Town employees hope the creation of interactive marketing materials will prevent Penhold's true colours from staying a best-kept secret.
Community services staff unveiled three short promotional videos to Penhold council during a delegation at the regularly scheduled April 22 council meeting.
“We wanted to take the opportunity to share with you a project the community services department and the Penhold and District Library has been working on in partnership for the past five or six months,” said Tera Wells, community services manager, about the relatively short promotional videos with an upbeat vibe. “We have three videos that are complete.”
Shining a mirror on the community itself was the best way to capture the essence of the Central Albertan town, said library manager Myra Binnendyk.
“And who better to promote Penhold than Penhold?” she asked rhetorically. “It's been such an exciting project.”
One of the videos promoted the community vision “Penhold S.H.A.R.E.S.” (which stands for Supportive, Healthy, Accepting, Responsible, Ever-Active, Safe). The video had the upbeat flare similar to illustrative graphics used in MTV's Teen Mom and used a whistling backing track.
Another of the videos creatively played with placement of modern fonts while inserting genuine comments collected from Penhold residents and stakeholders over the past six months.
The aim of the videos is to describe how accessible, welcoming and involved Penhold can be.
Wells said one idea is to add a QR code to posters around town, which would link directly to the video for people with access with mobile devices.
“We want to get the videos into the hands of as many people as possible,” she said.
Binnendyk said the promotional material was funded through the Community Access Program.
“The library has been able to access the Community Access Program which is to do with technology and computers. We've had this grant for about 10 years now,” she said. “The Town of Penhold has been very supportive and brought it up to the level it needed to be.”
A fourth video walking through an accurate history of Penhold is planned for when more funding is available.
“I'm so excited about Penhold and things to come,” Binnendyk said. “We are building community.”
