New name, bigger mission: Here’s how BRAC is reinventing itself

Downtown Baton Rouge. (Tim Mueller)

As part of a broad strategic shift, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber is dropping the word “chamber” from its name and leaning more heavily into its role as a full-fledged regional economic development organization.

In a meeting with Business Report’s editorial team last week, BRAC President and CEO Lori Melancon explained that the rebrand isn’t just cosmetic. It’s about better aligning the organization’s identity with the work it’s already doing—work that she says goes far beyond what most people associate with a traditional chamber of commerce. While a chamber typically focuses on supporting its members and advocating for their interests, an economic development organization tends to focus on more macro-level goals like attracting new businesses, retaining existing businesses and enhancing economic infrastructure.

“When we’re out there talking to companies, especially internationally, they’re like, ‘Chamber?’ They think of what a chamber does as being very different from what we do as an economic development group. That’s always kind of been in our way,” Melancon said.

The rebrand is expected to be formally announced in October to coincide with BRAC’s 20th anniversary celebration. While the new name is being kept under wraps for now, it will include the words “Greater Baton Rouge” to reflect the full geographic scope of the organization’s work. BRAC will also launch a revamped website in October that will more aggressively market the Capital Region for business investment.

The name change and the website revamp are just two small steps in a much larger repositioning effort. BRAC is currently in the early stages of organizing a regional “visioning exercise” that will see key stakeholders from a wide variety of sectors collaborate on a new long-term plan for the entire nine-parish Capital Region. Rather than planning in five-year increments, as BRAC has historically done, the new plan will see the organization looking ahead as far as 20 years.

“We don’t live inside parish lines,” Melancon said of BRAC’s leadership team. “We live and operate across boundaries all the time. Different parts of our region have different assets that we like to take advantage of. … We want to think about development together, as a region.”

The long-term plan, expected to be delivered in 2026, will focus as much on economic development as it will on quality of life, according to Melancon.