Sonoma Valley’s got a brand new brand

A refreshed branding strategy from the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau gives a new look-and-feel to where we live.|

Sonoma may look the same, but something has changed.

Fifteen months after taking his job as executive director of the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, Jonny Westom is making his impact felt with a new logo, a new slogan, and a brand new brand for the Sonoma Valley.

With much fanfare, hoopla, and not a little rah-rah, Westom unveiled a new destination strategy last Thursday, Oct. 27, before about 240 people at the Sebastiani Theatre, most of them involved in Valley tourism and marketing in one way or another.

It concluded an intense, year-long effort that called upon four outside consultants, a revitalized board of directors, members of the City Council and a number of tourism professionals both inside and outside of the Valley.

So what's our brand? Sonoma is presented as embodying “the art of enjoying life,” with a new italic script logo (slightly retro, slightly now) reading “Experience Sonoma Valley California.”

“It was a philosophical shift for the organization to really embody the brand that makes Sonoma Valley a unique destination,” said Westom this week. He summarized it as “a year-round culinary message.”

For the past few years the SVVB has used a circular logo with a wine glass stain, and the phrase “Real Wine Country.” Those are being phased out, and the newly redesigned website at sonomavalley.com is replete with the new messaging.

“Vintage,” “charming” and “fun” are three keywords that came out of the strategy process that Westom initiated when he set about developing a brand strategy, a comprehensive communications approach to take the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau to the next level as a destination marketing organization.

According to Kenneth Fischang, president of Sonoma County Tourism, the process paid off. “I think Jonny and the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau board of directors did an outstanding job. They really picked a brand that fits in well with what we're trying to do with the entire county.”

Driving the branding effort was Duane Knapp though his agency BrandStrategy Inc. “He's really been our guide through this process,” said Westom. “He understands the brand science and the sense of community we're trying to project.” Knapp's previous clients include destinations such as Queensland, Little Rock, West Palm Beach and Anacortes, Washington, where he lives.

Knapp drilled down into what people expect when they visit Sonoma, what they find when they get here and what they remember and value about the experience. He interviewed “Guests” (previous or current visitors), “Frequent Travelers” (people who might be interested in a destination like Sonoma Valley) and “Influencers” (local businesses in tourism, customer service and elected officials).

“It really is about escaping,” summarized Knapp at the Oct. 27 meeting. He characterized Sonoma as an “exceptional destination,” and for those who are skeptical of the commercialization of their home town, Knapp noted, “Everyone who moved to the Sonoma Valley was a guest first.”

“I think a lot of people will be relieved to see this strategy is far broader than the wine part of Wine Country,” said Rachel Hundley, a Sonoma City Councilmember who was interviewed in the brand development process (and makes several appearances in the accompanying video promoting Sonoma Valley's new brand identity, which was created by Sonoma residents Allyson Wiley and Casey Beck).

Hundley emphasized that Sonomans needed to feel part of the new brand if they are to support it, saying, “if they were expecting the whole city to get behind the new message, it needed to be something our residents could believe in.”

Fischang agreed. “An important part of (destination marketing) is making sure that we achieve a balance between residents and visitors. The more successful the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau is, and our organization is, at bringing people here, the more we have to reach that happy balance for residents, too.”

Other results from the brand assessment process were to shift community and hospitality self-awareness from a “visitor” to “guest” mindset, an acceptance that there is no “off season” but “always in season,” and from promoting products (wine, olives, cheese) to lifestyle: the art of enjoying life.

One key stage of the branding process was a day-long seminar in July at Cornerstone, when Knapp assembled a number of sources for his brand development and they workshopped through the brand strategy.

Still, Hundley and others were not entirely satisfied with the process. “Instead of surveying past and prospective visitors to see what they wanted us to be as a destination, it makes more sense to me to survey our community to see how we define ourselves,” she said. “The concept of Sonoma's ‘energy' was referenced during the presentation, and that energy is something that comes from the community.”

Even if Sonoma Valley doesn't need (and perhaps can't handle) more tourists during the April to October high season, there's room to add visitation during what Westom called “the need periods,” the shoulder seasons or mid-week days. So while the new marketing program isn't making ad buys in magazines for that high season, the new brand marketing strategy is to promote Sonoma as a year-round destination built on its brand promise: as a place to enjoy a relaxed Wine Country lifestyle in a charming vintage escape.

New ads will begin showing up this month in magazines such as Sunset and the Air Alaska in-flight and several regional publications.

Along with BrandStrategy, other key partners included Misfit, a Sacramento-based creative agency that created the new logo and collateral; Simpleview, which created the new website at sonomavalley.com and its members' extranet for updating information on events, images, video and special deals; and JNS Next, a media agency that will help get the word out through media placement on the new brand strategy.

Westom told the Index-Tribune that the SVVB has invested $31,000 in the destination strategy project to date, spread over the last and current fiscal years.

The new brand and design elements came out of a separate creative design budget. “I would estimate that the new brand blueprint and design elements investment was $7,000,” said Westom.

The annual budget for the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau for 2016-17 is $1.53 million, and includes revenue from the City of Sonoma, the County of Sonoma, the Sonoma Tourism Improvement District (TID), the Economic Development Board, as well as revenue from membership and visitor center retail sales. Both the City and the County receive income from their respective TOTs, the Transient Occupancy Tax levied on lodging.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

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