Fairborn Pivot

The City of Fairborn didn’t want a bland piece of paper with statistics and data for its annual report. Instead, Fairborn wanted to inform its citizens with something modern that reflected its development as a city and embodied its motto: “A City In Motion.”

Fairborn’s foundation is built on a rich tradition of heritage, values, and innovation. As a merging of two cities nearly 70 years ago, Fairborn is a melting pot of citizens from all over the country, drawn because of the high quality of life. Known for a continually advancing school system, extended educational opportunities, a historical downtown, and a vast parks system, Fairborn is a unique community dedicated to its citizens and their goals.

Wilderness Agency, an agency well-known for their passion for southern Ohio, partnered with the city to develop a living document that would continue to grow as the city does. Fairborn recognized that with a progressive, story-based annual report, they could change how they were perceived by businesses and residents.

An Interactive Way to Deliver Information

The report became an accessible, evergreen microsite. Pivot grew out of the need to tell a different story – to Fairborn’s residents about Fairborn’s residents. The microsite needed to showcase the economic growth and progression the city was experiencing as well as display the contributions and attributes the area already had.

By focusing the site on the businesses that were finding success in Fairborn, this positioned Fairborn as a business-friendly city eager to help entrepreneurs grow.

Wright-Patt Air Force Base has always been a major drive for the economy in the city, but new leadership wanted to foster innovation and make it easy for small or big businesses to get their start. Fairborn approaches these opportunities with zero B.S, cutting out the red-tape and allowing for an easier path for businesses to begin their journey.

Through this new approach and outside-the-box thinking, the city was able to help give support to innovative new businesses and lay the foundation for a kitchen incubator, and those stories fueled the Pivot website.

Using content from the website, Wilderness then worked with Fairborn and the Dayton Business Journal to deliver the stories directly to the desks of entrepreneurs and C-level executives with a special supplement within the business newspaper.

Fairborn Becomes A Leader

Overall, the new approach to what started as an annual report project helped to position Fairborn as a leading economic development player.

The response was positive, and the change in perception continues and as more economic possibilities arise. Fairborn and its participative citizens are excited about the direction their community is going and recognize that growth is a team effort between the city, chamber, businesses, and schools as they move Fairborn forward.