From traditional destination marketing to strategic branding.

Weskus Distrik Municipality achieved 12 clean audits in a row and was rated as South Africa’s top performing municipality.

Although proud of the accolade the team felt that they were just doing their jobs, typical of the inherent humility of Weskus people.

Despite reservations of presenting as ‘windgat’ we have a story to tell and must present it for the benefit and aspirations of our Weskus community and stakeholders.

The first step was to move from traditional destination marketing to strategic branding.

The strategic brand objectives included:

• Ensuring the future of our region’s towns and communities.
• Securing the next generation of skilled workers.
• Attracting investors and businesses.
• Increasing the number of residents (semigration), and
• Building popularity as a tourism destination.

We have defined our target audiences for each of the brand objectives and are already messaging into those sectors.

In crafting our brand, we understood that there was far more to a brand than a logo. We wanted a carefully crafted brand architecture to inform decision-making, and creative and communications. The goal was to present an authentic brand built on how we connected with the needs and aspirations of our targeted audiences.

We looked at the traits and values which had earned our rating as South Africa’s number one municipality, identifying the diversity of our people; a high credit rating; our track record in developing and mentoring, and our ability to take decisive action.

These traits translated into brand values of inclusive, solid, aspirational, and action-orientated which all resonate closely with our target audiences.

It is still early days for Brand Weskus Municipality but our brand architecture is in place, we are already reaching core audiences with considered messaging while refining and testing approaches, and mindful that the development of our brand is not an overnight process.

Dr Johan Tesselaar
Chief Financial Officer
Weskus Distrik Municipality