Theme: Selling Heritage
True or False? In a development context, the word ‘heritage’ has negative baggage and should be outlawed.
Question: How can we give heritage a sexier brand?
Here are some of your thought provoking answers
- Ask Brad Pitt to be our spokesman
- Make heritage authentic
- More young people in the heritage world!
- Better marketing with more innovative approaches
- Televised heritage minutes
- Not static – tell the story
- Make heritage integral to telling the story of a place, people, event
- Teach children wholesome values and connect heritage with parks, libraries, liveable cities
- Get media on board
- Heritage is a destination
- Heritage is more than sexy; about the quality of life
- You must address your audience
- Heritage is also culture
- Partner with organizations focused on sustainability to promote the message that the greenest building is the that already exists
- More carrots
- More public attention
- Heritage vignettes to encourage public backing
- Leverage local media to communicate the value of heritage and facilitate dialogues at the community level
- Distill broad-based intrinsic values and lessons learned from neighbourhoods
- Need to communicate to the various stakeholders and decision-makers in terms of reference and perspectives
- Integrate heritage into the sustainability movement
- Shift paradigm to everything has value – prove that it does not need to be kept before demolition is approved
- By removing the activist and eccentric and retuning those to a common ground
- To recognize heritage as an ongoing process rather than a particular point in time will allow it to continually redefine itself
- Sell heritage as more important for community and sense of place than tourism
- Sell heritage as also sustainable development
- Concept of selling heritage diminishes it
- Need to start at primary-school level by teaching our children the value of heritage
- Need to keep bringing heritage back
- Sexier by being environmentally sound – about who we are, not just who we were
- Need a champion – sexy but meaningful
- Identify and pursue good media contacts
- Rebranding ideas – sustainability, quality, lifestyle, youth & image, identity and sense of place, diversity, dynamic, one-of-a-kind, tells a story, adaptable, baggage, emotional engagement, pride/passion
- Talk to the environmental movement and others in the social economy
- Talk to designers
- New design in old buildings
- Produce a move with George Clooney and Charlize Theron as crusading heritage activists who save their town from developers who want to tear down the most valuable heritage buildings and replace them with condos
- Talk to your clients – what do they want from heritage?
- Talk to businesses
- Talk to property owners
- Would like to reframe the question – Does not have to be a sexy brand, it has to be a positive brand
- A lot of value in heritage buildings. As heritage specialists we can learn a lot from heritage buildings
- Heritage is a way of life; a value that cannot be defined in a singular form or ‘sexy’
- Tie the heritage discussion/debate to all quality of life issues
- Focuses on successes
- Need to be true to the values of the place
- Emotionally engagement for all people
- Messages – see local people coming into an area; buildings are adaptable and can have new, more valuable uses; Smart (eg. Heritage districts); responsible; smart growth
- Find a credible and popular champion
- Seek greater political support