Promoting our special town

I am sure a marketing “icon” in Gilkey Square was proposed for the best of reasons, but it strikes me as wrong-headed in a number of ways:

Goal. It’s been suggested to me that the icon will provide a great place for visitor photo ops. If that’s the goal, the icon will probably achieve it, at considerable expense. But if the goal is to attract more visitors and more return visitors, I don’t see how it does that. I don’t see people saying, “Hey, let’s run up to La Conner and get some pics with that icon thing!” It is just not an attraction in and of itself.

Marketing concept.

Good marketing requires differentiation, making your product, service or town different from all the others on the market.

La Conner attracts visitors because it isn’t like every other place.

It’s got a waterfront boardwalk, unique shops and galleries, lots of good restaurants, excellent inns and B&Bs, three museums, an artist community, the neighboring Swinomish community and culture, a thriving marina and maritime community, tulip and daffodil festivals, a classic car and boat show, an art auction, a poetry festival, historic buildings and so forth.

To attract more visitors and to have them return, promote this differentiation! Don’t spend money and effort on an icon that could be anywhere with just a name change.

Aesthetics. Gilkey Square is designed to be wide and spacious, inviting visitors in with its openness, with shops on each side, with the waterfront directly ahead. Its layout is fundamentally horizontal. Take a look at it from a block down Morris Street. A metal 11-foot vertical icon disrupts this design. It is out of place in the setting.

Finance. Assuming the goal of spending $21,800 is to promote La Conner and attract more visitors, I don’t think the icon, no matter where it is placed, is an effective way to do that. That money would go a long way toward a well-designed and informative Love La Conner website linked to a vibrant and always-current social media campaign or some other marketing approach that actually promotes what makes our town special.

Jim Airy

La Conner