JANUARY 18, 2018 // 7
NEW YEAR,
NEW BRAND
Chamber of Commerce
rolls out new branding
look for Cannon Beach
By BRENNA VISSER
COAST WEEKEND
W
ith a new year comes a new
message from the Cannon
Beach Chamber of Com-
merce, which is looking to launch a
new branding campaign for the town
early this year.
The new brand, which consists of
a new town logo and comprehensive
style guide, is all centered around
one tagline that will be featured in
various advertising spots, the visitor
guide, the email marketing program
and social media: “There is Magic
Here.”
“If you read through what people
are posting about Cannon Beach,
you’ll read the word ‘magic’ every-
where,” said Kevan Ridgway, chair
of the chamber’s marketing commit-
tee. “Cannon Beach is an escape from
reality. It’s what people feel here.”
The project is the first formal
attempt to create a cohesive brand
to attract visitors in the off-season.
Armed with recently secured tran-
sient lodging tax revenues previ-
ously not in the chamber’s coffers,
Ridgway said the committee could
now afford to deliver a consistent
and contemporary brand to attract
the next generation of Cannon Beach
tourists.
“It’s all about consistency. It used
to be in marketing that it took some-
one would have to interact with your
brand seven times before internal-
izing your call to action,” Ridgway
COURTESY CANNON BEACH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The logo showing the city’s new branding concept
said. Now research says it’s more like
a couple dozen or so times. “We need
to reach out to people in all the ways
we can with the same clear images
and words.”
The message
When Ridgway first came to
Cannon Beach, he said he saw lots
of posters up with no common theme
for Cannon Beach.
“We needed a brand evolution,”
Ridgway said.
Since last year, the chamber
worked with the company Red &
Co. to develop color palettes, a tone
of voice in ad writing, and photo
style guides. The goal is to attract a
demographic of affluent millennials,
Ridgway said.
“We are very dependent on the
baby boomer market, which is okay,
but we’re dying off. We have to ap-
peal to a younger market,” he said.
The changes to come will include
more photo ads featuring people
rather than landscape scenery, sharp-
er, modern text and, most notably, a
modern logo, said Gary Hayes, presi-
dent of Explorer Media Group.
“It’s personal, it’s authentic, it’s
fun and playful,” said Hayes. Some
of the first implementation will be
seen in Cannon Beach Magazine,
which his company produces. “We’re
not changing that we’re an art town,
or a premier beach destination. We’re
packaging it in a fresh and contempo-
rary way. I think people will notice,
but it’s not such a change where
they think, ‘This isn’t my Cannon
Beach.’”
The conflict
While the committee voted to ap-
prove it in December, members of the
Chamber board have expressed hesi-
tations about certain design elements
not fitting the feel of the town.
According to both Hayes and
Ridgway, Chamber board mem-
bers disagreed with the final design
elements of the logo. Others took
issue with colorful illustrations
of icons like Haystack Rock and
puffins that were proposed, which
bear a similarity to the aesthetic of
Seaside’s branding. Risley said she
wants more original art and photog-
raphy to be showcased to define the
town’s look.
“We don’t want to homogenize
ourselves. The draw of both places is
the fact we are so different. You can
go to one place and enjoy the other
next door,” said Risley, a Chamber
board member who did not vote to
approve the brand redesign.
While she did not agree with the
final version of the logo, Risley said
she thinks the branding overall is
“fresh and clever,” and that it is im-
portant for the community to support
the new look for it to succeed.
However, she still sees room for
improvement.
“People who are attracted to Can-
non Beach are very impressed with
how it is so natural and nature-ori-
ented and art-oriented, and I think
we need to make sure we continue to
project that,” Risley said. “The look
is fresh, which I appreciate, but we
need to maintain the feel we’ve been
able to project in the past.”
Hayes, who held similar reserva-
tions about the illustrations, said part
of implementing the new look will
be translating these differences of
opinion into the product.
“Whenever you embark on this
journey, you get a variety of opin-
ions. Our job is to translate that into
what works for our community,” he
said. “We are looking at phasing in
the branding immediately, one project
at a time.” CW