IDEA Mississauga – Brand Identity

Purpose
As a major contributor to Canada’s Innovation Centre, and its strategic location within the Toronto-Waterloo Innovation Corridor, it was important for Mississauga to create a brand for its Innovation District that would be locally and globally recognized as a critical asset that provides resources to support and nurture entrepreneurs and help scale-ups grow and be prosperous.

To help  achieve this, we hired a marketing agency, Good & Ready to create an  identity for Mississauga’s innovation district – IDEA Mississauga, a vibrant and bold brand that will support the following objectives: Position Mississauga as a global leader of innovation;  Be replicable across all City-owned innovation assets to demonstrate a unified and connected ecosystem; Create a sense of place for start-up/scale-up across the region to gather and  Celebrates Mississauga’s innovation success stories.  The brand will also leverage Mississauga’s unique value proposition and build awareness of Mississauga as a hub of creative and innovative activity where talent and business thrive.

Understanding that Mississauga’s innovation ecosystem was not previously defined, we anticipate that a brand for Mississauga’s Innovation District – IDEA Mississauga will take some years to be adopted locally, regionally and globally.   With aggressive marketing and promotional tactics in place we hope to build awareness of Mississauga’s innovation district and strengthen and grow our innovation business community.

Effectiveness/Meeting Objectives
The creation of IDEA Mississauga has proven to be more than an identity for our city’s innovation district, it has established a dynamic platform to showcase our city’s innovation assets and has created a community where entrepreneurs and innovators can learn, collaborate and scale-up their business.   Since the IDEA Mississauga brand launch in February 2022, we have seen the following notable outcomes:

• Our internal and external stakeholders and existing partners have adopted our brand and continue to amplify this brand through cross promotions and referrals
• IDEA Mississauga’s innovation and entrepreneur community has grown in the following ways:
• 2,000 IDEA branded social channels (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook)
• 11,000 total users on IDEAmississauga.ca
• 3,600 Subscribers to IDEA e-newsletterIn April 2022, the City of Mississauga announced IDEA Mississauga’s first anchor location IDEA Square One, an innovation and co-working hub located in Square Once Shopping Centre that will offer services, programs and collaboration space. This will be the first opportunity of many to apply the IDEA brand to a physical innovation asset.

Challenges
While developing a new identity for Mississauga’s Innovation District, it was critical to involve our existing innovation and entrepreneurial stakeholders to get their buy-in as a key part of IDEA Mississauga – Mississauga’s Innovation District.  To help with this endeavour, we included our partners throughout the development of the new brand which included extensive consultation, brand testing with existing clients and unanimous consensus on the final brand name and design.

Throughout the process the group worked together on a value proposition that was aligned with all partners’ strategic positioning, and although time consuming, the end product spoke to the true essence of what IDEA Mississauga is. 

Target Audience (demographics)
IDEA Mississauga’s primary demographic group includes Start-Up and Scale-Up Entrepreneurs.  The Secondary target group is our innovation ecosystem that includes:  Public Sector Partners, Business Leaders & Educators, Internal City Partners, Established Local Business Investors and Foreign Business Investors.

Sustainability of Project
As part of IDEA Mississauga’s value proposition, IDEA Mississauga offers programs that focus on sustainability, and inclusivity and support growing businesses contribute to social and environmental change.