Destination Branding Project

Puyallup Always in Season

Contact Us

  1. Eric Johnson

    Public Affairs Officer
    Email
    Phone: 253-770-3370

  2. Meredith Neal

    Economic Development Manager
    Email
    Phone: 253-841-5496

Summary

The City has hired a consultant to assist with destination branding and tourism. This project aims to create a marketing campaign that highlights all the cool things about Puyallup the downtown core and helps Puyallup to be known as a place where people want to be, and that is attractive to both locals and visitors.

To assist us, the City has hired Rotator Creative, out of Tacoma, who embarked on a series of outreach methods to gain an understanding of what makes Puyallup a destination for visitors. Over the course of several months, Rotator engaged with local stakeholders and the community at large. The results of these findings were presented to the project team and City Council, with a plan for attracting visitors to Puyallup. The new tourism brand campaign is called "Puyallup Always in Season." The following webpage details the project and where we are in the process.

  1. Background

Background

Retail, hospitality (food and hotel accommodations), and tourism are critical to the livelihood of Puyallup, bringing billions of dollars into the local economy and employing tens of thousands of workers. Spending by locals and tourists has a real and measurable positive impact on our economy. COVID-19 had a devastating impact on retail, hospitality, and tourism in the City of Puyallup, with a 25 percent decline in food and hotel accommodation spending at the start of the pandemic, and a slow crawl back to normal numbers. The historic cancellation of the Washington State Fair in the fall of 2020, along with the cancellation of numerous associated events such as the popular summer concert series, led to a loss of over $1 million in ticket sales taxes alone. Events at the Fair and downtown Puyallup draw almost 4 million visitors annually to our city, with about $50 million of indirect spending at local businesses.

Building on this success of a marketing campaign to shop and dine locally in downtown Puyallup during the winter of 2020, the City applied for and was awarded $40,000 in Lodging Tax Funds to continue its destination marketing efforts.

In 2021, the City sent out a Request For Proposals (RFP) to hire a marketing consultant that would help create a brand for Puyallup and incorporate it into a tourism marketing campaign. The City received 12 responses and selected Rotator Creative to lead this project.

In Spring 2022, Rotator kicked off the project and held a Design Charrette. In attendance at the Charette were residents, City Councilmembers, business owners, non-profits, and other stakeholders. At the meetings, Rotator engaged the group through a series of exercises to get them thinking about what make Puyallup cool. Rotator took that feedback, along with some additional outreach at the Farmers Market that summer, and presented Council with some design recommendations. 

In January 2023, after conducting extensive outreach to the community and meeting internally with City staff, Rotator presented their final design concept recommendation to Council. Council expressed tremendous support for the final design and directed staff to begin working on the Implementation Plan. In February 2023, staff presented the Implementation Plan to Council along with a request to use ARPA funds to fund a portion of the Plan. Council approved $100,000 in ARPA funds to be used for Phase One and a portion of Phase Two of the Implementation Plan.

  1. Outreach
  1. Contact
  1. Documents