The new municipality of Tantramar is in the midst of a roughly $68,000 brand development initiative.
To develop the brand identity for the newly formed town, the town hired the Details Design + Branding, which is working with the public relations firm Porter O’Brien.
They’re seeking input from local residents through a survey that can be found online at TakePartTantramar.ca. The survey closes on June 30th.
Public engagement will also be taking place in-person at several locations around Tantramar beginning this weekend.
Tanya Duffy, who runs the Fredericton-based design firm, said the process will involve more than just the creation of a logo.
“A brand is more than an image, it’s a sense of identity,” Duffy said.
Listen to the interview with CHMA
The municipality, which brings together Sackville, Dorchester and neighbouring areas, came into existence on New Year’s Day, following the Higgs government’s controversial process of local governance reform.
In May 2022, a committee of local officials announced that it would be called Tantramar. Until then, it was known by the placeholder name Entity 40.
Throughout this process, there’s been a lot of talk about what the changes would mean for the identities of formerly separate communities.
Tom Bateman, a senior consultant with Porter O’Brien, noted that the goal isn’t to stop residents from calling their home community by established names such as Sackville.
By way of analogy, he noted that people from communities within the Halifax Regional Municipality held onto local names following the 1996 merger of the City of Halifax with three other municipalities.
“People from Bedford, they still say they’re from Bedford and they identify with Bedford, but they’re also citizens of the Halifax Regional Municipality,” Bateman said.
In Tantramar, public outreach begins Saturday at the Sackville Farmer’s Market from 9 a.m. until noon, and then at Trueman’s Blueberry Farm in Aulac from 1:30 until 4:30 p.m.
Outreach continues Tuesday at the Veteran’s Community Centre in Dorchester from 8:30 a.m. until noon.
The website for the initiative includes details on where to pick up a paper survey, and a timeline for the project. It states that focus groups will take place in August before brand deployment in September.
Does deployment mean there will be a new website for Tantramar? For now, town staff continue maintain the websites of the former Town of Sackville and the former Village of Dorchester.
In an email, Kieran Miller, Tantramar’s Director of Community and Corporate Services said: “These websites are starting to show their age, and we hope a new website will be included as a capital project in the 2024 Tantramar budget.
“This would be a completely new website developed for Tantramar. Given the time and work behind creating a new site, this would be an initiative for 2024.”
She added that: “Once the brand development is completed in the fall and we have a new logo for Tantramar, we will start rolling it out in the community in phases as budget and resources allow.”
The contract for brand development is worth $67,850. CHMA previously reported that Tantramar will be asking the province to reimburse those funds.
On Thursday, Miller said town staff have submitted a request to the Department of Local Government to cover expenses associated with reform, including $50,000 for branding.
“We have not received confirmation yet as to whether it will be covered,” she said.
