Denny Wilson at Grouchy Old Cripple lives in Atlanta, GA and writes about the current thoughts on "branding"
Branding Atlanta
GMAFB! Atlanta is gonna spend $15 million to brand itself. Think I'm kidding? Read this
Las Vegas: Gambling. Orlando: Disney. New Orleans: Bourbon Street.
Atlanta: Hmmm . . .
City leaders are trying to define Atlanta for tourists, conventioneers, businesses and even locals.
Is it Scarlett O'Hara or Martin Luther King? Trees or traffic? Hip-hop or NASCAR? Major sports, big business or high art?Howza 'bout "When we say nudie bar, we mean nudie bar. Our strippers bare everything." You're welcome. E-mail me and I'll tell you where to send the check.
Atlanta is losing millions of dollars, boosters say, because it's hard to pinpoint the city's image.Bill Campbell, probably the most corrupt mayor in Atlanta history, said that people were gonna come to the 1996 Olympic Games for an "African-American experience". Maybe they oughtta try that. Campbell could use the money to pay his legal bills.
Denny used to work for IBM and he riffs on an experience with that company during one of it's many Re-Branding episodes:
Ya know what this bullshit reminds me of? Back in the waning days of the John Akers' regime at IBM, he decided that he was gonna split IBM up into little companies. This was the current MBA fad: small companies able to react quickly to changing market conditions. Scott Adams called this tactic, Battling Business Units. The Education Division, where I worked, spent some gawdawful amount of money to pay some consulting firm to come up with a name for our little company. The winning entry was Skill Dynamics. Almost everyone (including our customers), except Ralph Clark who was the head honcho, thought this name was stupid. We even made jokes about it and thought that our insignia should be a Skill saw. Speaking of insignias, Skill Dynamics paid a consulting firm some gawfawful amount of money to come up with one. It was some printing symbol that no one had ever heard of.
First, kill all the P.R. people...
