The City of Regina is rebranding and looking to ‘Grow Your World.’
Economic Development Regina unveiled its new place brand strategy, which aims to position the Queen City as a place to live, work, play, and invest and a strong and competitive community while fostering stakeholder support and commitment, both financially and otherwise.
Chris Lane, the President and CEO of Economic Development Regina, said that the brand strategy is about positioning the City and the region to be advantageous.
“As we tell the story of Regina and as we take the opportunities in Regina to the rest of the world, it becomes really important to have a cohesive story around that, and that’s really what a place brand project is all about.”
“When we talk about ‘Grow Your World’ in Regina, that can mean a lot of great things to a lot of people depending on who we are talking to,” Lane continued. “Whether we are in the business community attracting investment to Regina, whether we are out there recruiting talent to help those businesses grow and help the workforce in Regina, that all becomes part of the same story.”
EDR plans to achieve the strategy by being the heartbeat of the new prairie economy, growing the next generation of energy, and being the home of do-ers and transformers.
Lane said he feels the key will be sustainable growth, especially in agriculture.
“Finding other ways to leverage that investment and build out the industry,” he said. “That means making sure that we have a good story to tell around attracting people to the City. That we are very proud of everything we have from post-secondary skills training to the cultural elements of the city and embracing the indigenous heritage.”
Lane said that the strategy wouldn’t be short of its challenges.
“There is so much opportunity in a post-COVID world around this that every other city is also doing a similar thing,” he said. “We have to make sure that we are on the leading edge of that, we have to make sure that we are creative, that we are bold around it and that we understand that we are in a very competitive environment.”
Lane noted that other challenges the City faced were being too humble and not promoting the City and its positives enough.
The benefits of the strategy include improving competitiveness, strengthening tourism attractiveness, attracting and retaining talent, attracting businesses and investment, growing demand for local products and services, and many others.
“The real wins on this will be are we attracting businesses that could have gone somewhere else, that now call Regina home.” Lane said. “Are we attracting worldwide talent to this city to make those businesses all they can be, and from a host and an event city place, are we landing bigger and better events and many other benefits.”
