Who are we? We are worth celebrating

A CITYWIDE campaign aimed at bringing together the community and celebrating everything that’s great about Ballarat has been officially launched.

Known as We Are Ballarat, the effort is focused on the post-COVID recovery and beyond, and is aiming to unify everyone from high-level organisations through to businesses, community groups and individuals.

“The key elements out of We Are Ballarat are really trying to highlight some of the great parts of living in Ballarat and encouraging being able to see that, and ultimately invest, work, live and study here,” said City of Ballarat mayor Cr Daniel Moloney.

“If this was just a City of Ballarat thing, it is limited, but when you’re involved with Commerce Ballarat, Committee for Ballarat, Ballarat Regional Tourism, and we get a lot more input from the broader business community, then you start to really have quite a powerful and strong message.”

The new campaign falls under an overarching Ballarat masthead, which is being used as a single point of entry for marketing the city.

A recently reinvigorated Made of Ballarat is the outward looking brand seeking to champion the city to tourists and visitors, while We Are Ballarat is all about getting people who live here to move around, experience what’s on offer and celebrate what we have, as well as encouraging others to do the same.

“It’s come from an evolution of our community campaigns and tourism ones as well,” Cr Moloney said. “It solidified last year out of a need to have a campaign that was overarching.

“I don’t need to tell anyone how challenging last year was. We had the Be Kind campaign, and this is to some degree an evolution of that, and what I love about it is that it brings together the tourism and community elements.”

As part of We Are Ballarat seven familiar faces will initially act as ambassadors to help spread the word on everything that’s great about the region before including other faces from across the city.

The seven big names include artist and Wadawurrung woman Deanne Gilson, surgeon and arts patron Mark Guirguis, chef Tim Bone, president of the Ballarat African Association Michael Akindeju Sovereign Hill CEO Sarah Quon, broadcaster Gorgi Coghlan, and former Olympian Steve Moneghetti.

Cr Moloney said the role of the ambassadors would be multifaceted.

“Some of them have a great local identity but are also people with great reach across Australia,” he said. “The best marketers of the city are Ballarat people.

“We want all of Ballarat to be ambassadors for the program and talking up Ballarat as a great place to work, live and study, because when a local does it that’s when it’s powerful.”

To drive home We Are Ballarat, the City of Ballarat – who are the campaign’s main marking backers – have commissioned a series of commercials across TV, social media and in print.

However, Cr Moloney said there was an easy way for people to take part and get across what’s going on.

“Just tell people to go to ballarat.com.au,” he said. “It couldn’t be simpler than that.

“If you’ve got a mate who wants to study here, then just send them to the website. If you know someone who has a business in Melbourne that is of thinking setting up shop in regional Victoria, again send them to the same place.”