As part of an effort to promote the Centralia area as a whole, the Centralia Chamber of Commerce has launched the Inspire Community campaign. The goal of the campaign is to bring the community together by showing off the local features that make Centralia and its surrounding area appealing to residents and businesses. Executive director Marcus Holland says the campaign highlights a variety of things that make Centralia special.
“It’s all the good stuff,” Holland said. “We talk about education; that’s quality of life. We talk about recreation, top employers, and we talk about things to do, so events and all of our traditions that we have. It’s really highlighting stuff that’s already here.”
The campaign is active within Centralia and municipalities within a ten-mile radius. Holland is visiting city council and village board meetings throughout the area to discuss the campaign.
“We have a bunch of municipalities that have their own identities,” Holland said. “We aren’t trying to rebrand the community entirely, but we are trying to connect them to realize that we are connected. ‘Inspire Community, Inspire Progress, Inspire Connections,’ is what we do as a chamber. Having this Inspire Community campaign, we’re able to bring in the municipalities that are surrounding us, that support us by working here, shopping here, and using our services, but also they’re the same communities that the city of Centralia provide water to via the water treatment plant, so we are connected.”
The chamber has produced a magazine for Inspire Community along with other promotional materials funded by a $50,000 marketing grant awarded to the chamber last year by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
