Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Warren Worx Marketing Director Jenny Phillips speaks during Wednesday’s Warren Worx stakeholders meeting held at the Tidioute Community Charter School.

It’s no small feat to capture the essence of 39,000 people.

But that’s the task that Truth Collective has been tasked with by Warren Worx as part of a branding process.

And the initial fruits of that effort were discussed Wednesday night at the September Warren Worx stakeholder meeting.

The session was held at the Tidioute Community Charter School.

Jenny Phillips, Warren Worx marketing director said the firm, Truth Collective, has provided a creative brief to the initiative’s organizers.

That document outlines “that they’ve learned” based on meetings and conversations with people throughout the community about “what makes Warren County special.”

Traits identified include the environment and recreation, affordable living, strong family and community ties, safety, convenient proximity to other cities and a rich culture and history.

“They’re going to create a vision for Warren County,” Phillips said. “These are some of what they found to be core common values” — independence, resourcefulness, resilience, ‘big-hearted,’ nature living.

“We’re part of one county,” she added, “but we all have our separate charm, what our community is made of.”

The first draft vision statement: “A vibrant people united in the beauty of life and land.”

The first mission statement: “To nurture a thriving community that honors its rich heritage, shared entrepreneurial spirit and the natural beauty in our cherished home.”

“The first pass isn’t always going to be perfect,” Phillips acknowledged. “I think the focus is a little … bit less of what we don’t have but what do we have to make it attractive to have people want to come here?”

She questioned whether the mission and vision capture enough of the county’s economic capacity.

“Are we being too outdoorsy?” she added. “Our resources, our land is great.” But it is clear “that we have a great industrial variety here in Warren?”

The mission and vision and all the feedback offered to Truth Collective will be boiled down to a logo and tagline.

That logo and tagline will then be shared with entities around the county to use but also for Warren Worx to use directly as it developed what WCCBI Senior Vice President John Papalia called a “strategic marketing plan.”

“It’s collaboration and commonality,” he said of the branding piece, “so we’re all kind of singing that same song.”

Papalia stressed the importance of being able to pitch the concept to people in the county.

“The more we can get out there and try to explain this, it’s a lot easier to talk to people in person and explain what we’re trying to do.”

To that end, Phillips said they’ll be pitching Warren Worx to the marketing class at the Warren County Career Center next week with the goal of forming a Warren Worx junior committee.

“We have to engage students,” Papalia said.

The rest of Wednesday’s session focused on updates from the four Warren Worx subcommittees — Business development, Quality of Life, Community Revitalization and Marketing.

Papalia told the stakeholders that business surveys will be hitting the streets in the next week to gather data from larger employers and small businesses about where employees are coming from and challenges with finding employees “so we can really have that baseline.”

He also provided an update on one of the first identified projects — Starlink mobile hotspots in communities throughout Warren County.

The goal is to have free wi-fi in a common space in Tidioute, Sugar Grove, Sheffield, Warren and Youngsville, “lean(ing) on the communities” to identify those locations.

“We’ve broken that down into some costs,” he said, noting that it would cost $25,000 for three years.

He said they’ll be reaching out to foundations and crafting a business sponsor form to raise funds toward that goal.

“The goal is to have this in place by April 1st-ish,” he said, so they can “take that first little project win here.”

The community revitalization group, he added, is “gathering all the studies we can find, looking into buildings of disrepair” as well as take steps to form revitalization groups (like Revitalization of Youngsville — ROY — or Revitalization of Akeley and Russell) in communities that don’t have such a group.

“The idea being trying to get the people together,” Papalia said, forming the group under the auspices of Warren Worx to “keep the barrier small for them.

“Establishing those revitalization groups in each community is essential.”

“More involvement across everything earlier on in the process is going to be key for whatever one vision we end up with,” City of Warren Councilman Jared Villella said.

He acknowledged that it’s “great when people come out” but said “too many times things get to the end and then we have more people jumping in.”