PETERBOROUGH has a new brand identity, above. Commissioned by Opportunity Peterborough, ‘The Future Is You’ strap line has been developed alongside a powerful and striking logo designed to reflect its ambitions.

According to Opportunity Peterborough, the new identity captures the city’s spirit – aiming to bring a sense of pride and purpose for the community. The vision will encourage a vibrant, cosmopolitan culture to energise the city centre and promote Peterborough as a desirable city in which to live, work and attract new skills and talent. It also complements Peterborough’s status as an Environment City and will engage the community to achieve its goal to be the UK’s environment capital.

The brand strategy was developed after a period of consultation with local residents, businesses and stakeholders and focuses on the community and improving their lives. The ambition of the new brand is to help each individual achieve their full potential and in doing so, live a better life. In addition, the ambition for the city is to create an economically sustainable environment in which businesses grow and flourish.

Steve Compton, Opportunity Peterborough chief executive said: “Peterborough is undergoing significant growth and regeneration to transform its economic and physical landscape for the benefit of existing and future residents, businesses, investors and visitors. Branding is not about a logo and strap line, but having a clear and consistent message that is both real and used widely when people talk about the city. Having this in Peterborough will ensure that we achieve our goals for the city.”

Cllr Graham Murphy said: “We are really proud of the new Peterborough brand. The four primary colours reflect four distinctive sectors of city life – commerce, community, environment and culture and this will be evident as the branding is introduced. The city will have so much to offer in the future and a strong and consistent identity will allow us to engage with residents and attract businesses to demonstrate this both nationally and internationally.”

Roger Hutchings, Centre Director of Queensgate Shopping Centre added: “The new identity will act as a beacon and visually represents the ambition of all who are concerned with the success of Peterborough and ensuring the city receives the recognition that it deserves. The success of Queensgate is inextricably linked to that of Peterborough; we look forward both to contributing and deriving benefit from the gains that will arise from having a clear focus for the aspirations of the city.”

Peterborough is looking to engage the business community and to those living in Peterborough and the region to put these values into practice through its City Bondholder Scheme. It enables everyone, both businesses and individuals, to collectively make a difference to the future of Peterborough.

Organisations can participate as a Sponsor or Champion and individuals as an Ambassador, according to the time, expertise, resource or financial support they provide. Businesses will benefit from becoming advocates of the City Bondholder Scheme through joint marketing and promotion initiatives. Ambassadors have the opportunity to become spokespeople for the city. To find out more and get involved go to: www.opportunitypeterborough.co.uk/citybondholderscheme.

The consultation with residents, businesses and other stakeholders provided detailed responses on what they felt the community needed to best achieve the goals of building 25,000 new homes, attracting 40,000 new people and 20,000 new jobs via the agreed £1 billion investment projects by 2021. A stronger identity for the existing community alongside a recognisable brand both in the UK and internationally was key to the feedback and has formed the first step towards achieving these goals.