banners, content packages, etc.) at international events and how the branding efforts of Ottawa Tourism make the case for why it’s a great place to live and work.
Upon completion of this work, Ottawa Tourism then took this DNA and refreshed the branding and messaging to align. One of the first campaigns out of the gate was “Here to Inspire,” a multi-platform campaign celebrating Ottawa’s culture and creativity. It features the city’s key differentiators, from museums to galleries, concert venues to festivals, targeting leisure travelers, tour groups, meeting and convention planners, as well as sports organizers.
The Destination Effect is a joint initiative by Destinations International and Tempest. To share your destination's success story, please email join@destinationeffect.com.
