Ask Truckee residents what makes the town a great place to live and work, and the answers are diverse. Sense of community. Ski resorts. Safety. Natural environment. Entrepreneurial spirit. Now take those varied sentiments and incorporate them into a single marketing vision. This is exactly what the Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce is seeking to accomplish with its place-based marketing initiative. As could be expected with such a monumental task, the process is not proving to be easy. The project has already received criticism from the public that it is off-base, but the chamber maintains the intiative is needed.
“The goal is to develop a clear and consistent message that expresses the unique assets and personality of Truckee,” said Lynn Saunders, the chamber’s president and CEO. “This message will serve as the foundation for all marketing tools, providing one authentic, unified story.”
The chamber says the end goal is to develop a website geared toward visitors, locals, and businesses. They want to send a uniform message of what makes Truckee unique and different, but first they have to figure out what that is.
“We are looking for a common thread,” said Colleen Dalton, the chamber’s new marketing and communications director, as well as the project manager for the place-based marketing initiative. “Our mission is to distill the unique characteristics of Truckee … Truckee has a soul. It’s totally different than any other town.”
Saunders said this initiative is needed because marketing communications surrounding Truckee is “disparate, conflicting, and decentralized.” The idea is if all the information about living, working, and playing in Truckee is in one place then individuals can choose Truckee as a home, business location, or vacation destination. But, without a logo, tagline, or consistent messaging that describes what Truckee is about, that is difficult to do.
“We don’t have anything that represents Truckee,” Saunders said.
PROJECT HISTORY
This project has been five years in the making, going through various versions and names, but was rooted in diversifying Truckee’s economy. Coming out of one of the greatest recessions of our time, the Town of Truckee named economic development a priority and began a journey to reinvent itself economically.
In 2010, Truckee Tomorrow was born as a collaborative economic development initiative led by the Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the Town of Truckee, the Truckee Downtown Merchants Association, and Nevada County. The goal was simple: to create economic prosperity.
“Recruitment and retention was a huge theme,” Saunders said.
The priorities identified by Truckee Tomorrow’s original 37 members were improving Downtown Truckee and creating a more appealing atmosphere, enhancing Truckee’s marketing, business retention and recruitment with a focus on second homeowners, and transportation. One idea was to develop a Truckee brand and “build a long-term business and marketing strategy around it,” according to a 2011 Truckee Tomorrow brochure.
In Feb. 2013, the group was presented with four strategies to enhance economic prosperity: Fund a place-based marketing campaign, start a local community/economic development corporation, fund an economic development/business liaison position, or pursue partnerships to develop new visitor draw opportunities. According to Saunders, funding a place-based marketing campaign won, hands-down.
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The Truckee Town Council awarded the chamber $75,000 in Jan. 2014 for the initiative through its Economic Development Support program, with the caveat that the chamber would provide matching funds. Saunders said more than $90,000 has been raised to date. According to Saunders, the $165,000 will be used to rebuild the truckee.com website and maintain it for three years.
The project officially began in Feb. 2015 when the San Francisco-based Keith Design Group was hired to oversee the endeavor. They began gathering information by developing a community survey and holding public workshops this summer to get input from the public. The goal is to capture what locals believe is the soul of Truckee. With two workshops under their belt, and a second survey taking place, the chamber says they are learning this is not an easy process.
After the first public workshop Aug. 4 at the Truckee Town Hall, “some people were concerned,” Dalton said. “Our takeaway from the first workshop was that people thought we were pushing a campaign … Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot.”
IMMEDIATE PUSHBACK
That first workshop, which many people felt came out of nowhere, included a slide by the chamber that mentioned recruitment. Audience members were asked to provide input on what Truckee needs to improve its economy, what does Truckee need to make it a better community, and what will make Truckee a better place to live. That initiated discussion on Truckee’s issues, including the lack of affordable housing, the need to diversify the economy, and specific concerns of individuals.
The public was also encouraged to give feedback on the process, and there were immediate questions on why certain groups were left out of the discussion and what the point of the initiative was.
“It happened quickly,” said Truckee resident Michelle Gartner, who has a background in marketing and was involved with the town’s vision workshop in April 2014. “The concern with the branding is that they aren’t going to sustain it … I’m afraid there is going to be a brand and no follow through.”
Another criticism of the project is that it was originally marketed as a branding initiative to brand and market Truckee, but the word brand was quickly dropped after that first workshop. The project was originally called a “placed-based marketing and branding initiative.” The chamber even called it a branding project in press releases and public posters, but is now quick to distance itself from the title.
Truckee Town Manager Tony Lashbrook said there was a perception that branding the town meant there was a focus on growth and that there was a level of exclusivity to the project. Lashbrook, Saunders, Dalton, and all those involved with the initiative reject those labels.
“We are not doing recruitment,” Saunders said. “It is a tool that helps other people who are recruiting. It’s not a big marketing campaign.”
Both Saunders and Dalton say the chamber will not actively recruit people to live and work in Truckee, but that it will be a “passive” website that could help local businesses with their recruiting.
“It does help somebody to recruit and move here,” Saunders said. “People are going to move out, and we want to make sure people continue to move in and keep our community.”
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Dalton contends the chamber “didn’t do a good job on communicating with the community” about what the project is. While past materials on the project note a number of outcomes, including a “brand name, logo and tagline; brand language and voice; accompanying brand design elements; brand website; and content creation/inbound marketing,” when pushed, Dalton said “We’re just redesigning a website.”
IS IT ABOUT THE ECONOMY?
Although Saunders and Dalton reject the idea that the project is about recruitment, the idea was born from a group dedicated to economic prosperity and diversity with a goal of soliciting business. When the chamber received the $75,000 grant from the town, the staff report said the place-based marketing and branding effort would “focus on attracting talent and business investment to Truckee to augment the current tourist/visitor-based marketing that is funded by the town.”
The Town of Truckee allocates an estimated $320,000 annually to the Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce to run the California Visitor Center and for visitor marketing. And with a current 50/50 mix of locals and visitors that make up Truckee, Lashbrook says there is a risk of losing permanent residents. The town currently has a local population of 16,021, which balloons to more than 45,000 during the peak summer and winter tourism seasons, hence the need for year-round local recruitment.
“This effort is well rooted in town policy,” Lashbrook said, pointing to the town’s Economic Development Element of the 2025 General Plan. That document points to the need to partner with the chamber to help market and recruit.
“While local employment conditions and the economic vitality of the downtown has shown improvement since the town prepared the Economic Development Strategic Plan in 2001, Truckee continues to face economic challenges,” the Economic Development Element document states. “These challenges stem in large part from the character of the local economy, which is dominated by the retail and service sectors and by seasonal recreation-based tourism.”
The town has established that part of the solution is to attract a variety of business in various sectors, including light industrial development, healthcare, and “new economy,” which includes high-tech, computer, and information-based enterprises. “The type of employment reflects a growing sector in the California economy, offering ‘clean,’ high-wage, and skilled employment opportunities,” according to the document.
As of 2012, the majority of employment came from the accommodation and food service industry, at 19 percent. The construction industry was second with 12 percent, and the retail sector third at 11.7 percent.
“It’s a long established town policy that the future economy needs to change from construction-centered to another [industry],” Lashbrook said.
However, there is concern that seeking that type of industry will change what Truckee is currently all about. If the high tech industry seeps its way into Truckee, then housing prices could go up even more, leaving little room for the current ski bums and baristas that make this town tick. San Francisco is currently dealing with the ramifications of when it attracted the high tech industry, which forced out the artistic and creative types.
“I love Truckee. It used to be a community where people came up and could make it work,” Gartner said. “It’s not that way anymore. I love this community, but it’s become unaffordable. It’s changing so quickly. It’s losing its appeal for the ski bums and alternative lifestyle.”
Chaun Owens-Mortier, president of the Truckee Donner Historical Society, questioned why a marketing initiative needs to be completed for the town.
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“We already have what attracts people here,” she said. “Why do we have to rename what we have?”
Cabona’s owner Stefanie Olivieri, whose family helped build Truckee, points to Truckee’s steady growth over the past 10 years and also questioned the initiative. According to a demographic and economic profile completed in 2012 for the chamber, “over the past 10 years, the town’s population grew by nearly 16 percent, a significantly higher rate of growth than Nevada County and statewide averages of roughly 6 percent and 9 percent, respectively.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
As the chamber moves forward with its placed-based marketing initiative, it is up to the people of Truckee to figure out what its identity is. After surveying the community, the next step will be to see how local businesses are already marketing the town and how the outside world views Truckee. Dalton hopes to have the gathering of information completed by the end of the year.
While early in the process, Dalton said there already seems to be some common themes emerging from the workshops and surveys. Locals like the friendliness, community spirit, and people of Truckee. “We are here to support each other,” Dalton said.
Dalton said that while they are still in the first phase of the project, she hopes the website will be up and running by next year. The chamber is also scheduled to give an update to the town on the program by the end of the year.
And as the community tries to figure out where it fits in society, Dalton and Saunders want to remind everyone that this entire initiative is just about marketing a place.
“This is new territory for us,” Saunders said. “We are learning how to market a place in these times.”
The next place-based marketing community workshop will take place Sept. 16, 6 to 7:30 p.m., Glenshire Clubhouse, 15726 Glenshire Dr., Truckee. For info, or to take the second community survey, visit truckeechamber.com. To share ideas and opinions, visit feedback@truckee.com.
