"As the agency of record for the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, Preston-Osborne recently conducted a survey of higher-income individuals who live outside of the state but within a 350-mile radius of Lexington on their impressions of Lexington and other major cities in the region. In this Q&A, Phil Osborne, president and CEO of Preston-Osborne, discusses the results.
Q: Based on the results, how successful has Lexington been at branding itself?
A: I think it's been pretty successful, relative to some of the other communities that we checked. Cincinnati, for example, really doesn't have a brand identity. There were some comments about sports or comments about the German influence, but there's nothing like what we saw in Nashville, for example, where 90 percent of the people said it's Music City.
It's interesting, if you look at the stats, almost 40 percent didn't know anything about Lexington. Among those who did, they were citing the horse and the scenic beauty. When you look at Kentucky, very few didn't know anything about Kentucky, but they were seeing the scenic beauty, the horse farms, the rolling pastures, etc. So they equate what is Lexington to Kentucky.
Kentucky is taking advantage of Lexington's image, so to speak.
Q: So Lexington is a strong part of the Kentucky brand, and yet many surveyed don't associate anything with the Lexington brand. What does this mean in your effort to build the city's brand?
A: Not only for the city but for the region, we can take advantage of that because people already equate this wonderful experience with Kentucky, so we just need to remind them it's here in the Bluegrass. So it actually helps us as we go into marketing the community to use those same images and those same symbols to garner attention.
The Bluegrass experience is only found in Lexington and surrounding counties.
Q: In the survey, more people associated music with the term "Bluegrass" than horses. What do you take from that?
A: The way we set it up, we initially asked, "Does the term Bluegrass have a positive or a negative connotation to you?" Most people said positive; the ones who said negative said it was negative because they don't like Bluegrass music.
Then we put the question in the context, "Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State. Lexington is at the heart of the Bluegrass region. What does Bluegrass evoke to you?"
It was pretty evenly split between scenic beauty, horses and music. Music actually had the plurality score on it. I think that's just a function of people not equating Lexington with those beautiful visual images of the rolling pasture, that's Kentucky. But since we've identified Lexington as being the heart of the Bluegrass, they default to Bluegrass music.
Q: Were you surprised by any of the results?
A: Not really. Historically, I think we as a community have said it's all about the horse, and it is, but one of the things we did find out is that it's all about the horse as a part of the scenery. The people are really taken by the scenic beauty of the Bluegrass region, the horse farms, the rolling pastures, the plank fences, etc., and if it weren't for the horse, obviously those farms wouldn't be there. But it's not so much the four-legged image up close; it's the four-legged image as part of this larger pastoral scene. So that may change a little bit how we shape our promotional material in the future. Certainly we don't eliminate the horse, but we can also play up some of the many other attributes the community has to offer.
Q: What are some of the opportunities and challenges you see coming out of this for building Lexington's brand?
A: I think the opportunity is tremendous to build a brand, because of again that connection people are making to the image of Kentucky. They are actually looking at the image of Lexington and Central Kentucky. We can take advantage of that preconceived notion of what Kentucky has to offer and remind them that it is here in Lexington that you can find that.
From the tourism standpoint, I think one of the challenges would be that historically we have made the horse the star of promotions. In asking people what they like to do when they are on vacations, when we asked specifically about horse-related activities, 50 percent of the audience went away. They just weren't interested.
So we have other things that we could offer that 50 percent, with distillery tours and vineyards and fine dining. Again, we never get rid of the horse, because that is so much what we are known for and such a strong attribute to build on. But we can take advantage of some of the other amenities we have and some of the other travel and tourism opportunities that we have to try and gain a larger audience.