28 - Direction to City Manager regaridng Dead Cat Media serving as branding manager

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Item No. 28 Memorandum TO: Mayor, Mayor Pro Tern & City Council FROM: Grayson Path, City Manager SUBJECT: Branding and Marketing Project Branding Manager Role DATE: January 23, 2023 BACKGROUND: In February 2022, the City of Paris partnered with the Paris Economic Development Corporation (PEDC) and Paris -Lamar County Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) to contract with North Star consulting to perform a branding and marketing project for our three entities. We worked on this from approximately March 2022 up through this point. This process included community surveys, field observations, interviews, outside research, etc., followed up by a lengthy creative process developing the logo, messaging, tagline, etc. This was a very thorough and comprehensive process which will be discussed in more depth at a future time. STATUS OF ISSUE: North Star has completed their work, but as part of their deliverables, they have provided us with a lengthy series of recommendations for how to properly roll this project out to the public. This process and timeline must be correctly, carefully and thoroughly thought out and managed. As such, they recommend that we hire and/or contract the services of someone(s) to serve as a branding manager to focus on managing this process. It typically can take any months to roll this out as there are presentations, social media, messaging, websites, materials, and much that must be developed and addressed. This is frankly beyond the three partner's expertise, experience and workloads to perform, The three partners in this project would like to entertain contracting with Dead Cat Media, a local firm, to assist us with this branding manager role. Dead Cat Media played a critical role in the final creative elements of this project, therefore they have intimate knowledge of what has occurred up to this point. They have the expertise, experience, and knowledge that we feel will give us success in rolling this new brand and marketing out to the public. The PEDC and Chamber have contracted