Community Excellence Award Update

Zeeland Wins the Region 3 Race for the Cup with Its “Feel the Zeel” Branding Campaign

The Region 3 voters crowned the city of Zeeland as their regional winner! 

Zeeland won the peer-nomination against neighboring communities for Feel the Zeel, a branding/marketing campaign created to better represent the city and all it has to offer.

“Zeal” is used to explain passionate interest in furthering or promoting a subject or cause.  Feel the Zeel mirrors this concept and speaks to the passionate people who love Zeeland and want other people to understand what makes it such a unique city.

To unveil the new marketing campaign Zeeland launched two guerilla marketing stunts: spray painting (tagging) the new logo around town and introducing the new tagline on the city water tower.  The stunts were documented on video and released via two YouTube videos.

The community brand was also plastered on downtown banners, www.feelthezeel.com (blog, Zeel Deals from local businesses, a flickr photo gallery, biz.com, and community links), elevator speech cards, Z! car cling-ons, paid advertising, Z! stickers on the front window of almost all downtown businesses, letterhead, lapel pins, city truck decals, and more.

This win places Zeeland in the running for the ultimate win—the 2008 Community Excellence Award Cup!  The final competition will be fierce, pitting the winner from each region against each other for the BIG win, which will be announced at the 2008 Annual Michigan Municipal League Convention on Mackinac Island, October 1-4, 2008.  Don’t miss out—register early (June 2) to come out to vote for your favorite project.  Congratulations to the city of Zeeland! 

If you have questions about the Community Excellence Award program please contact Kim Cekola at kcekola@mml.org or 734-669-6321.