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PrintBaltimore: City of slogans
World-class misanthrope Ambrose Bierce described happiness as "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." We can all identify. But we feel something different about somebody in the exact same mess we're in, a feeling more akin to solidarity, benevolence even. Case in point: Baltimore, a city The Morning File has always liked, and not just because it was the setting for two Pirates World Series clinchers. Like Pittsburgh, Baltimore is a real city with character and few pretensions. Like Pittsburgh, it has a non-stop identity crisis and flails about for a suitable slogan every few years. It's been called Crabtown and Charm City, which make only slightly more sense than our Steel City. It painted "The city that reads" on bus stop benches. But with half of Baltimore's children born out of wedlock, graffiti artists changed it to "The city that breeds," and, with a nod to Baltimore's alarmingly high murder rate, "The city that bleeds."
In this millenium alone, "Baltimore is Better" and "Baltimore Believe" have materialized, the Christian Science Monitor reports. (Wags changed "Believe" to "Behave".) There's even been a toe-tapper of a song: "Balti-More than you knowwww...." Mayor Martin O'Malley trotted out: "Baltimore: The Greatest City in America." Writing in the Monitor, David O'Mara said, "The staggering hyperbole stunned every would-be parodist into utter silence."
Mayor O'Malley blames Baltimore's bad rep, in part, on David Simon, the creator of three acclaimed Baltimore-based series on HBO: "Homicide: Life on the Streets," "The Corner," and "The Wire." But researchers at Landor Associates found that these dark cop shows may actually attract out-of-towners. There's nothing wrong with Baltimore that a little branding won't cure. Branding? If you're of a certain age, you're picturing some cowpoke applying a red-hot iron to Baltimore's backside, with an R for registered trademark. It turns out that the modern form of branding can hurt just as much, considering the cost involved. Branding is the hot word in marketing and sales, the sort of word that can instantly kill a cocktail party. It means a distinctive element that makes an individual or a company stand out, like that annoyingly pervasive Nike swoosh or the incredibly intricate Morning File logo. Which is where brand strategists Landor Associates come in. Baltimore is giving the firm $500,000 for a new slogan,
According to Eric Swartz, president of TaglineGuru, "Rebranding your town with a memorable motto or moniker is the most cost-effective way to leverage your assets, increase your visibility and build brand identity. Look at Cleveland. They've suffered for years with the sobriquet, the 'Mistake on the Lake.' Now, they have a new slogan that's vibrant and contemporary. Urban rebranding is a form of urban renewal ...without the need for a bond measure." On the other hand, there's Nick Wreden, author of "FusionBranding: How To Forge Your Brand For The Future." "It's a feel-good exercise that actually does little good," he told The Christian Science Monitor. We're going to need more evidence than Cleveland to be convinced anyway.
(As judged byTaglineGuru.com.)
1. What happens here, stays here. Las Vegas
2. So very Virginia. Charlottesville, Va.
3. Always turned on. Atlantic City, N.J.
4. Cleveland rocks! Cleveland
5. The sweetest place on Earth. Hershey
6. Rare. Well done. Omaha
7. The city different. Santa Fe
8. Where yee-ha meets ole. Eagle Pass, Tex.
9. City with sol. San Diego
10. Where the odds are with you. Peculiar, Mo.
Experience our sense of Yuma. Yuma, Ariz.
The city was so nice they named it twice. Walla Walla, Wash.
There's more than meets the Arch. St. Louis, Mo.
Keep Austin weird. Austin, Tex.
It's not the end of the earth, but you can see it from here. Bushnell, S.D.
Newark, on a roll. Newark, N.J.
The town that made Tulsa famous. Glenpool, Okla.
Town without a toothache. Hereford, Tex.
You'll notice Pittsburgh's slogan is not among the above. That's because we don't have a winner at the moment. You'll recall that a couple of years ago a bunch of civic branders, known as the image gap committee, came up with: "Accomplishment through connected individuality -- linking vital individuals, vital communities and vital resources." Which raised two questions: "Is this a slogan?" And: "Is that an accomplishment in your pocket, or are you just trying to connect with my individuality?" The answer to the first question: No, it's a "core theme," the committee informed us, not a slogan. And certainly not a "brand essence" or "brand promise". The answer to the second question is personal. So the branding continues. A group is working on something for 2008, the 250th anniversary of Pittsburgh's founding.
We all know that New York is the Big Apple, Las Vegas is Sin City and New Orleans the Big Easy. But did you know Berkeley, Calif., is Berzerkeley; Cincinnati is Porkopolis (perhaps Benopolis by Sunday night); Gallup, N. M., is Drunk driving capital of America; Beaver, Okla., is the Cow chip capital; and Nashville is (who knew?) the Protestant Vatican. So says TaglineGuru.com.
From guff.szub.net
Los Angeles: The city where angels are unlikely
Washington, D.C.: U.S. government swamp
Philadelphia: Somewhat peeved since 1800
San Francisco: Where earthquakes are merely a nuisance
Boston: Now more like the Corinth of America
Denver: Join the mile high club without leaving the ground
Atlanta: The world's next great traffic Jam
St. Louis: More than just that damned Arch
Cleveland: It doesn't always seem like Hell
Memphis: We buried Elvis here... Twice
Does Paris have an image gap?
This slogan business is mostly an American phenomenon, born out of our endearing tradition of civic hucksterism, but that's changing. Before Baltimore, Landor designed brands for Hong Kong ("Asia's World City") and, in the Persian Gulf, "Brand Oman." Poland got a new national logo to draw attention to itself: a kite.
Earlier this year, Kansas launched a "Kansas: As big as you think" branding campaign. It immediately ran into problems One big one was a nationwide poll which found that Americans would never associate the word "think" with Kansas. So the state went back to the drawing board for another way to unlock the Kansas zeitgeist. Some unsolicited help was posted on snarkhunting.com:
Kansas: Like Afghanistan used to be, only the religious government is Christian, not Muslim
Kansas: Come drown in our mainstream
Kansas: A place to exist
Kansas: Jesus lived as far from this place as he could
Kansas: We put the fun in fundamentalism
