Firm would provide new logo, marketing and media plan

North Star Destination Strategies, a branding and marketing company, is proposed to develop materials for a new advertising campaign, Lakeway City Manager Steve Jones said. The selection was made at the Lakeway Visitors Commission's July 8 meeting. Lakeway Visitors Commission Chairwoman Sandy Cox said the decision came after members spent hours of research to narrow down a list of 23 applicants for the project.

"We'll have a new logo, a new marketing and media plan to help people understand more about Lakeway," said Steve Zbranek, chairman of the Lake Travis Chamber of Commerce board of trustees, at the July 17 Lake Travis Economic Forecast Update.

The Nashville-based company specializes in creating custom marketing programs, or brands, for municipalities and visitors commissions. According to North Star's website, branding is used to change, refine or improve what people are saying about a community.

"We have a little saying: 'Your brand is what they say about you when you're not around,'" said Don McEachern, president and CEO of North Star. "The [campaign] is designed to have a little narrative about Lakeway, for people to be intrigued to look a little further at what Lakeway has to offer."

Jones said that about half of the LVC's budget, which comes from the city's hotel occupancy tax, is geared toward bringing tourism to the city and business to its hotels.

"We don't have a brand as a city," Jones said. "We're trying to standardize that message. North Star will help us identify who we are and what we have to sell."

Per its website, North Star has provided branding campaigns for other Texas cities, such as Denison.

Funded wholly by Lakeway's hotel occupancy tax, North Star's $70,000 contract with the city may be approved by Lakeway City Council at its Aug. 19 meeting and will then take about six months to complete, Jones said.

"Hopefully [the brand] will be something we can be proud of," Jones said. "We're already proud, but it will be packaged up in pretty pictures and nice words that we can present to the tourism industry."

Lakeway's decision to hire a branding company for marketing purposes follows its May 10 announcement that developer Stratus Properties will be heading up a project to create a town center in the city.