(KNZA)--" Hiawatha: The most boring town you'll ever love."

That’s the branding slogan chosen for a campaign to promote the community.

Rick Nobles, with Excellence K12, has been working with the city, USD 415, the Hiawatha Foundation for Economic Development and the Hiawatha Chamber and Visitors Bureau on a branding campaign to attract visitors and new residents to the community.

Nobles presented the Hiawatha City Commission Monday evening with three print ads developed for the first phase of the campaign that include the branding slogan.

It was developed based on an on-line survey that was conducted this past winter.  318 people participated in the survey, with 61 percent of those living in Hiawatha.  “ Boring” and “ Mayberrish” were the two words respondents used to describe the community.  

Nobles said the key to branding is to embrace what you are. “I can tell you categorically no other town is claiming boring as their watchword, so it’s different. It does actually resonate, but only for a special kind of people, and that just happens to be the people who are already here, and who love being here, and love visiting here, and I’m going to include myself in that because I fell in love with the town the first time I saw it.”

Nobles said the 1st target of the campaign, which will be conducted through an email blast system, will be Hiawatha residents. “Want to gather email addresses of everyone we can in the town, and we send them a monthly newsletter. The newsletter will have the ads in it, but that’s not the focal point. The focal point of the newsletter is stories about the town, and about its history. It’ll be a little bit of what events are going on that you can attend, features on different attractions.”

The campaign, which will run through the end of the year, will cost $7,500, with the cost to be split between the four participating entities.

The Commission voted to move forward with the campaign, with the city’s share of the cost being $1,875.