Design and developing of the Gelendzhik Resort City Firm Style.

Ovcharova Anna, 4^th year student of Gelendzhik Branch of Sotchi Institute of Tourism and Service; Manager of ICL company, Gelendzhik.

Every year the Gelendzhik's popularity increases. Practically, all Russian inhabitants have already visited our town.

It's the very time for making up a proper image of the town.

And one of the way of image making is the firm style. So, what is the firm style? The total firm style definition: a combination of graphic, verbal, colour, plastic, sounds methods, which combine all products and services and help to remember and take in all the activity of the firm not only its goods and services. The firm style helps to distinguish products and activities of one firm from another one.

The main components of the firm style are: the trade-mark (brand) - is actively used as the well-known trademark; the logo is a verbal trade-mark, the firm's name in any graphic way; the motto; house colour or types, that combine with the trade-mark form, created in remarkable manner and other firm constants.

Mark, that there is no a common firm style for the other resort cities of the Black Sea coast, such as Sochi and Anapa. The town emblem is generally used as the trade-mark. As for Gelendzhik, there were some attempts to work out the firm style. But they weren't successful.

Our town's authorities entrusted working out a firm style to the local design - studio "ICL", which was well recommended by the brand development projects for the Resort Complex "Nadezhda" and “Gelendzhik” Wine Complex. The marketing part of the project was held under consulting of Venco Developent Corporation.

To work out the Gelendzhik brand conception, we had to determine some up-to-date resort characteristics and properties for solving the problem.

The first step - the questionary. Visitors of the Resort Complex "Nadezhda", government of the town and managers & directors of the main resort enterprises took part in the questionary. Unfortunately, the results of the questionary in Resort Complex “Nadezhda” showed that Gelendzhik was the least famous resort town among the others pretendents such as Sochi and Anapa.

Leading today’s position of Gelendzhik is entertainment and active way of resting. Then follow: opportunity of resting with family; beaches; catering; summer holidays; availability; SPA.

The Gelendzhik’s advantages: progressivity and dynamics; accomplishment; atmosphere, availability; the nature, kindliness, hospitality; flexibility, calmness.

Potential for Gelendzhik’s development: first of all it is SPA. On the second place there are infrastructure development for a year-round resort. Then follow sports, eco-tourism; cultural and historical tourism; business tourism science and so on.

Programs that are used all year round, SPA, balneology, service quality and international tourism should be developed in future.

After that the SWOT analisys was made. It showed:

Strengths: entertainment infrustructure, investment.

Weekness: the ecology of the bay, transport, tourism infrastructure, service.

Opportunities: international tourism (airport), SPA, business tourism, ecо-tourism, cultural and historical tourism, sports, zone diversification of Gelendzhik.

Dangers: closeness to the war regions and particularly to the Chechnya.

Then we moved to the colours creating.

What images come to the mind of our visitor when he thinks about Gelendzhik? Certainly they are the sun, the sea, rocks, embankment, pine, grapes, the bay and the blue sky. So, that was the way of choosing firm colours – the colours of these associations.

Finally, there were disigned and suggested some brand samples, and the present firm style was also choosen with the help of the questionary.

So, the Gelendzhik firm style was designed ih such a way.

It was represented in tourist exhibitions in Moscow, Nice, Austria and Cannes recently. Wonderful bags with booklets about Gelendzhik were given there. The information given in the booklet informs about basic product segments and our town’s activity as a whole. It tells us about Gelendzhik’s history, its customs, sanatoria etc. English is also used in the booklet to spresd it abroad.

You can ask in what way we can use the firm style? It follows, that we can use the firm colours, logo with any product: souvenirs, clothes, graphics and etc. Really, we can use it in many ways. It’s ergent to understand the point and significance. It can help Gelendzhik to rank a significant place among other Russian and foreign resort to a considerable extent.

April 2006, Gelendzhik.