One Ship - Drifting or Sailing

Would you like to improve the direction of our community? Help us uncover the hidden strengths in our region?  Continue to expand on the unity that we so vigorously exercised earlier this year?  The team that brought you MyMarinetteMenominee is hosting our biggest event yet.  Add your voice to the conversation. Attend the upcoming Regional Branding Summit, Tuesday evening, October 22, at 6 p.m., doors open at 5 p.m., the  Auditorium,  810 Frontage Road, Peshtigo (inside NewLife). Find it - FB@mymarinettemenominee 

Please imagine our region, Marinette & Menominee Counties together, as one ship.  It is a significant ship, equipped with enough compartments and assets to be a manageable, capable, and preferred vessel. We are aboard this ship in open water, working hard to maintain it.  But maintaining and sailing a boat are two different things.  It is not enough to keep a ship; it is the action of sailing that matters.  If we are not sailing, we are adrift, staying afloat, until inevitably running aground with our children and grandchildren left aboard.  Yes, maintaining the ship is foundational, but floating and drifting is not the purpose of the vessel. The use of the boat is to sail with a clear and present purpose. 

Our region’s economic health is rated a low, 436^th out of 530 communities our size in the nation. Yet in comparison, we have a better ship than communities that perform much better.

Our purpose before we entered The Small Business Revolution, was for our participation to help unfurl our sails. We were not awarded the reality show’s top spot, but our purpose persists. Creating our regional brand and the process of branding is the step we would be taking now, no matter what place we were awarded. 

If you are trying to decide how branding is essential, you can define it as all that we do beyond the minimum required: sailing versus drifting. Branding is a process of discovering how we see ourselves reflected in how others see us.  The method of branding will resume where we left off in creating a sustainable power of “Unity in Community” that we discovered with the #MyMarinetteMenominee effort.

We seek to develop a place where youth wants to stay and contribute their talents. A place other’s desire to belong and bring their skills to contribute to our success.  The branding process helps us clarify our purpose.  Branding merges economic and community development. The captains of our ship need to know the clear and present purpose we have for our community.  They need to understand how to invest to achieve a return to economic and relational prosperity.