Made of Ballarat is the new brand

NOEL Dempsey, CEO of Made of Ballart – formally Visit Ballarat, wants to change the perception of the city.

Ballarat doesn’t rank highly with potential Melbourne visitors because there is a view that it is just an old place.

“Just because it has a rich history it wasn’t enough to put the town on the agenda,” Mr Dempsey said.

Mr Dempsey’s team analysed research to discover what does make the difference in Ballarat.

“Ballarat is made of earth, once it was gold now it is the produce and the land,” Mr Dempsey said. “It is also made of creativity with a lot of artistry that is hidden, and we are made of heritage but you don’t tell it with just museums, you have to bring it alive in a certain way. And importantly we are made of rebellion.”

The Made of Ballarat campaign, launched last year to bring all these aspects together, will now replace Visit Ballarat as the city’s brand.

It was decided not only was it unnecessary to run two channels, Visit Ballarat and Made of Ballarat, it was also uneconomical.

“Made of Ballarat is a movement, a feeling, an attitude that can exist across everything we do,” Mr Dempsey said.

“It’s not dispensing with the past it is just a different lens to look through it.

“Ballarat is town where old meets new, contemporary experience against a rich heritage backdrop.

“Great food, wine, artistry in a beautiful streetscape with a depth of richness of history that is interesting.”

Visit Ballarat is a very functional site but similar to so many others, Visit Victoria, Visit Geelong, and Visit Bendigo.

Mr Dempsey admitted that the change of brand will be polarising and some people won’t like it.

“When you hear or see Made of Ballarat it asks the question what’s that all about and it gets you to scratch a bit deeper to understand more,” he said.

“There 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’s what it does.”