Hamilton wants the world to know it’s no longer Canada’s Steel City.
The city is aiming to shatter old stereotypes as it rebrands itself to highlight its newly diversified economy, says Michael Marini, coordinator, marketing of the City of Hamilton’s Economic Development Division.
That’s why it’s now calling itself “the ambitious city,” a moniker it once had in the early 1900s. “From a marketing perspective, we’ve been extremely aggressive,” Marini says.
He says the city has a growing culinary scene with “funky, cool eateries” popping up, many of which are helmed by chefs from Toronto. In fact, foodie tours have emerged as a major component of Hamilton’s efforts to change perceptions about the city.
A foodie tour last February was successful in generating investment and foodie interest and garnered Hamilton a Marketing Canada Award from the Economic Developers Association of Canada, Marini says.
Another all-day foodie tour is slated for Nov. 13 with stops at 10 eateries, mostly in the rejuvenating downtown core, which is attracting increasing numbers of young professionals and empty nesters.
When thousands of manufacturing jobs went overseas or down South in the 1980s, Hamilton lost its swagger and its right to call itself ambitious, Marini says. But the swagger is back, he says.
While steel is still a large part of the economy, the city is now ranked as Canada’s most diversified economy by the Conference Board of Canada. That diversification has helped lower Hamilton’s unemployment rate to 5.7%, below the national average of 7%.
Hamilton has seen “exponential economic growth” in the last five years, Marini says, with the city of about 520,000 increasingly known for its healthcare and scientific research industries.
Refugees from the Greater Toronto Area are fuelling the growth as they flee astronomical house prices and traffic jams. “A lot of people in the GTA are starting to look at Hamilton,” says Marini.
According to Marini, Torontonians who work in creative industries such as graphic design or web and app development and are getting hard hit by the city’s rent and house prices are increasingly looking at Hamilton as a viable alternative in terms of prices and quality of life.
Some observers, like the Huffington Post, have taken to calling Hamilton Canada’s answer to Brooklyn.
To catch the interest of disgruntled Toronto suburbanites, the city released a YouTube video in 2012 that urged them to “wake up from your commuting nightmare” and live, work and play in downtown Hamilton.
Meanwhile, a print ad asks: “You know what beats commuting to downtown Toronto every day? Having a life.” And another print ad notes that studio space in downtown Hamilton is less than half the price of Toronto.
For the most part, however, marketing efforts for Hamilton have been online, with a two-year-old YouTube video called “Hamilton – The Ambitious City” leading the way with more than 48,000 views.
While many marketers may say “big deal, we do that in a day for some of our campaigns,” you have to compare apples to apples, Marini notes. “When you look at economic development videos, you don’t generally think of 50,000 views. You may get a couple hundred because, basically, you’re selling your community to investors.”
Focusing the marketing effort online is cost-effective and provides the city with significant data, he says. “That data really shows us where we have to focus our efforts – what cities, what countries, even what topics we need to be covering.”
When it comes to targeting international investment, analytics are very helpful in determining which countries are most interested in Hamilton and in what sectors. “We’re starting to glean a lot of hard data which helps us in the end make a sale or get an investment for the city.”
