What Prince William County can learn from the Richmond region on how it launched its successful RVA brand identity

Prince William County is working to come create its new brand identity. Road signs, vehicles, and water towers will feature the new brand ordered by the Board of Supervisors.

Ninety miles south of the county in Richmond,  you’ll find a great example of not only how a successful regional brand ID was launched but also how it was adopted by the business owners and residents of the community.

Creative minds in the Richmond region came together to create the familiar RVA branding that appears on bumper stickers seen on cars traveling up and down Interstate 95.

It was developed about 10 years ago; a collaboration between some of that region’s most creative minds from more than four marketing firms, as well as business leaders, and professors and students at Virginia Commonwealth University.

R-V-A, those three little letters have now been adopted by more than 1,200 businesses that used those letters when registering their business name with the State Corporation Commission. Everything from doctors offices, nail salons, to landscaping.

It has also been adopted by local leaders in jurisdictions around Richmond, like Hanover, Henrico, and Chesterfield counties.

It’s a far cry from the creative process used in recent years when we saw Manassas and now Prince William County re-work their municipal mark on to put everything from street signs, trucks, and water towers. Here, the process has been insular and developed inside government offices with little or no collaboration with industry.

“The richness of the results is because of the process,” said Lucy Meade, director of marketing at Venture Richmond, the city’s downtown development firm.

Municipal branding doesn’t work as a community brand

For Meade, the process began by knocking on the door of the Martin Agency, the creative minds behind the Geico insurance commercials, and Virginia Is For Lovers campaign. The firm, also located in Downtown Richmond, identified that the city was a creative Mecca for people who like to make things.

Industries in the town like West Rock, which makes innovative packaging materials for the foodservice and healthcare industries, reinforced the idea. So, Meade turned to the Brand Center at VCU and asked them for help to come up with a brand that fit the creative idea.

“They told me municipal branding doesn’t work and didn’t want any part of it,” said Meade.

In the past, it didn’t work because the branding is attached to a municipal government, representing government entities, with copyright restrictions on who can and can’t use the design.

Then it was decided to remove those parameters and come up with something an identity that is regional but is also open source — not copyrighted and open for all to use.

VCU loved the idea and put together teams of students who came up with what the branding should be.

“They all came back and said ‘you are RVA,” said Meade.

And, why not? There was an RVA Magazine, an RVANews website. It’s a popular social media hashtag, and it’s what many who lived in the were already calling the city, simply “RVA.”

Working together as a region

It became a community brand and was placed on everything from trash trucks and police cars to t-shirts. A recent study found that businesses well outside the city in places like Brandermill in Chesterfield County and in Short Pump in Henrico County also use the RVA brand on a regular basis.

That’s partly because jurisdictions in the Richmond region work together on economic development.

“When members of the Greater Richmond Partnership travel aboard to bring business to the region, no matter what jurisdiction they’re from — Henrico, Chesterfield, Richmond– they’re all wearing RVA-USA on their shirts,” said Meade.

Prince Willam moves head with new brand identity

On March 13, Prince William County Communications Director Jason Grant told the County Board of Supervisors that of the 356 people who responded to an online survey about his proposed design for a new county brand, 65 percent of respondents like it.

The brand is simple — Prince Willam County, Virginia in a uniformed font and the county seal to the left. There are those who said they want more of a stylized or ornate design, and there are some who want or don’t want “county” used in the new logo. Some, he pointed out, would rather have it say, Prince William, Virginia to end any possible confusion with Prince Georges County, Md. to the north.

“This is why we don’t do designs by committee because you’re going to get things both ways,” said Grant.

In the end, the Board left it up to Grant to come up with the next county brand and logo. It didn’t dictate what colors to use on the new signs that would feature the new logo or did it say what on what materials the signs should be printed.

At this point, there’s not even a cost estimate or budget for the new branding campaign, although Grant told the Board he is looking to implement something for as little cost as possible.

After Board directed Grant to come up with a uniform brand strategy for the county, they asked if the new logo would be painted on the county’s water towers. He told them the cost to do so would range between $15,000 and $25,000 per water tower, depending upon whether or not a full-color paint scheme was used on the side of the towers.

The new logos would be painted on the sides of the towers when it comes time to rehabilitate them. Next in line for rehab are tanks in Gainesville and the tank outside the county government center.