Central Coast Council

The Central Coast Council engaged Headjam to develop a Brand campaign, with the aim to reposition the Central Coast area and positively change perceptions amongst key target audiences both internally and externally to the Central Coast region. The Brand campaign will be activated over the next four years, with planned activities and marketing campaigns to encourage businesses or individuals to visit or more importantly move their businesses or themselves permanently to the region.

With this being a multi-faceted campaign, there were several objectives for this project to meet:

+ To create an effective place making campaign which speaks to all target audiences to encourage them to visit or move to the region.

+ To change perceptions of the Central Coast region by increasing the positive perceptions and awareness of the area, both internally and externally.

+ To encourage growth of economic development within the Central Coast area, by increasing awareness of the area’s potential and economic benefits.

+ To develop and launch an effective partnership program with local businesses in the region.

The target audience was very broad for this campaign. We were required to reach community groups in various areas (sport, culture, charity, progress associations, etc), residents, education groups, business and industry (both within the area and out of area such as Sydney or Newcastle), industry groups and associations, and other government agencies.

Central Coast Council is ‘alive with potential’.

We wanted to create a campaign that evoked an emotional response, a campaign that touched and resonated with every single person within the Central Coast region, who would see this campaign and feel like they were proud to live and work in the Central Coast area. We wanted them to feel proud of their safe, yet vibrant community and of the beautiful, natural environment that surrounds them. The Central Coast region offers a variety of unique experiences that excite, inspire and surprise investors, visitors and residents alike, and we wanted to capture the passion for this and spread the word in a genuine and believable way.

We developed a Brand campaign that used photography and story-telling to tie to the existing Council branding, however, we ensured that it had its own distinctive look and feel. The essence of the campaign was to convey that the Central Coast offers the perfect work life balance and as such, the tag line ‘this is the life’ was born. This was developed from a good old-fashioned advertising line, in which we found a real product truth and linked it to genuine human insight. Everyone has a vision in their mind when they hear ‘this is the life’. By using this line to describe the Central Coast, we were directly tying those memories or experiences with the region itself.

We found key personalities who lived and worked on the Central Coast and told their stories that in-turn demonstrated the key features of their life in the region. Their stories were based on their work, their passions, the opportunities that the Central Coast had offered to them and their lifestyle priorities. The talent we selected were all highly personable and ‘real’, and it is clear that they are not selling an unachievable dream – the life that they are living is real and highly achievable.

We developed a responsive campaign site ‘thisisthecentralcoast.com.au’, which is a beautiful introduction to life on the Central Coast and delivered the stories of our key personalities, demonstrating the benefits for business, lifestyle, opportunities and more. It is a platform for viewers to learn more about the Central Coast region and for local businesses to jump on board the Partner Program and show their support for this growing region.

Since the launch of the 'this is the life' campaign, the Central Coast Council have received over 80 applications from local businesses who want to be part of the Partner Program and are passionate about supporting the campaign and more importantly, the Central Coast region. We are excited to see how the results progress over the four year campaign period.