At a meeting Friday morning at the New Hanover County Government Center, members of the Regional Branding Initiative Leadership Team (BILT) focused on generating lists of the area’s assets and factors that draw people to the area and induce them to stay.

That exercise is part of developing a regional brand that can be applicable to – and useful in – all kinds of economic development efforts, from business recruiting to tourism and the film industry to attracting retirees.

Six members of the 20-person team participated in the work session, along with facilitators from University of North Carolina Wilmington: Thom Porter, chair of the Department of Marketing at the Cameron School of Business; and Jenni Harris, assistant to the chancellor for community partnerships.

Porter led the session.

After a discussion to identify what Porter termed assets, concepts and big ideas, the group broke into three subgroups, each taking one of the big idea nuggets to further flesh out. Those nuggets were “Discovery,” “Re-creation and invention,” and “Home.”

“It’s important to cast a wide net, and not to focus on just one idea,” Porter told team members after they reported back the results of their small group work. “We should find three or four ideas, test them, and then select the best. It's important to be flexible."

Team members agreed with Porter that it would be advisable to test several brand ideas with the approximately 300 people who participated in an earlier regional identity survey, and to get their feedback before further refining the brand message.

“A really good brand becomes a beachhead to lots of good possibilities,” Porter said in an interview following the session. “It allows us to target a variety of groups.”

Several team members acknowledged that their brand identification efforts would need to mesh with other studies underway: the recently launched New Hanover County comprehensive planning process, the city of Wilmington’s comprehensive planning process, and the Pathways to Prosperity report commissioned by New Hanover County from Garner Economics, a draft of which was released this week.