The Greater Lansing Convention & Visitors Bureau has a new brand: Choose Lansing.
The destination marketing organization represents Ingham, Clinton, and Eaton counties, which include the capital city of Lansing as well as East Lansing, with its identity closely tied to Michigan State University. Vice President of Marketing Communications Tracy Padot says rebranding has been in the works for a while, but got a boost with pandemic recovery funds that helped the organization take a deeper dive.
“We really felt it was a good time to do the rebrand process,” she says. “We did the RFP [request for proposal] process and ultimately selected someone who does this kind of work across the country.”
North Star place branding, which has offices in Tennessee and Florida, conducted research including surveys and focus groups with community leaders, local residents, visitors, and industry experts.
“One of the benefits of using someone not from the Lansing region is they do not have a bias about your destination,” Padot says. “They can look at the research and data to point us in the right direction, the messaging, [and] who we are in essence of a destination. That’s what they spent the bulk of their time doing from September of 2022 all the way through the spring [2023].”
The CVB primarily markets outside of the Lansing region, and Padot says findings showed “people just think of this region as Lansing.” So while the mission is still to promote the wider region, a simpler name that “really talks to” event planners, sports tournament organizers, and others looking for a place to hold events and bring groups, like Choose Lansing, was needed. Still, they didn’t want to mimic what peers in other parts of the state had done in selecting an actionable title like Experience Grand Rapids or Visit Detroit, for example.
“We wanted to be a little more unique and speaking to those event clients,” Padot explains. “We like to play off the call to action.”
Enter “Choose Lansing” with the tag line, “Plan on Something Greater.” “’Plan on Something Greater’ was a nod not only to the Greater Lansing region, but also a lot of surveys came back that event planners appreciate our team goes the extra mile,” Padot says. “They get greater service and amenities and have a greater experience. So it’s utilizing all the variations of ‘greater.’”
The organization is in the process of updating the myriad components that support its marketing efforts with the Choose Lansing brand. That means “everything under the sun,” Padot says. “We have new ad campaigns rolling out, new video. The new name and logo is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The Greater Lansing Sports Authority, which has been a “sub-division” of the Greater Lansing CVB, also underwent rebranding and has been renamed the Lansing Sports Commission. Its focus is regional destination development of athletic facilities in the area, focusing on amateur athletic competitions and events.
