WLKM Radio 95.9 FM
A Grand Rapids-based firm was awarded a three-year contract to aid Vicksburg with an effort to rebrand itself.
During a recent meeting, council members approved a contract with The Image Shoppe. Village Manager Jim Mallery said the village back in December had requested proposals for rebranding and updating its website, as well as a wider and deeper look at the branding of Vicksburg.
As a result, the village agreed to a three-year, $36,000 contract. Mallery said the contract is front-end heavy, explaining the $24,000 cost of the first year. The website standalone is $12,000 of the $24,000 the first year, he said.
The second and third years of the contract will cost the village $6,000 annually, Mallery noted. He said The Image Shoppe in the past has put together a few standalone pages for village-sponsored events. It also has a few other clients in Vicksburg, Mallery said.
Tossing taxpayer money down the toilet again. If you want to attract people, you have to have something real and of value to attract them. If you, as the community leaders are clueless as to what that is, then you don’t have it. No marketer making money off you is going to tell you that what attracts him to your town is your cash, desperation and gullibility! If you want to be recognized for your uniqueness, and you can’t prove what makes you unique, you’re not! Just like the majority of towns and villages across the nation. Get off the monkey see monkey do bandwagon! Put your money, time, and effort into actually making your community the most functional for your residents. And during that process be brutally honest with yourselves. Why people live there? Why do they leave? What attracts those who choose to move to Vicksburg instead of surrounding areas? Just how much control of your little space in the county do you actually have before you become another annexed bedroom community for Kalamazoo/Portage/Battle Creek?
They’re doing a website? Taxpayers are spending $30,000 on a new logo and a new slogan? Is that what gets the council members to frequent a store, a hospital, a church, a school?
The money could be spent on an intuitive, easy to navigate, fully functional website independent of google docs and other substandard free web doc sites that are basically digital billboards with few data features and lax security.