Branding announced for Bigfork

The consortium of Bigfork organizations gathered last week to announce the new branding for the Village — "Bigfork: Where Flathead Lake begins."

It took a few minutes to sink in for the crowd of business owners and community members at the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts on April 21.

"No other town in America can make that claim," said Clint Walker, who worked on the branding committee with the Bigfork Area Chamber of Commerce which has been striving to develop a marketing plan for Bigfork this year.

The chamber announced plans to work on a marketing strategy back in December and requested community members get involved in the committee. The plan has been to implement what the group can of a plan in 2010 to lay the foundation for that plan to become effective in 2011. A group of eight to 12 people has been meeting regularly since January to come up new slogan for the Village.

When this slogan came up, it was like a light bulb came on, said Bruce Solberg, executive director of the chamber.

The meeting to announce the branding brought many of Bigfork's organizations together to collaborate as "Team Bigfork," including the chamber, Community Foundation for a Better Bigfork, the Bigfork Tourist Promotion Assessment, the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts Foundation and Bigfork businesses.

Part of the push for a unified branding effort came from the fact that advertising for Bigfork has been inconsistent, which is a sure way to be ineffective, said Walker, who is also founder of Flathead Living and working on the marketing for the Saddlehorn development. In moving forward, the chamber will need to serve as the protector and curator of the Bigfork brand.

Previous taglines like "Far from the common place" are romantic, but don't pinpoint the town on a map, Solberg said. This phrase "where Flathead Lake begins' marks Bigfork as a jumping off point, Walker said. Instead of people starting in Whitefish or Glacier National Park and paying Bigfork a visit, it aims to have people start and stay in the Village.

This branding will be able to be incorporated in a variety of ways, particularly with the word "begins." For example, Christmas can "begin with Bigfork."

"Drive it and own it. You really have a unique opportunity to do that," Walker said. "A brand is not something you create, you build it. This one is a really natural fit."

The chamber board is scheduled to discuss the next steps at a meeting today, April 29. This will include how to gather input and vote on the potential logos for the community which Walker helped develop. These will likely also go out in a future chamber newsletter, Solberg said. The chamber plans to trademark the saying and focus all advertising in that direction.

"This is the starting point," Solberg said. "Whether it's successful or not depends on how everyone rallies to it."

CFBB is already in preliminary discussions with the Montana Department of Transportation on placing additional signage near Bigfork as part of this campaign, chair Paul Mutascio said.

TOURISM

A larger reason for pursuing efforts to more effectively market Bigfork has to do with competition throughout the Flathead Valley for tourists, Solberg said.

Kalispell has been looking at establishing a Tourism Business Improvement District, which would allow the city to raise money for its own marketing and promotion. It would raise the total lodging tax to just under 10 percent. A 7 percent state sales tax and tourism tax already exist on lodging.

Whitefish began its own assessment program, similar to what Bigfork is attempting with the BTPA, to raise money to market its city. That program has already brought in several hundred thousand dollars to promote the city. Bigfork's program is just getting started, but in its trial-run in 2009 brought in $5,000.

On top of that, the future of the Flathead Convention Business Bureau which had been one of the driving forces for promoting the Valley as a whole has been under question. Kalispell usually contributes its bed tax money to the bureau but will no longer be doing so. An effort is being made to keep the bureau alive to promote more rural areas of the Valley.

Read more in next week's Bigfork Eagle.