Community feeling on the choice of Barrington Coast as a tourism brand for our local government area has been strong.
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The Manning River Times and the Wingham Chronicle received letters from the editor from as far as Tea Gardens and Gloucester, as well as from near Taree, all of which are published on our website.
However there has been no public comment from Wingham residents, so we reached out to Wingham Chamber of Commerce president, Liz Jarvis, who was involved in consultations on the brand, for her views.
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Liz, as president of both the Wingham Chamber of Commerce and the MidCoast Business Chamber, was involved in the consultation and sat through many hours of presentations.
“I think it’s important to be aware that the purpose of the name is to attract an external visitor that doesn’t already know who we are or where we are, so the name needs to be attractive to that target customer, and the consultants have gone to a lot of trouble to work out the target customer,” Liz said.
She explained that the consultants had done a lot of research on statistics, looking at the various tourism websites in the area, and looking at engagement. She said they identified women in the 30 to 50 year age bracket as making most of the decisions regarding where to take their families on holidays.
I think it’s important to be aware that the purpose of the name is to attract an external visitor that doesn’t already know who we are or where we are.
- Liz Jarvis
“They looked at the types of engagement and worked out which customer is going to bring the most bang for your buck, if you like, narrowing down the brief to that customer and then finding the things attractive to that customer,” Liz said.
“That part of the consulting is huge. The name is one part of a very, very big and complex monster and the reason locals probably, I guess, weren’t consulted looking for the name is because we would have our own inbuilt biases around names that are already here and things that we are attached to.
“Whereas it’s not about us, it’s about the outsiders. Yes, we need to be able to back that name and be proud of that name, but I don’t think anybody was particularly happy when we got slapped with the name MidCoast, and that will still be our council name unless something changes with that. The Barrington Coast is a tourism destination name.
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“In terms of locals being consulted it may not have been appropriate at all,” she said.
The businesses and organisations consulted were consulted separately to the MidCoast councillors.
“The councillors had their own briefing where they should have made their first vote, and they didn’t vote. They decided that industry should be engaged as well. It also shows that they didn’t necessarily understand the importance of it,” Liz said.
“If they had made a decision back in March/April, we would probably have our advertising campaigns out and done by now.
“It’s wasting very precious time, money, resources, and causing community angst - that’s what frustrates me the most.
It’s wasting very precious time, money, resources, and causing community angst - that’s what frustrates me the most.
- Liz Jarvis
“We need leadership from our council to take us on the path to a good tomorrow, if you like. However what we got instead is indecision.
“And there’s an inertia that happens to our community as a result of the indecision of the councillors around matters around this.
“There were some very important matters on the agenda for the same meeting where they made the decision to go with the Barrington Coast; many hours were spent in that meeting debating that matter. But there were many other matters on the agenda for that day and I’m not even sure they all got heard.
“We need our councillors to be engaged in matters of importance, matters of REAL importance to the future of our community, and a brand name like Barrington Coast is pretty small fry. The whole branding campaign is very important but the name is tiny. We could be getting engaged about something far more important.
It should not have happened like this. It’s about how the councillors chose to handle it.
- Liz Jarvis
“It should not have happened like this. It’s about how the councillors chose to handle it. It seems to me that if the councillors took a role of leadership and went with the name, understanding where it fits, then we wouldn’t have all of this backlash. And the backlash is only because it’s not understood because it’s such a complex issue,” Liz said.