Northern Kentucky is made up of three counties and 36 municipalities, but there is no official boundary or label on a map. Regional leaders are still searching for an identity independent from the city of Cincinnati and the state of Kentucky.
Northern Kentuckians have most likely heard this saying before: “Not quite Cincinnati, not quite Kentucky.” Northern Kentucky boasts horse racing, bourbon AND Skyline Chili.
Members of the OneNKY Alliance — a collective of Northern Kentucky nonprofits and companies advocating for community initiatives that advance residents’ overall health and educational wellbeing — grappled with the question of regional brand identity at their fifth-ever summit last week.
OneNKY hosted a slate of speakers from various regional organizations to speak about how Northern Kentucky should go about marketing itself and what measures could be taken to help craft its own unique identity.
Now, four Northern Kentucky growth organizations — meetNKY, Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, BE NKY Growth Partnership and OneNKY — announced they are collaborating to release a Request for Proposal, or RFP, to hire an agency to help craft the region’s new brand identity.
“What does Northern Kentucky stand for? What is our story? How do we express it? What does it look like,” meetNKY CEO Julie Kirkpatrick said during the summit.
Kirkpatrick said the RFP would be released “soon,” with the finished brand identity slated to be released sometime in 2024.
“I’m so excited now that I feel that we have this tipping point when it is time to do this project and to do it right,” Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick and other Northern Kentucky leaders hope to use the newly created branding package in marketing campaigns going forward. These campaigns will aim to increase tourism and help bring more talent and companies to NKY.
When identifying recognizable symbols of NKY, what are some of the things that are generally brought up?
Two popular answers are often horses and bourbon, symbols closely associated with the state of Kentucky. Northern Kentucky does have a horse racing tradition through the late Latonia Racetrack and revamped Turfway Park in Florence. It also has a burgeoning bourbon tourism scene through the B-Line. However, both these symbols are more closely associated with Lexington and Louisville.
In those cities, the bourbon and horse racing industries have international acclaim. Northern Kentucky can claim these symbols, but they are not intrinsically unique to the region. They don’t help the region differentiate itself from Kentucky as a whole.
Another popular answer is the Florence Y’all water tower — arguably the most recognizable landmark in the region due to its folksy charm. The Florence Y’alls baseball franchise even made the water tower its official mascot. Even though it’s a beloved symbol, regional leaders are still searching for a brand identity beyond the water tower.
“When you start thinking about brand and identity, what’s the iconic image of the community?” BeNKY Growth Partnership CEO Lee Crume told LINK nky in September. “Is it the Florence Y’alls water tower? Is it the Roebling Bridge? Is it the horse farms?”
At the summit, Kirkpatrick recollected a comment from last year conveyed to her by freelance writer Liza Weisstuch. At the time, Weisstuch was working on a piece about Northern Kentucky’s bourbon industry for the New York Times.
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“She said, ‘You’re an amazing destination, but it’s really hard to define what it is that makes Northern Kentucky, Northern Kentucky,'” Kirkpatrick said.
That comment stuck with her.
Later in the year, Kirkpatrick recalled working with Washington D.C.-based consulting firm Streetsense on meetNKY’s tourism master plan. They also expressed a similar sentiment.
“The way they described that to me is that Northern Kentucky is a very unique place and a very unique region, but you’ve described yourself as a direction,” Kirkpatrick said. “The number one thing that Northern Kentucky could do is getting the band together and get a regional identity established — a narrative on how you describe yourself.”
