Brand Gold Coast chair Melissa Donnelly reveals vision

It’s long been the Glitter Strip, the Goldie, the tourist capital. But Melissa Donnelly has a new way of seeing our city.

It’s goodbye and good riddance to the Glitter Strip.

It might be a catchy title, but Brand Gold Coast’s brand new chair Melissa Donnelly says it’s no longer a catch-all for this city.

In fact, after just one board meeting of the City of Gold Coast’s new place-branding body, Ms Donnelly is done with the ‘glitter strip’ denomination, saying the tarnished title simply does not reflect the city’s style and substance.

However, she’s the first to admit that the Coast is undergoing something of an identity crisis.

But for Ms Donnelly, this crisis is not a problem but an incredible opportunity to unite this city.

Appointed in October as inaugural chair of Brand Gold Coast after council, in June, resolved to establish a place-branding controlled entity to be formed as a proprietary limited company, Ms Donnelly said it was a privilege to help define what the Gold Coast stands for and why people should choose to live, work, visit and invest here.

“Describing the Gold Coast as ‘the glitter strip’ or ‘the tourism capital’ is easy, but it’s not who we really are … at best, it’s a tiny fraction of who we are,” said Ms Donnelly.

“The City of Gold Coast has acknowledged we have a brand problem, there is brand confusion. It’s not terrible, but it is a sort of identity crisis, and our job is to explore that … to reshape the story and the narrative of the city. We’re clearing the table and resetting it.

“The mandate of Brand Gold Coast is to build a place-based brand strategy for the Gold Coast, it’s about understanding and articulating what we stand for as a place. It’s not just thinking about how other people perceive us, it’s about how do we think about ourselves as the Gold Coast? I mean residents, people who visit here, people who work here, people who commute here, people who invest here, people who own businesses here, our First Nations community.

“We want to find out what’s the story we tell ourselves, what describes who we are as a community … and why should you care? Why should you choose to live here? Why should you choose to visit here? Why should you choose to buy into us?”

Melissa Donnelly, the new head of Brand Gold Coast. Picture: Glenn Campbell.

Ms Donnelly said the primary task of Brand Gold Coast was not to create a new logo, tagline or campaign, but to listen.

She said the team would create a strategy, to be implemented by the soon-to-be-named CEO, with the intention that it would help inform every decision made by every stakeholder in the city.

“The way I explain it is it’s like the scaffolding for a building, and all of the work you then do hangs off it. We give that underlying form and shape to everything to provide a framework for decision-making.

“Our first step is a listening tour, deep consultation and strategy development, then there will be our CEO who will be responsible for the execution and operational side of things.

“This is not about imposing a new set of rules, but pulling out the elements that we already believe in. We have amazing assets already in our entities like Experience Gold Coast and the new Invest Gold Coast, and finding our core brand will ensure we are aligned and co-ordinated, it will help us all sing from the same song sheet.”

With the first board meeting already conducted, an imminent CEO announcement and a second board meeting scheduled for Monday, Ms Donnelly said the Brand Gold Coast environment was energised.

The board is stacked with superstars, including Culture Kings founder Simon Beard, former journalist, market and social research professional and strategic counsel Leanne White and strategic adviser in business transformation Stephen Forth.

Tragically, just weeks after being appointed to the board, Medibank chief marketing officer Lisa Ronson was killed in an accident on her farm outside Melbourne.

“She will always be part of this inaugural board. We have marked that moment and she remains in our memory, it was just such an absolute tragedy and our hearts have gone out to her family,” said Ms Donnelly.

“There is a vacancy on the board, but she will never be replaced.”

Ms Donnelly said all board members were motivated to serve the city because they believed in its enormous potential.

She said being appointed as inaugural chair was a career highlight and a role she didn’t realise she had been searching for.

After choosing to move to the Gold Coast almost 15 years ago and establishing her business Affinity Communications, she said she wanted to ‘crack the code’ to the city.

“There are so many success stories here but we’re all sort of doing our own thing and off in our silos and not working together, not even knowing there are so many nuggets of gold out there,” she said.

“I became obsessed with how I could help bring us together and amplify what we have to offer. There’s nothing to be won by being the best kept secret.

“Then I saw the Expressions of Interest for Brand Gold Coast, and I was like, I tick every box here and this ticks every box for me.

“Absolute kudos to the City of Gold Coast because what they’ve done is so radical and entrepreneurial and I believe will set a global standard.”

Melissa Donnelly, the new head of Brand Gold Coast. Picture: Glenn Campbell.

As a communications, marketing and branding specialist who has worked for household names including MTV, Microsoft and ESPN, Ms Donnelly was familiar with the Gold Coast well before she moved her family here.

In fact, after starting her first business at the age of 21, she landed a contract for Telstra Mobile which saw her run the corporate suites and entertainment at the city’s first Indy Car World Series event in 1991.

With husband Michael, she later moved with their two children to Dubai, where she worked as global brand head for Thuraya, a company formed in partnership with Boeing and the Abu Dhabi Royal Family.

“I was the only Western woman in the whole company, it was an amazing experience, in equal measures challenging and it could be pretty brutal, but incredibly interesting,” she said.

“When I started, my mandate was to launch their new brand that they had developed and we realised within about a day that it wasn’t a workable brand.

“So we flipped the whole thing and we launched a new brand in 145 countries just six months later.

“We physically wrapped our entire building in the new identity for the staff reveal, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are places for invention and reinvention.”

While Australia, and especially councils, might be more commonly wrapped in red tape, Ms Donnelly said creating change was her favourite hobby.

It was one of the reasons she joined the board of the Domestic Violence Prevention Centre, only stepping down as chair last month after serving the maximum three years.

“Seeing the change that the organisation has made is incredible. It’s radically different,” she said.

“Sitting at my last AGM, the most incredible thing was seeing that so many of the ambitions articulated by (former CEO) Rosemary O’Malley are now coming through.

“In DVPC, the ultimate priority and privilege was to listen to those unheard voices.

“In a way, that’s the same skillset used for Brand Gold Coast, finding those stories that need to be heard and finding out how we can change our city for the better.”