Chambers County’s branding initiative is now in its fourth year and still going strong. The idea has been championed by the Chambers County Development Authority, and the citizen response has been excellent.

That’s a good thing. It’s an identity for our place in the world, and we should be proud of it. It’s our heritage and a way to honor our forbearers who got us here.

The Strength Woven In logo is on county vehicles, on stationery, on web sites, on banners displayed on utility poles, on property tax bills – almost any place you can think of with a Chambers County connection.

Four years ago, a local branding committee put in many volunteer hours trying to get three Chambers County cities, three towns, two school systems, a hospital, and a library to get on board with the idea of a unifying brand. Early on, some 13 logos were created, each one with the Strength Woven In tagline with an image unique to that city, town, school system and so on. What kind of image do you think the library wanted? An open book, of course. The branding campaign allowed Bradshaw-Chambers County Library the opportunity to get across their mission to get people to read more.

Just one year into the campaign, in 2015, Chambers County won a statewide award for the campaign.

The enthusiasm for our brand is still high after four years, and its biggest proponent, Kimberly Carter of the CCDA, is as fired-up about it as she was in year one.

“The branding committee isn’t done yet,” she recently told us. “We plan to continue forward by getting the remaining municipalities completed, getting the private schools in the process and to update our websites.”

Intentions are to have a full countywide marketing plan for the brand and to work on marketing the brand beyond Chambers County.

We think there’s already been some success in that regard. There’s an old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. County officials have already been contacted by representatives of other counties seeking advice for a branding campaign  for their county.

When you get requests like that, somebody has been doing something right.