5 Questions (and Answers!) That Can Shape Your Community Branding
Community branding is about so much more than logos, taglines and shiny new websites. For chambers and community leaders like you, it’s a core piece of how your destination competes for businesses, talent, visitors and long-term growth.
At the same time, expectations are higher than ever before. People want proof instead of platitudes, substance instead of spin. That’s why we keep coming back to a few major pain points about building stronger, smarter brands.
Below, we’re answering 5 key questions we hear again and again from communities trying to do this work well. Ready to get started?
1. How do people really view your community, and how do you find out?
You understand your community frontwards and backwards, left and right, up and down. You know its history, its strengths, the stories it’s told itself for years, because you live them every day. But the people you’re trying to reach? Those business owners, the site selectors, remote workers, and visitors? They’re already forming opinions based on what they think they know, not what you intend to communicate.
That’s where the perception gap rears its ugly head. The good news: research tools like perception studies, stakeholder interviews and market analysis can help determine exactly how your community is being perceived by the outside world. Sometimes you’ll find that the story is landing; other times you’ll discover that it’s getting lost, or not being told at all. Once you see that gap more clearly, everything else gets a lot easier.
When we developed the strategic plan for Travel North Tahoe Nevada, we relied heavily on extensive stakeholder input, interviews and research to help clarify how the destination is actually being perceived. That process surfaced shared values, real concerns and untapped opportunities, allowing the brand to move forward with a clearer, more credible foundation.
2. What evidence shows your community as a smart place to live, work, play, visit and invest?
We don’t have to tell you that there’s fierce competition to attract businesses, talent and visitors. Most communities are offering some variation of the same promises, including and especially opportunity, quality of life and affordability. So the question becomes: why your community?
2026 decision makers require proof. They want to see the data, the nitty gritty “show your work” kind of thought processes that led your branding to where it is today. Showing data like workforce demographics, industry stats, education access, cost of living and other lifestyle indicators can be the difference between being considered, and being chosen.
At TAA, we often turn to tools like GWI to go beyond surface-level data and build real audience profiles based on behaviors, attitudes and motivations (instead of solely demographic information). This kind of insight allows us to translate raw data into true strategy, moving from generic messaging to tailored stories that influence how and why people choose one community over another.
3. How do you make your community visible in this new era of AI search?
You may have heard of a little thing called AI, which is absolutely changing the search game for destinations like yours. Instead of typing in a few keywords to a search engine like Google, people today are asking full, nuanced questions through tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which in turn generate answers based on information they can find, understand and trust.
For example: instead of searching something like “best places to start a business in [state]” in ye olde search engine, someone would instead open up ChatGPT and say, “show me mid-sized communities with strong tech talent pipelines and affordability.”
To show up in this new discovery landscape, your community needs more than surface-level marketing copy. AI overwhelmingly favors a well-organized, authoritative ecosystem of storytelling; that means having a cohesive narrative across your website, economic development materials and digital channels. Never underestimate the combined power of real proof points, plain language and consistent themes.
We recently developed a custom AI-powered chatbot for Visit Murrieta that helps answer common questions about the destination. As more folks turn to AI-driven search for answers instead of scrolling through pages and pages of content, tools like this help ensure destinations like Murrieta show up with clear, on-brand responses in those key moments of discovery.
4. How can economic development and destination marketing work together?
If you’ve been living in a world where economic development and destination marketing are two separate endeavors, we kindly, gently ask you to reconsider. Think about it: the qualities that make someone want to visit a place are often the very same qualities that make someone want to invest in it, build a business there or even stick around long-term.
We’ve seen this firsthand through our work on the “Utah Forever” Stewardship Messaging Framework for the Utah Office of Tourism, which was carefully crafted to align visitors, locals, partners and policy makers around a shared sense of responsibility for the state. Rather than treating stewardship as a tourism-only message, the framework directly connects responsible visitation to things like community well-being, economic vitality and long-term quality of life for everyone.
When economic development and destination marketing work together, one cohesive, proven story can often serve multiple goals. Tourism campaigns double as talent attraction, community storytelling becomes business recruitment. And as a bonus? Instead of competing messages, your community presents itself as a unified front, a single beating heart with a clear, compelling identity.
This idea, that strong destination marketing shapes perceptions of a place beyond tourism alone, is lovingly referred to as “the halo effect.” In her Forbes article, our fearless leader Abbi Whitaker breaks down how travel marketing can quietly and meaningfully support business attraction, talent recruitment and long-term economic growth. Give it a read if you’d like to learn more!
5. What does an integrated branding approach look like, and where do you start?
An integrated branding approach means connecting all the little nuanced dots of your efforts. Research informs strategy, which shapes messaging, which then shows up consistently without missing a beat. From economic development materials to partner toolkits, campaigns to day-to-day communications, everything tells the same story. Instead of a collection of well-intentioned efforts pulling in different directions, an integrated approach gives you and your team a clear throughline.
Like most worthwhile things, this process begins by stepping back and taking stock. Ask yourself: what’s working? What feels outdated or behind? Where are messaging overlapping and/or contradicting each other?
From there, partnering with an agency that understands both economic development and destination marketing can make all the difference. And that’s where we come in. Here at The Abbi Agency, we help communities build integrated brand systems that are thoughtful, supportive and designed for long-term growth.
We saw the power of integrated marketing through our recent Colors of Camarillo video series for Visit Camarillo; this collaborative storytelling project was built from the ground up as an integrated effort, bringing together the powers of strategy, creative, content, videography, social and PR to create something truly magical. Rather than treating each channel as a standalone tactic, everything worked together to reinforce a shared narrative, allowing real community stories to travel farther and land more meaningfully at every touchpoint.
Taken altogether, these 5 simple questions offer a direct way to take stock of how your community shows up and competes in the wider world. Ready to move from insight to impact? Partner with a team that understands every side of the integrated equation, from strategy to execution.
