In August we will open the new Waterloo Greenway downtown - a new 5 000 seat outdoor amphitheatre & park that is going to be an amazing new music venue for locals and tourists to go to.
#Texas city keep it weird full
It’s two weekends in October and without even publicising the full schedule, they sold out both weekends in under three hours. We have the Austin City Limits music festival here every year. There's such a pent-up demand for people to get back to seeing live music. It was about making sure that as many of our music venues survived so that there'd be a place for people to play, because it's such a part of who Austin is. We had to keep our musicians here employed, to make sure that as we came out of this pandemic that we were going to be the same Austin.
It's a big part of who we are and we really celebrate music here in Austin! Through this pandemic, one of the things our organisation was proudest of was helping support those musicians when they were out of work by hiring them to do virtual gigs. The fact of the matter is there was a large music community here, there were a lot of venues, and talented artists here, and local people passionate about music. Where did the initial inspiration come for your positioning as ‘Live Music Capital of the World®’? It’s interesting to see that it’s pulling through to your current campaign of ‘It’s better here live.’ People have heard the story of Austin, and they've heard people come back and say “I had that experience, and it's exactly what they say it is and you need to try it too.” I don't think you can get there without your local community being a part of that story. I’ve never been there, but I hear so much about how great it is, I just need to get there.” The brand is so strong, and that goes a long way. I’ve had people tell me “Austin is my favourite city in America. In its core Austin is a small music town / college town / southern state capitol kind of place, but still a place with amazing culinary and retail opportunities and parks and trails and tech… when people come here, they really experience what they expect to see. I think it's really important that there's a charm about Austin - it's kind of a very big small town and we want to stay fundamentally a small town. They didn't want to lose what made Austin different and local brands and local businesses are a big part of what makes Austin special.
It's like the whole “let's keep Austin weird” which was started by local businesses who wanted to differentiate themselves away from big chains. The authenticity of Austin really rings through with people that come to visit as well as our residents – and that’s absolutely key. You don't want to manufacture something that really isn't reflective of your destination it's not going to sell and it's going to disappoint a lot of people. We have a new ad campaign ‘It's better live.’ It’s a spin on our positioning as the Live Music Capital of the World®, but it is not only live music - culinary is better here live, our parks and trails are better experienced here live, our venues, all of those things that make up Austin are all better experienced live, and it fits with our branding and the real experience you find in Austin. When you talk about your place the first thing it needs to be is honest, real, authentic, and it needs to be reflective what your community can offer visitors. To start with, can you share what place branding means to you? Austin has seen phenomenal growth in recent decades, but what does this mean for the future of the city’s place brand proposition? We reached out to Tom Noonan, President & CEO at Visit Austin, to understand how they’ve been managing the momentum of their growth and what they’ve done to support their local residents and businesses as they recover from COVID-19.
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