A group of city and county leaders got together this week to hear a South Carolina company explain how it is going to spend three days talking to citizens and then present us with a plan to "rebrand" Hinds County.
This effort comes on the heel of weeks of conversation, and some hysteria, about the U.S. Census showing that Jackson's population has shrunk 5.8 percent in a decade, with more whites than blacks moving beyond the city limits. (Both the city and metro communities saw increases in black residents, following a national trend of African Americans moving to the South and to U.S. suburbs.)
The Hinds County Economic Development Authority is paying for the three-day session, which should result in marketing plans, a new logo, a tagline and such that the county can use to help attract visitors and new residents to the county.
So far, we see nothing that tells us this is a particularly bad idea other than the outsourcing part. And we like the idea of some of our suburban communities coming together with the capital city to get the area's positives out to a larger audience. We'd like to see that on an even larger scale, with more cooperation between all three local counties and the city. That doesn't mean, of course, that the city goes along with whatever the others want; it means working together to support the entire area and overcome the city-v.-suburbs division that is, honestly, our biggest PR challenge.
We want to see that everyone who ought to be is pulled up to the table, not another case of non-elected leaders and the mayor's office going two directions. When asked, the mayor's office said they were "notified of this presentation"—which doesn't sound a lot like an effort to make sure the city is fully on board with the rebranding. And, this week, the mayor said the city is working with the Jackson Chamber to figure out how to better brand the city of Jackson. We're just not convinced that two separate branding campaigns are the answer.
Jackson State political science professor Byron D'Andra Orey made a smart presentation at Koinonia's Friday Forum last week, saying the city needs to overcome perceptions of inadequate public education and a high violent-crime rate in order to attract more people to the city—both myths that need to be exploded. In fact, crime is below the national average, and Jackson has a number of high-ranked public schools. "I think we, in Jackson, need to do a better job of branding the fact that we don't have these murders and rapes taking place," he said.
Orey also wants the city to grapple with the real elephant in the room: poverty. High poverty leads directly to crime, and the lack of local jobs and job training leads to poverty. It's a vicious cycle that rebranding will not repair, however well meaning. So, brand away, but don't lose sight of the big picture.
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