Survey About Reston: The Brand Underway, Could Result in Giant Indoor Pickleball/ Waterpark/ Biophilic Pleasure Dome, Maybe

Among your voluminous electronic correspondence from deposed Nigerian royalty and purveyors of discount medication, you may have received an "electronic message" with an equally mysterious subject: PLEASE HELP US SHAPE THE FUTURE OF RESTON. And apparently, that future may involve some sweeeet indoor pickleball courts, a water park, and some rockin' keggers at the Leaky Lake House.

Something called the "Brand Consultancy" is conducting a survey on behalf of our beloved Reston Association to get a sense of RA's, um, brand. Survey questions ask us, the lowly lumpen Restonians, if we think the RA "is on the cutting edge of environmental needs," "helps make Reston a better place to live," "are easy to work with," and (and if this isn't a misguided consultant-generated bit of branding gobbledygook, we don't know what is) "the premier service provider for Reston." Then there's this question, which prompted us to hastily cover the screen of our laptop in case the kids happened to walk by:

Then we get to the meat of the survey, which asks what kinds of services our plastic fantastic homeowners association should consider adding. Some are things people have talked about for a loooong time, like indoor or all-year tennis courts. Others build on existing initiatives, including indoor/all-year pickleball courts. Others are... interesting.

"Once the data and results are received by RA, the association will be better positioned to make decisions about how to serve its members’ needs now and in the future," the association's weekly email states.

We'll leave it to others to debate the wisdom of a giant, RA-run indoor water park, and just close this informative blog post with what those of us in the marketing biz (or at least got most of the way through Season 2 of Mad Men) like to call a positioning statement:

... and scene.