City moves forward with lake marketing efforts

Mozingo Lake, the city-owned reservoir east of town that functions as both Maryville's primary water source and a public playground, has a new name and a new logo.

As part of its ongoing effort to market the lake as a regional recreation destination, the city also has plans to unveil a new website, billboards, brochures, advertisements and branded merchandise intended to attract both local residents and out-of-towners to the 3,000-acre park.

Earlier this week, Assistant City Manager Ryan Heiland, the city's Mozingo point man, unveiled the new logo for "Mozingo Lake Recreation Park," which the city is hoping will erase confusion about what the place is called.

In the past, the lake and its surrounding acres of rolling wooded hills and grassland have been variously referred to as Mozingo Lake Recreation Area, Mozingo Lake Park, Mozingo Lake, Mozingo Lake Park and Golf Course and just plain old Mozingo.

Suffice to say previous efforts to draw attention to the multi-use area — which offers facilities for golf, RV camping, youth camping, fishing, boating, cabin rentals, hunting and horseback riding — have lacked consistency.

In recent years, as Heiland pointed out, lake amenities have been represented by at least a half-dozen logos and differing websites, including a few rogue sites not sanctioned by City Hall.

In an attempt to focus its marketing, the city partnered last year with a senior-level advertising class at Northwest Missouri State University, which came up with a couple of proposed campaigns designed to give Mozingo promotions a unified look and feel.

Over the past several weeks, city staff has worked to select what they think are the students' best ideas, which are being incorporated into what amounts to an advertising blitz.

In addition to the new name and logo, Heiland also plans to launch "Fore!" this spring. This is an interactive "marketing engine" for Mozingo Lake Golf Course that will offer online tee time reservations, a smartphone-friendly website, course updates and other player services.

The program will also allow Mozingo staff to collect customer data and monitor course usage patterns.

Golfers will be directed to the "Fore!" environment from a new Mozingo Lake Recreation Park homepage, which will also include interactive sections pertaining to other facilities, each marked with a variation of Mozingo's new tagline, "Change your ..."

Phrases such as "change your mood," "change your priorities" and change your outlook" will be accompanied by photographs of park patrons swimming, golfing, boating, jogging, fishing and participating in other outdoor activities.

The start of the campaign is more or less being timed to coincide with a "grand reopening" in early April at the golf course clubhouse, which is being remodeled.

The city has budgeted $35,000 this year for print advertising, broadcast advertising, billboards, brochures, "digital outreach," signage, merchandise and other Mozingo promotional efforts.

As with the original marketing proposals, the campaign is being implemented by Northwest students enrolled in Jacquie Lamer's advanced advertising strategies class, which will receive $1,400 from the city to cover mileage, copying costs, Internet fees and other expenses.

The new logo — based on a combination of two preliminary student designs — was created by AR Design Shop of Denver, Colo.