Sheffield City Council have progressed the plan for the city’s brand in an aim to enhance the city’s identity and hold its status as a top 5 UK city for trade, tourism and talent.
The council’s Marketing Sheffield team have been working on refining and developing the refresh of the ‘City Brand’ over the past 12-18 months; working with an external agency.
Sheffield City Council have indicated key strategies and policies to develop and launch their new update rebranding, focussing on the Council Plan, City Goals, Growth Plan, Destination Management Plan, Major Events Plan and Culture Strategy.
Councillor Martin Smith, Chair of The Economic Development and Skills Committee, said: “We describe this change as a refresh, not a rebrand. We still want to achieve the same things, it’s just a slightly different way of doing it.”
As part of the City Brand refresh, the council are focussing on web content to sit on a new area of the Welcome to Sheffield website in order to attract visitors to the city.
He continues, “What can we do in terms of brand image and linking that all together? I see this as a the umbrella branding of Sheffield
When we promote the city, we will now have a consistent logo across the promotion, which will bring the rebranding package together.”
The council hopes that a stronger perception of Sheffield will increase people’s willingness to visit the city, which will drive the city’s economy and increase the ability to improve the city for all.
Sheffield has been labelled as ‘tired’ by many social media users, so the change is bound to be met with appreciation from its residents.
Clr Smith continues, “What people may not know until you come to the city is how many parks we’ve got, how many trees we’ve got, we’ve got seven areas of ancient woodland. It’s a very green city in comparison with others in Europe.”
With many recognising Sheffield as ‘the home of football’, the council plan to work with Sheffield’s ‘Home of football’ movement to include this as part of their rebranding.
Clr Martin Smith said: “It’s something that we are very proud of, you know, having the world’s first football ground, the world’s first set of rules.”