Providing the "community experience" that gets talked about is really the key ingredient of a successful service branding solution. By adopting a value proposition that is consistently articulated a service can find and build its own brand awareness. Unlike a physical product the branding of a service provides more complexity than it physical counterpart. Because a physical product provides a tangible product and a service a nontangible product the opportunity for branding is more challenging. A successful service must build a number of things such as an emotional bond, customer loyalty, a sense of community and a rich repeatable experience driven in a public social services environment. Thus the challenge and the opportunity.

Creating a P and R experience that is provided by the professional staff of the agency requires rising awareness, benefits, visibility and consistency. The first step is to develop a lasting and creative tagline…one that is memorable. Some of many that might work include the following:

"Live it. Learn it. Experience it."
"Live, learn and experience"
"Parks and Recreation. Experience the benefits today"
"One community with many options"
"Parks and Recreation: One resource not to be ignored"
"Parks and Recreation: A critical key component to your quality of life"
"Parks and Recreation: Endless opportunities"
"Parks and Recreation: Many benefits yet unexplored"
"Parks and Recreation: You're key to unlocking the future"
"The power to learn"

More than any other single factor in making a compelling the success of the P and R professional is the 3rd party testimonial. Just like any hot new product with limited resources for promotion the P and R departments should count on viral marketing to help create and sustain the buzz all the while being specifically targeted and highly relevant. Without buzz the departments will become forgotten entities. A wonderful example of a successful program is the Glendale California Parks and Recreation Community Services. There web presence and traffic indicate that they have established a significant following. In order for that following to sustain itself many different tools are needed to insure long term success. Just like a "product" business the service business of the P and R needs to provide great service, a timely and useful experience and a benefit filled program. A program that has the community talking is a program that will thrive based on the talk of the community.

Few cost effective tools and resources exist that can carry and sustain a compelling take action message. But the few that do exist, with proper nurturing, can be as or more powerful than any traditional advertising campaign. Enter the world of the internet and more specially a blog. A unique and well conceived blog can and will provide an online community away from the physical community. It will provide a meeting place that over 70% of the American population has access to daily. It will be the "umbilical cord" that holds the P and R community together without a massive restructuring of key elements already in place.

A well thought out blog, with many features and benefits that traditional websites don't or can't offer provides a simple turnkey auto-pilot vehicle to deliver the brand and the message of the brand through the users. User input, typically know as third party endorsements or testimonials, are far more powerful and believable than any canned advertising message. America and its traditional media are finding the going is getting very tough. Those that recognize new opportunities and new frontier's are on the horizon and will dominate there market niche.

By deploying a multifunctional blog community the P and R departments will be able to establish the image they so desire. An image that will be carried by the very people who are benefiting from the services of the P and R staff. When properly implemented the brand will:
• Gain an authentic market position
• Provide the footing to develop an internal culture
• Provide for external awareness
• Create a high perceived value proposition
• Make the experience desirable
• Provide a central theme that can be aligned with all message's

Thus our first recommendation for a tool that would empower and build a P and R branding opportunity is that of a super blog. A super blog has many characteristics that when combined provide for a powerful media and content rich experience. The city of Glendale has built a very substantial online following by employing some but not all of the tactics that we are proposing with our blog. In the last 4 months over 1,000,000 individuals went to the blog for information. They used the information as a quick conduit to the actual physical building without having to set foot in the door. All the information that any individual could possibly want is readily and easily accessible. While they have created a powerful online presence there are still things that could and should be implemented to increase the experience. Our recommendation includes what they have done plus a whole vast and long list of other powerful resource pulling tools that will make the P and R professional and even more valued community asset.

There is no better way to "sell the services" of the community P and R department than by allowing its users to be the ambassadors that create the buzz. When someone has a great experience they are more than ready to tell the world. We just want them to tell the community. By actively promoting the blog and its mutual benefits everyone in the community will benefit from the interaction…especially the P and R departments themselves. Third party endorsements are highly prized and often bought. The P and R departments don't have to pay for endorsements if they do there job. The individuals who use the service will be become the non-paid mouthpieces for the P and R departments.

In order to build a successful blog we need to first look at the community as a whole. Our success will be determined by the sum of all the individual niche communities that comprise the main community. Simply put the sum of the pieces is far greater than the sum of the one large piece. Not everyone is interested in knitting or computers. For that reason each individual community or activity needs to be its own self contained entity. By using a blog we can very easily identify and separate each activity. We will create a brand loyalty for the P and R departments based on the individual needs and wants of the people who make up the entire community.

The blog branding tool will have the following attributes.
• Overall main community
• Individual target specific niche communities
• Content that is updated through various media daily
• All natural traffic
• SEO tactics firmly entrenched for high rankings in all the major search engines
• Reader and user moderated feedback or comment sections
• Heavy one way linking attributes
• User encouraged input
• Opt-in mailing lists
• Squeeze page technology
• Audio and visual attributes
• Membership opportunities both paid and non-paid
• Autoresponders in place for mass mailings to the opt-in list
• Newsletter's generated by user content
• Monetization where appropriate
• Social bookmarking built in
• RSS feeds employed
• Create companion MySpace site (it's not only for kids)
• …and a whole list of other features and benefits

This overall blog marketing tactic should precesily and with laser accuracy pinpoint and address a very specific tool that can be effectively used and managed to help the community at large use the P and R as a solution. While powerful in its scope it is also potentially 100% turnkey if so desired and requires limited maintenance to run efficiently. Blogging when first started was nothing more than a simple and efficient way to communicate. Today blogging, in many circles, is considered to be one of the key ingredients in the emergence of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a powerful and lasting concept unlike Web 1.0. It's the new next generation of the internet. One needs look no further than the youth of America to understand and appreciate the power of this new medium. Kids today spend very little time looking at TV. If you are a traditional advertiser looking to capture market share that presents a huge challenge. If however you can think outside the box it is also a tremendous opportunity. The reason is simple. With fewer kids watching TV those companies that can capture the eyeballs of our children can narrow down significantly the playing field of competitors. It's an advertising dream come true but only if you are able to think outside the box. The kids of today are showing us where the future is by showing us today. Understand the opportunity and how it is rapidly moving across all age barriers and you will quickly understand the fabulous opportunities that the web presents for those who can take the lead.

In conclusion we feel that one very powerful and potentially viral tool that the P and R should use is the community blog approach. It allows its users to interact with others in their specific communities of interest. The power of this type of branding and marketing can not be underestimated. It is the future here today. While most large companies are scrambling to build similar systems our system has the platform and components identified and ready to integrate into an active living breathing blog. A blog that will bring the entire community together under the umbrella of the P and R and its staff of experts. It becomes the voice of the P and R as told by the users. They feel the connection and want to be a part of the process…they feel needed and they want to help as they are believers. They are the unpaid mouthpieces for the P and R that help to virally grow the business at hand…the business of connecting the staff professionals with the community. They are the ambassadors of change.