Gympie council adopts new branding

After decades of Gympie’s reputation being dragged through the mud, councillors are fixing hope on its subregions with a new brand attracting tourists to its mountains, rivers, valleys and shores.

Visit Gympie Region is getting a rebrand.

The region of Gympie is to get a tourism rebrand with hopes it will lead to a fresh appeal.

The decision comes with the tension of trying to find a brand that matches the vast differences between the coastal, country, city and gentrifying southern areas which fall within the Gympie region.

Councillor Bob Fredman said the current brand was “uninspiring” and asked if they could “selectively use the subregions, which quite frankly, do sound worth visiting.”

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Councillors Jess Milne and Bob Fredman both had strong views over the importance of a good marketing and tourism brand.

He said the message to send should be “exciting, more appealing, and a place you’ve got to visit.”

“We’ve got the sea, we’ve got the trees and we’ve got whatever it is out west,” he said.

Councillor Jess Milne moved the motion and said she was glad to have a uniform approach to use collectively across the region as tourism played a continued role in the economy of Cooloola Coast.

Gympie’s brand and tourism falls under the peak tourism body of Visit Sunshine Coast, which also includes Sunshine Coast and Noosa. While it comes with marketing restraints, it provides tourism operators with a greater network of resources.

The new rebrand of a logo, font and colours were completed in-house with advice from Gympie councillors and Visit Sunshine Coast.

The new rebrand of a logo, font and colours were completed in-house with advice from Gympie councillors and Visit Sunshine Coast.

Gympie councillors unanimously voted to adopt a new font, logo, and primary colour palette composed of teal and crème, and a secondary colour palette of dark pastel green, yellow, blue and burnt orange.

The rebrand comes in time for the 2023 updated tourism brochure, along with the opening of the new Traveston Visitor Information Centre.

The next step is to decide on the rebranding of the sub regions around Gympie, which currently includes Cooloola Coast, Mary Valley, the West and Gympie CBD. This is scheduled to happen in July 2023.

Gympie, named after a painful plant, has often been the brunt of jokes after a 1997 Penthouse article labelled it “hell town” and shttowns of Australia recently unearthed alleged reasons to avoid the city.

But ‘the town that saved Queensland’ will soon have its shiny new tourism brand which gives a long list of valid reasons about why visitors should spend time and money in the picturesque region.