WILLMAR — The Willmar City Council on Monday in a split 5-2 vote approved the city’s rebranding initiative. Councilors Audrey Nelsen and Rick Fagerlie voted against the initiative; Councilor Mike O’Brien was absent from the meeting.
There was no information in the public packet of meeting materials regarding what the new brand would be, but councilors were individually shown the rebranding information prior to the meeting in order to have the information they needed to vote on the initiative. The withholding of the information from the public meeting packet may be a violation of the Open Meeting Law.
“The obvious is, you don’t see anything in your packets tonight,” City Operations Director Kyle Box told the council while presenting the initiative. “We did show almost all of the council members ahead of time. We got an opportunity to sit down with you and show you … what the brand strategy is. Again, we wanted to show that to you so you weren’t asked to vote on something that you had never seen before tonight. But, we want to build up some anticipation and … launch with the brand later this month, is what we are asking for from council tonight.”
Minnesota Open Meeting Law, Chapter 13D in statute, requires that materials relevant to the meeting of a public body be available to the public.
"I'm not aware of any state statute that would allow the materials relating to the rebranding to be kept out of the public packet," said Minnesota Newspaper Association attorney Mark Anfinson.
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As such, the West Central Tribune has requested that the brand strategy and the information provided to the council outside of the meeting be made available to the public.
City Administrator Leslie Valiant acknowledged receipt of the request Wednesday morning, but no further response has yet been received.
The city has $17,000 in the 2024 budget to work on the branding strategy. The City Council in June of 2023 approved a $35,000 proposal from Replace for rebranding services. The Minneapolis firm specializes in brand design.
One hint as to what the new brand would be was provided by Nelsen, who shared her disappointment that the city’s brand would no longer be associated with a red "W."
“I have to say that I am truly sad that we are going away from the red 'W,' I really am. I understand and I appreciate the work that I’ve seen, I appreciate that, but for me, I am sad to see the red 'W' going away,” Nelsen said.
The primary goals of the rebranding project are to create uniformity, community identity and pride, community and economic development promotion, brand flexibility and community endorsement, according to a memorandum in the council packet.
“Just a little history — back in the 1990s, the flying red 'W' was adopted as the official city logo,” Box said. However, a brand development strategy and standards were not created during that process and various city departments developed their own logos.
“So it creates a little inconsistency in messaging and marketing for the city overall,” Box added.
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During the rebranding process, community and stakeholder engagement took place providing multiple design directions. Exploring Willmar's history was a key element of the project, and the rebranding committee worked alongside Replace to develop a brand logo reflective of Willmar's history and the future growth of Willmar.
“There’s been some community and stakeholder engagement, multiple design directions, and they did a really good job of exploring Willmar’s history, and those were key elements for this project,” Box said. “The rebranding committee worked alongside Replace to develop a brand logo reflective of Willmar’s history and the future growth of Willmar.”
When the rebranding proposal was approved in June of 2023, it was noted by Councilor Julie Asmus that a number of other community entities, including the Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar Economic Development Commission and Kandiyohi County, were also exploring rebranding and all those entities could collaborate with the city on the rebranding efforts for similar color schemes and designs.
Nelsen asked Box about that collaboration at Monday’s meeting.
“We were able to sit down with some of these groups and share what the city was doing along the way, whether it’s fonts, whether it’s color palettes, whether it’s design looks and how they can incorporate it when they are in the midst of their rebranding, as well,” Box said, but noted that those community entities have independent boards and decision-making ability and it is up to them what they would do.
“We’ve shared and communicated the city of Willmar’s vision and I think it was received very well by the people that we presented to,” Box added. “... But the goal of all of this is to kind of create that uniformity city-wide. Not to be the same for every organization, but to provide … those recognized key factors where you can recognize and hone in on trying to create that uniformity community-wide.”
The EDC Joint Operations Board approved its new logo at its Jan. 11 meeting. It had approved a new name, Kandiyohi County Economic Development, at its November meeting. The EDC is planning to launch its rebranding campaign once its new website is complete, according to Marketing and Communications Specialist Kelsey Olson.
She told the EDC Joint Operations board that the color palette chosen for the EDC logo is complementary to the logos of other area organizations, such as the Willmar Area Community Foundation and Vision2040.
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Olson also said she conversed with Box regarding the city’s rebranding efforts and they shared information regarding color palettes “hoping that we can be flexible, to be complementary, depending on what partnership we’re promoting.”
City Administrator Valiant explained how Replace worked with other community stakeholders in creating the city’s new brand, sending out a questionnaire with a triangle exercise that assisted the company in finding the core of what is important to the community.
Replace used that information to design seven different renderings of the direction in which the rebranding could go and those were also shared with stakeholders for feedback, which whittled it down to three renderings.
At that time, the rebranding committee, which consisted of Councilors Vicki Davis and Julie Asmus, Valiant and Box, decided on the final version of the rebranding.
“I like the red 'W,' too, but I will be happy to see a unified logo everywhere — the trucks, everything will have the same logo and it will make us look really professional,” Davis said. “And, I want to say it was fun to work with the people from Replace. They’re super professional, they worked really hard for us, they walked around the town, took pictures of everything and it was just really neat to see that whole process.”
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