NOEL Dempsey, CEO of Made of Ballart – formally Visit Ballarat, wants to change the perception of the city.<\/p>\n
Ballarat doesn\u2019t rank highly with potential Melbourne visitors because there is a view that it is just an old place.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because it has a rich history it wasn\u2019t enough to put the town on the agenda,\u201d Mr Dempsey said.<\/p>\n
Mr Dempsey\u2019s team analysed research to discover what does make the difference in Ballarat.<\/p>\n
\u201cBallarat is made of earth, once it was gold now it is the produce and the land,\u201d Mr Dempsey said. \u201cIt is also made of creativity with a lot of artistry that is hidden, and we are made of heritage but you don\u2019t tell it with just museums, you have to bring it alive in a certain way. And importantly we are made of rebellion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Made of Ballarat campaign, launched last year to bring all these aspects together, will now replace Visit Ballarat as the city\u2019s brand.<\/p>\n
It was decided not only was it unnecessary to run two channels, Visit Ballarat and Made of Ballarat, it was also uneconomical.<\/p>\n
\u201cMade of Ballarat is a movement, a feeling, an attitude that can exist across everything we do,\u201d Mr Dempsey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not dispensing with the past it is just a different lens to look through it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBallarat is town where old meets new, contemporary experience against a rich heritage backdrop.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat food, wine, artistry in a beautiful streetscape with a depth of richness of history that is interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Visit Ballarat is a very functional site but similar to so many others, Visit Victoria, Visit Geelong, and Visit Bendigo.<\/p>\n
Mr Dempsey admitted that the change of brand will be polarising and some people won\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you hear or see Made of Ballarat it asks the question what\u2019s that all about and it gets you to scratch a bit deeper to understand more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are two levels of the branding designed to challenge perception about what Melbourne people think of Ballarat and what we think about ourselves, we needed to stand out and be different and that\u2019s what it does.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NOEL Dempsey, CEO of Made of Ballart – formally Visit Ballarat, wants to change the perception of the city. Ballarat doesn\u2019t rank highly with potential Melbourne visitors because there is a view that it is just an old place. \u201cJust because it has a rich history it wasn\u2019t enough to put the town on the […]<\/p>\n