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Client: Fairbanks, Alaska
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Survey asks for input, opinions on Golden Heart City
BY Eric Lidji
Fairbanks is a hardworking, blue collar, military town with great outdoor activities all year long. Or, maybe it's an artsy, remote college town with a unique sense of community. Or, perhaps, it's Alaska's second largest city, trapped in the shadow of Anchorage and troubled by high energy costs and poor infrastructure.
What do you think?
A new online survey asks Fairbanksans to provide impressions of the area they call home.
A group of local economic development organizations plans to use the results of the survey to help define a new brand for Fairbanks and Interior Alaska. The brand will form the basis of future ad campaigns designed to differentiate Fairbanks from other cities in Alaska and from other destinations around the country.
The Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Downtown Association of Fairbanks, the Fairbanks Economic Development Corp., and the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce commissioned the survey from North Star Destination Strategies, a company that helps small communities better promote the resources they already have.
Although named for Alaska's favorite heavenly object, North Star Destination Strategies is actually based in Tennessee, with regional offices in Colorado and Florida. The company, though, has experience in Alaska, creating brands for Seward ("Alaska Starts Here") and the Kenai Peninsula ("Alaska's Playground").
The 18-question survey looks to gauge Fairbanks' strengths, weaknesses, icons and opportunities. The survey asks about the biggest challenges facing Fairbanks, the aspects of Fairbanks that are most attractive to businesses and the things that make Fairbanks different from Anchorage, as well as specific questions about downtown, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the military.
North Star Destination Strategies created the survey after visiting Fairbanks in March to conduct on-the-street interviews, go through real estate and economic information, host focus groups with local officials and tour the city.
The survey is buried on the Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau Web site in order to get more locals to fill out the questionnaire, as opposed to visitors who might be surfing through sites about Alaska, according to Karen Lundquist, advertising and public relations manager for the FCVB.
However, North Star Destination Strategies will also use zip code data collected by cruise companies and the Alaska Railroad Corp. to learn about the people coming to Alaska. The company plans to survey people from around the world to get a view of Fairbanks' reputation Outside.
The process should help local tourism and economic development officials get a deeper understanding of the resources Fairbanks has to offer and learn how to market the region more effectively and uniformly, according to Lundquist.
"Our topography is very subtle. It's hard to sell subtle sometimes, but you see people when they come back from a flightseeing trip and they're amazed at what they saw," Lundquist said.
