This year UNESCO designated the Joggins Fossil Cliffs a World Heritage Site. How the submission came together is a case study in teamwork

Chiselled by the highest tides in the world, the cliffs at Joggins, N.S., are the most complete and accessible known vista of the Coal Age anywhere on Earth. Mentioned in Darwin’s Origin of Species and espoused by Sir Charles Lyell, the father of modern geology, the Joggins custodians knew they had a great shot at being named Canada’s 14th UNESCO World Heritage Site, but they wanted to ensure that a multi-purpose toolkit was a practical legacy of that effort.

The Cumberland Regional Economic Development Association (CREDA) and MT&L Public Relations Ltd. of Halifax needed to develop a brand to market the fossil cliffs and a new state-of-the-art interpretive centre to the general public. “We tried to make the World Heritage application fit with UNESCO standards but also develop a set of tools that we could use outside of the application,” says Jenna Boon, the director of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs Interpretive Centre.

The nomination dossier and a promotional video created for UNESCO were reproduced thousands of times for distribution as gifts, tourist information, and at public presentations. “Although a major goal was to get the UNESCO designation, if we didn’t get it, we would still have a world-class promotional package,” says Boon. “Those tools would be multi-purpose, not just used once and put on UNESCO’s shelf in Paris.”

Boon emphasized the need for the marketing team to experience the site firsthand. “We had the design people from MT&L come on-site and do an interpretive walk on the beach,” she says. “We provided them with volumes of material and had an action team of various partners collaborate with them, including government and non-government organizations.”

MT&L joined the marketing campaign after CREDA was given the green light to build the new centre and begin the UNESCO -designation process. “One of the first things we were tasked with was solving the brand identity,” says Sarah Young, a principal at MT&L. “It was also developing the brand, the collateral, and the UNESCO dossier.”

The project had many stakeholders and audience groups to engage while keeping the local community involved and supportive. MT&L was attracted to the challenge of communicating the brand both locally and globally.

With the UNESCO designation far from secured, CREDA and MT&L didn’t even consider a Plan B; all of the work was held to a world-class standard. “Knowing that the UNESCO process was going on reminded us that, despite the media attention, the competition for Joggins included iconic places like the Galapagos Islands,” says Paul Black, a senior consultant at MT&L. “If we ever started to think colloquially, we would remind ourselves that if somebody from Italy sees this, it somehow has to resonate with them too. The overriding thing to keep in the forefront when we were in development was that the experience was tactile. It was something that you were participating in, the antithesis of a theme park.”

Given three choices by the design team, CREDA and the Fossil Cliffs Interpretive Centre chose a logo portraying the cliffs and a footprint of the oldest known reptile discovered at Joggins. “We chose what best represented our mission,” says Boon, “and because we had a master concept of the power of the cliffs, it was pretty straightforward to stick with this imagery.” The team used a variety of methods to communicate the brand, including print materials, media, newsletters, public presentations, and the Internet.

In July, the UNESCO designation was announced. Hits on the centre’s web site exploded, as did visitors and merchandise sales. There was a collective “hoot of joy” for the team’s success, says Boon. The success marks the beginning of a new era for Joggins.