BusinessTN

"Mesquite. Real. Texas. Flavor." Such was the tagline implemented for the small Texas community by Nashville-based North Star Destination Strategies, a brand marketing agency founded in 2000 by ad agency veterans Don McEachern and David Bohan. "They discovered things about our community that we had either overlooked for years or had never capitalized on," says Tom Palmer, manager of economic development for the city of Mesquite. "The end product was genius."

Communities, towns and cities are not unlike companies and products; by nature, they can be conceptually branded, focused, guided and sold to the public—with effective streaks of creative insight. In 1999, McEachern identified the need for a company devoted specifically to bringing out the best in small-to-mid sized communities.

"The idea originated from my desire to bring—as a consulting model—the marketing and branding tools used successfully by private sector markets to the public sector," says McEachern, who has more than 20 years of ad agency work under his belt leading creative teams in developing top-tier brands like Hawaiian Tropic, Trump Plaza and Panasonic. "The typical agency model won't work for communities because there isn't a single large advertiser that has the entire community's interest at heart."

What's in the interests of most communities these days is attracting a younger demographic of workers, the so-called "creative class," in order to compete and prosper. In recent years, many communities have launched strategies designed to capture such knowledge workers—from artists to architects to programmers—aimed at ensuring they don't fall behind in a future economy.

Assisting in guiding a community "from good to great" is at the heart of North Star's strategy. "Every community has something really good about it," McEachern says. The most effective implementations occur when the city uses its brand "to package what the community already has, and as a beacon for new development."

At present, North Star employs 10 full-time employees in three offices (Nashville, Denver and Largo, Fla.), and they have ongoing relationships with another 12-15 contract employees. With an expanding clientele of more than 80 communities, stretching from Yarmouth, Maine, and Beaumont, Texas, to larger cities like Providence, R.I., and Mobile, Ala.—and the burgeoning desire of American cities to assert their individuality—North Star appears poised for fruitful growth.