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William Lozito has a short discussion on his blog of state and city tagline problems that seem to have been plentiful lately. While his naming methods may differ from Stokefire's techniques for naming, I think he is spot on with this bit of wisdom:
While I agree with the idea, I'm curious how it scales to cities of a million people. Is it harder to come up with a flavor that makes everyone happy? Do people even try? My real question: Is it easier to brand a small city or a large state? Or even a country? Does the added diversity of a larger constituency make it harder to come up with a representitive tagline, or does a smaller town have bigger issues because the players involved are more directly affected (and represented) by any slogan? I've heard many people complain that locality branding efforts have been lousy of late - and I tend to agree. ("Say WA" may be one of the worst I've come across in a long time.) I just wonder how much of the bad efforts are because the audience has become more savvy at detecting BS and how much of it is because branders (and government) aren't creative and skilled enough to create genuine connections anymore. Me? I Love New York, but since Virginia is for Lovers I've decided to stay put. I can heart NY from afar. (I'm guessing neither phrase would do particularly well if introduced today...) ...and we're not the only folks blogging about the inadequacies of locality tags. Check out this, this (from a guy that quantifies the BS involved in our economy), this (from a local that has to live with a nasty tagline), this (from a man who takes an idea and runs with it), and this (...and note the defensive and highly informed anonymous comment. Gotta love an artist defending his work...) Tate Linden |
