A county-wide rebranding effort began in earnest this week when a tourism consulting firm contracted with Rowan began soliciting proposals from companies across the United States.

A public request for proposals was approved Thursday during a rebranding task force meeting. The task force also picked 12 advertising and marketing firms to directly ask for proposals. During the meeting, Magellan Strategies Group Founder Chris Cavanaugh said he would start distributing the request, which is open to any firm, on Friday. The total budget for the work that’s requested of a firm is $200,000. The total budget for the entire rebranding is $500,000.

The ten-page request for proposals lays out project objectives and components of the rebranding that would be requested by Rowan County.

“We see this not simply as a project, but as a process,” the request for proposals states. “The community brand must be created through a rigorous, inclusive methodology, for which the final project deliverable is merely a starting point for growing and staining the brand.”

Among the items listed in the request for proposals is:

• developing visual and verbal brand identity options with logos and taglines

• identify how the new brand fits within the community

• developing a “brand architecture” showing county and municipal entities how to adapt to the new brand

• conducting presentations and workshops for Rowan County stakeholders and residents. The workshops would be free and open to the public, Tourism Director James Meacham said.

Meacham said a final product of the county’s rebranding would likely be ready in early 2016. The deadline for request for proposals is June 19. Work by the selected firm is scheduled to start on August 1.

Text in the request for proposals largely echoes a presentation made by Cavanaugh to the task force on Thursday.

Cavanaugh talked about getting the entire community to buy into a new brand. He emphasized the county using a master brand, meaning Rowan’s logos and symbols could include one or more identical symbols. Cavanaugh also suggested getting municipalities from around Rowan County to adopt parts of Rowan’s rebranding. Salisbury, for example, might use a logo or signage that would resemble Rowan’s.

In his presentation to the task force, Cavanaugh listed several critical elements of any rebranding, including the image projected being credible and providing incentive for entities, such as a business.

He used Las Vegas becoming a family friendly destination as an example of a place that wouldn’t be credible. He used a personal experience at Disney World to describe a universal community adoption of an image.

Cavanaugh said a local firm could be chosen to conduct the rebranding, but specific marketing and advertising groups presented were being presented as suggestions because of the companies’ history. Some of the groups suggested by Cavanaugh were local, but most were based in other states. Two are from New York, for example. Some firms are relatively small in comparison. Others didn’t have quite as much experience with rebranding a county.

Contact reporter Josh Bergeron at 704-797-4246.