Locally owned DeadCat Media came in both as low bidder at $20,000 and the firm Executive Director Maureen Hammond recommended from three proposals. The other two bids came in at roughly $30,000 each, one from 365 Total Marketing and the other from the Dealey Group.

Website Developer

“Deadcat Media already has videos and photographs and would not have to go out and get those, so I think that goes a long way,” Hammond said. “Plus they are involved in the community and would be able to view the website from that perspective.”

Branding

Hammond gave a brief report on the progress of North Star Branding, the firm contracted to produce a unified marketing strategy for Paris.

“We recently held three (Zoom) meetings with firm representatives to work through the findings from those internal and external surveys,’’ Hammond said of a steering committee composed of representatives from the three entities involved.

Of five steps in the process – community input, research, strategy formation, creative process and implementation – Hammond said the group is now in the strategy formation process.

“Next steps will be a smaller committee that will work through the creative process,” Hammond said.

Later, Hammond said the creative process should take four to six months with a report expected by the end of the year to begin the implementation phase.

Updates from PEDC

Completing her report to the board, Hammond noted that summer intern Madison Brown is completing her work.

“She did a fantastic job working on several projects,” Hammond said, adding that Brown assisted with the group’s first newsletter, designed flyers for social media posts and has imputed survey data collected from information from industrial survey visits.

After almost an hour in executive session to discuss projects by the code names Rocket X, Red Oak and Red Maple, directors took no action.

The Paris News

Mary Madewell is a staff writer for The Paris News. She can be reached at 903-785-6976 or at mary.madewell@theparisnews.com.